Customers ask about balayage prices, lash availability, walk-in slots, bridal packages and gift vouchers around the clock — usually when you are mid-colour and can't get to the phone. SmartWidget answers in your salon's tone, captures their details, and texts you the second a real booking enquiry lands. Built in the UK, from £19 a month.
You're in the middle of a balayage. The phone rings on the desk. By the time you've foiled the last section and washed your hands it's gone to voicemail — and they didn't leave a message because they were ringing three salons at once. That booking is gone.
Most independent salons lose eight to fifteen enquiries a week to a busy chair, evenings, and Saturday chaos. Your website probably gets 50 to 200 visitors a day, but the static enquiry form converts about one in fifty.
Customers won't wait for an Instagram DM reply on a Wednesday night when they want to book brows for the weekend. They scroll, find whichever salon answers fastest, and book there. The salon that captures the enquiry, captures the booking.
SmartWidget aggregated benchmark · 538 UK hair & beauty sites, Q1 2026
"Saturdays used to be carnage — phone going non-stop while I'm doing a balayage. Now the widget catches everything and texts me when somebody actually wants a booking. Saved my sanity."
SmartWidget reads your salon website and learns your services, treatment prices, stylist names, opening hours, walk-in policy, and which services need a patch test or consultation first. When a customer opens it on your site, it answers in your salon's tone — chatty and warm for hair, sharper for cosmetic, on-brand for barber — and captures the booking details you actually need.
Every conversation pings your phone. Email goes to the desk, SMS to your mobile direct (using SMS credits), or both. Reply from your phone, the customer sees it in the chat as a continuous conversation — not a bot then a human handover.
Captures the service requested, preferred stylist, dates that suit, and any allergies or previous treatments. Texts you everything you need to book the chair.
Balayage, lashes, brows, nails, extensions, men's cuts, beard trims — quoted from your published price list with stylist-tier ranges where you offer them.
"Any slots today?" is the most common opener for salons. The widget either replies from your opening hours, or pings your phone instantly so you can answer in the same chat.
Captures wedding/event date, party size, venue postcode and which services each person needs. One enquiry, full breakdown, into your phone.
December peak alone usually pays the year's subscription. Captures amount, recipient, occasion, and sends customers your voucher link or contact details.
The moment a hot enquiry lands the widget texts your mobile with the customer's name and ask. You reply from your phone, the customer sees it in the chat.
Warm and chatty for hair, calm and precise for lash, sharp and quick for barber. Tweak the tone in seconds and lock it across every conversation.
Polish, Romanian, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic — replies in the customer's language automatically. Built for the actual UK high street.
Data stored in the EU, ICO-aligned retention. Patch-test, allergy and consultation notes handled with care. Transcripts deletable on request.
Drop in your website address. That's the entire setup form. No code, no integrations, no sales call.
Our model reads every page — services, treatment prices, stylists, opening hours, walk-in policy, location — and builds your widget knowledge base automatically.
Copy a single script tag into your website footer. Works with Fresha sites, Squarespace, Wix, Showit, Booksy profiles with a website, custom HTML — anything that loads JavaScript.
Pay monthly or save 25% on annual. SMS credits sold as one-time top-up packs from £39.99.
It sits on your salon website as a chat widget and answers booking enquiries instantly. It quotes prices for cuts, colour, balayage, lashes, brows, nails, extensions and any treatments published on your site; checks walk-in availability against your opening hours; captures bridal and hen-do enquiries with party size and date; and texts you the moment a real booking lead lands. It runs 24/7 — which matters because most salon enquiries arrive in the evening when customers are scrolling on the sofa.
SmartWidget captures the enquiry — service requested, preferred stylist, dates that work — and sends it to you by SMS and email. You then enter the booking into Fresha, Booksy, Treatwell, Phorest, Timely or your manual diary, exactly as you do today. Direct booking-system integrations are on the roadmap. Many salon owners prefer the human-confirmation step so the widget never double-books a chair.
The widget quotes ranges drawn from your published price list. If a customer asks for a specific stylist's rate, it confirms the range and asks if they want an exact quote — which it captures as a lead and routes to your phone. It does not invent prices or commit to numbers you have not published.
Yes — and these are some of the highest-value leads any salon gets. The widget asks for wedding/event date, party size, venue postcode (for travel), and which services each person needs. It packages this as a single enquiry and texts the full breakdown to your phone so you can quote with confidence.
Customers asking "any slots today" are the most common chat opener for salons. The widget can either answer with a generic response based on your published opening hours, or ping your phone immediately with the request so you can reply within the same conversation. Most owners use the second mode on Saturdays.
Not directly — it captures the enquiry, the amount and the recipient details, then sends the customer your published voucher link or your contact details. Direct gift-voucher purchase via the widget is on the roadmap. December peaks alone usually pay for the year's subscription.
Yes. SmartWidget is built in the UK, data is stored within the European Union, and we follow ICO guidance on lawful basis, retention and visitor consent. Conversation transcripts can be exported or deleted on request directly from your dashboard. Patch-test, allergy and consultation information — if a customer shares it — is treated with appropriate care, but the widget never gives clinical advice.
Around 90 seconds for the initial AI configuration. You paste your salon's website URL, the AI reads your pages and builds a starter knowledge base — services, treatments, price ranges, opening hours, stylists, location — and you tweak any details before going live by pasting a single line of code into your site footer. Works with Fresha sites, Squarespace, Wix, Showit, custom HTML — anything that loads JavaScript.
Most independent salons convert at least one extra booking per week that previously would have gone to voicemail. With a typical UK colour-and-cut ticket at £80–£180 and a balayage at £140–£260, the £19 Lite tier or £49 Growth tier typically pays for itself two or three times over with one captured booking. The maths is even better for high-value services — bridal, extensions, brow lamination — where one missed enquiry can be £400 of lost revenue.
"Saturdays used to be carnage — phone going non-stop while I'm doing a balayage. Now the widget catches everything and texts me when somebody actually wants a booking. Saved my sanity."
"Lash girls don't have time to be on the phone all day. The AI quotes our classic-vs-Russian prices, books in patch tests, and pings me a summary. Bookings up about 40% in five weeks."
"Barber shop with four chairs. Set it up in about eight minutes — it learned our walk-in policy and our skin-fade pricing from the website. Brilliant bit of kit for the money."
"Lovely for routine nail bookings and price questions. Occasionally it forwards a custom-design question to me that it could probably have handled, but the tuning was easy."
"I do bridal hair. The widget captures wedding-date, party-size and venue, then sends me everything so I can quote properly. Booked three full bridal parties from web enquiries last month alone."
"Mobile beauty, working solo. This is genuinely the closest I'll get to having a receptionist. Customers can book treatments from my Instagram link in their pyjamas at 11pm."
Free for 14 days. No card. Cancel any time. Live before your first appointment.