Hair salon website design in Japan – a site that shows your stylists and their work

Hair salon website design starts with the site's role

Most salons in Japan already use a booking portal such as Hot Pepper Beauty, an Instagram account and a Google Maps profile. Giving each channel a clear job makes it obvious what your own website needs to do.

• Booking portal: where new customers discover you, compare coupons and check open slots
• Instagram: daily style photos and the mood of the salon – posts scroll away quickly
• Google Maps: directions, opening hours and reviews for people searching nearby
• Your website: the home base that brings together your approach, your stylists and the styles you do best, and turns interest into requests and bookings

Your website is also where people go to check you out after seeing you elsewhere. Link to it from your portal page and Instagram bio, and plan the site so that visitors feel confident and book from there. For the bigger picture on attracting customers, see hair salon marketing.

The core pages of a salon website that gets bookings

Plan the content in the order customers want answers before booking. Even a small salon works well with these pages:

• Home: photos that show the atmosphere, your signature styles and a booking button
• Menu and prices: cut, color, perm and treatment prices with time needed, including extra charges for long hair or requesting a stylist
• Stylists: a photo, specialties, background and working days for each person
• Style gallery: work photos you can browse by length and look
• Salon and access: interior photos, number of chairs, parking, directions from the station and a map
• FAQ: children, same-day booking, payment methods, cancellations
• Careers: if you are hiring, how you work and train

Go beyond "from 5,000 yen" and explain how prices change with hair length or products used. It prevents surprises at the counter. Tidying your current menu into a web-ready format is a good first step.

Building stylist pages and a style gallery

Stylist pages and the gallery are what win requests for a specific stylist. Portals carry similar information, but on your own site you decide how photos look and how much each stylist can say.

• Specific specialties: write in the words customers search for, like "short bob", "highlights that blend gray hair" or "cuts that work with natural curl"
• A personal note: what each stylist cares about and how they run a consultation, in their own words
• A booking link per stylist: a button right under the profile that books with that person
• An easy-to-browse gallery: sort by short, bob, medium, long, color and perm, and tag the stylist and menu for each photo
• Consistent photos: shoot front, side and back in natural light against the same background

Get each customer's consent before their photo goes on the website, and keep a record of it. If a photo already on Instagram will now appear in more places, confirming again is the safe choice. A practical start: pick about ten photos per stylist from what you already have.

Designing booking buttons and the path to a reservation

The route to a booking affects results more than anything else on a salon site. When a visitor thinks "I want to go there", the button should be right in front of them.

• On phones, pin a booking button to the bottom of the screen so it works from every page
• Offer only the booking methods you actually handle: portal, your own booking system, LINE or phone
• If new and returning customers book in different places, make the button labels show the difference
• Match the website and booking links on your Google Business Profile with the ones on your site
• Track booking button clicks in GA4 to see which pages lead to reservations

To reduce portal fees, some salons add their own booking system and move regular customers over step by step. We compare the options in salon booking systems.

What to prepare and common mistakes

The more materials are ready, the faster the build. Typically a small salon site goes live in about one to two months.

• Prepare: logo files, photos of the salon and stylists, style photos, your current menu, opening hours and days off, details of the booking service you use
• Mistake: using only an Instagram embed as the gallery, which slows the page down
• Mistake: needing the agency for every staff change or price update, so the site goes stale
• Mistake: forgetting to update "first visit only" or limited-time offers, so the site and real prices disagree

In Japan, discount and comparison wording falls under the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations, and claims about retail hair care products under the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act. Guidance is revised from time to time, so check the latest from the Consumer Affairs Agency and the Ministry of Health before publishing. Build the site so your own staff can update stylists and menus in the admin panel. If you also offer esthetics or nails, see esthetic salon website design.

How UNANOBO builds a salon website: a free demo first

Before you commit, UNANOBO builds a free demo centered on the home page, using your logo, colors and the photos and menu already on your Instagram or portal page. You check how the stylist profiles and gallery look on a computer and a phone, then decide whether to go ahead.

The process is free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, so you have one contact from the first demo to marketing after launch. Everything runs by message in Japanese or English, so you can reply between appointments at your own pace.