mylocalsalon generates over $14,000 in salon sales since launch

First of all, please let me say a huge thank you to the 450 pioneering businesses on mylocalsalon, who have contributed to the site’s early success. Without you, our vision would not have been possible. From all of us at Shortcuts, thank you again.

Following its launch on 29 September 2010, mylocalsalon has had over 11,800 visitors. On average, visitors are viewing four pages per visit and spending over three minutes on the site. To date, the site has generated 130 bookings, including 15 from the newly launched iPhone application. Overall, this equates to a booking conversion rate of around 1.4%. The well-established Wotif accommodation site runs at about a 3% conversion rate, so we are very pleased with the progress of the site to date.Ratings and reviews are proving to be extremely popular, and are driving traffic to the site. Over 47, 500 ratings emails have been sent out and your clients have left over 3,425 ratings. They’re mostly very positive, which highlights the strong loyalty your clients have for you, their preferred salons and spas.

Specials emails are also driving visitors to the site, with over 600 subscribing to receive the weekly mylocalsalon specials each Friday. We encourage you to keep posting specials in order to profile your business.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) activities are helping to raise mylocalsalon’s ranking in search engines, and the site is generating Top 10 results for virtually every listed salon. We are also achieving Top 10 results for searches by regional towns and cities. Our SEO initiatives will continue to bump the site up the rankings, ensuring your business is found as part of the 170,000 online searches for hair and beauty services in Australia every month.

Public Relations activities continue to generate broader consumer awareness, and you may have seen coverage in publications such as Courier Mail, Sunday Mail, Notebook, Health Smart, Style Icons and Madison Online – which lists the mylocalsalon iPhone App as one of the six best beauty apps.

Our Facebook Community, Heart Your Hair now has over 6,650 hair and fashion loving fans, and we are planning to bring this community into the mylocalsalon space via a blog, where we can better engage with them through forums and competitions. The newly launched mylocalsalon Facebook page currently has over 150 fans, however we expect this will grow as we continue to promote your specials and new businesses listed on the site.

We’re also excited to let you know that mylocalsalon is heading to the UK, where we’re preparing for the launch of mylocalsalon.co.uk in December.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on in the mylocalsalon community, and we have some even more exciting developments coming down the line, which we’ll share with you soon. In the mean time, please contact your Business Development Consultant if you have any queries about mylocalsalon.

We recommend you add:

• Pictures of your business, staff, treatment rooms and anything else that makes your business unique.
• There is also plenty of space to write descriptive text about your business, the services and products you offer, and how your clients will feel when they have visited you.

We have prepared some help documentation and a brief video which explain what sort of content to add, how to add it and how to get the most out of your mylocalsalon listing.

As with any new website, there are bound to be questions about how it works, and what at each stage of the setup and booking process. The mylocalsalon team has compiled a detailed list of FAQs, which are available here.