What Makes a Good Treatment Menu

A good treatment menu is clear and to the point, it stands out amongst your competition, it presents all the benefits resulting from the purchase of your service, product, it shows the pros, builds trust towards the brand, company, and seller – but how exactly do we achieve that?

Since you've already begun to read, give me a chance to quickly show you a few assumptions, that should be your guidepost when creating and checking the attractiveness of the beauty treatment menu in a salon.

One of the most important and basic sources of information about a spa or a beauty salon is its treatment menu.

This is precisely what the client first reaches for and what they see and are impressed by… or not. In short, your beauty salon's menu should be tailored to each and every client, to make them want to come back.

What is a treatment menu really and why should we pay so much attention to it?

Briefly speaking, a salon's beauty treatment menu is like a business card! It should reflect the philosophy of the place and be the best promotional folder there is. This folder influences the client, who might just come back and use your services once again. Every spa or beauty salon manager should be aware that a well-prepared menu is a great sales tool on its own.

So, if you own a salon, see that your menu has been prepared and constructed accurately and whether all aspects have been considered. And if you're just starting in the beauty business, let the below steps be a guidepost for you.

The first step is checking whether the treatment menu is consistent with the object's philosophy and fully reflects it. This rule is often not followed; therefore, often the treatments seem mismatched from the philosophy of the brand. One such extreme example is when the salon's interior relates to the Eastern culture, the air is full of the smell of oriental oils, the staff's outfits are in line with the whole climate of the place, and… the salon's menu has nothing in common with this interior. A message such as this is very misleading for the client and such a contradiction is not a good presentation of the salon. The client shouldn't have to infer from the treatment menu what your brand consists of only to be met with a different depiction. It is worth paying special attention to the salon's name, which often suggests the types of treatments that can be found in the menu. Spa by nature will be associated with treatments based on natural and organic cosmetics, therefore a menu with medispa treatments will be a complete failure.

In a typical spa, greater pressure should be put on a holistic approach to the client, and the core of the menu should be treatments and massages of the whole body. An attractive supplement of the menu will be relaxation therapies, personal training and any types of fitness activities, which will fit perfectly with the rest of the treatment program.

Target group

Another step is checking, whether your menu is adjusted to the target group of the object. Don't try to adapt to every trend and social group there is. You need to precisely determine the age and social group you will be directing your menu at. A spa hotel menu should be completely different from a local beauty salon. In the case of the first, a common mistake is offering treatments, which show a visible effect only after performing a series of 4 to 8 procedures with a frequency of once or twice a week. Hotel guests usually come for no longer than 7 days. Such a menu can turn out to be a fiasco, because the client will not be able to perform a full treatment series, and 2 or 3 treatments won't allow obtaining the desired effect, in addition, we may expose ourselves to the dissatisfaction of the clients, giving an opposite result.

An aspect which should also be kept in mind is the supplementation of the current menu with novelties and fashionable trends. Here, mistakes are made quite often; by introducing the most fashionable treatments, we hope that they will sell themselves, just because something is fashionable and the customer might just find us in the search for new trends. Blindly following fashionable trends will not bring us new customers and might have the opposite effect.

The menu should be updated and supplemented with new treatments as much as possible, but we must do it in such a way that the introduced "novelties" are consistent with the object's philosophy and addressed to our target group. Only then will they be profitable and the client will be satisfied. The rule to remember is that not every new trend will a perfect match for your image and the client's wants.

Analyzing further aspects, we should pay attention to the content and the descriptions of the treatments and their names. Keep in mind - customers are not eager to buy products, but they are willing to pay for solutions to their problems and the fulfilment of their dreams. From today, the language of benefits should become your main language.

The menu must be understandable for the client and at the same time interesting so that they will want to read everything and not just the headline. Is this not often the case that when we reach for the menu of a beauty salon, it is full of incomprehensible words? Our professional vocabulary means nothing to the average customer, and only a small percentage of them have the courage to ask for an explanation, and others are too embarrassed to pronounce the treatment names incorrectly. The main lesson you should take away is that what may seem easy to a professional, does not have to be to our clients. Therefore, the construction of words should be attractive enough to guide them through from the beginning to the last element of the menu, so that they do not get discouraged. And most importantly, to encourage them to follow your hints. It may be helpful to comply with the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) which is often used in various areas of life, even in architecture. Its main goal is to maintain a transparent structure and simplicity.

Assume your client does not know anything about treatments, and that each thing needs to be explained in basics. In summary, when writing a text, let's remember not to use terminology that is too difficult; the whole should be a coherent and clear message.

And now... it's time for cost analysis. Because what good is even the most attractively cut menu when it is unprofitable? The order should be as follows - before you decide to introduce a new treatment, analyze its cost, market price, and the customer profile. Distributors quite often provide suggested prices and as the name itself indicates, this is only a suggestion developed for the whole region. It might not always be adequate for your business. It is also a mistake to copy prices from the competition. A commonly given argument is that if they are earning money, we will too. Well, it is not always the case, everyone has different costs associated with running a spa, a salon, so what pays off for someone will not always pay off for you.

As you can see, a well-designed treatment menu must meet many aspects, it cannot be created in a rush and without an original idea, nor can it be taken out of thin air – it needs to fit with your business' ideology.

It is worth, however, dedicating time and energy to check whether the most important aspects were taken into account when creating a menu for your salon.

Here's what you should start with:

- Check the consistency of the menu with the philosophy of the place and its name,

- Analyze your target group of clients, whether your menu is addressed to them,

- Determine the needs of customers, provide them with ready solutions to their problems, realize their dreams,

- Analyze the descriptions and their graphic form, so that they are clear, transparent, and understandable,

- Use images; our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text,

check if the treatment menu is attractive and up-to-date,

- Analyze the prices of treatments in terms of profitability,

- Show your client what you are best at, i.e., what is the specialization of the place, what makes you stand out from the competition,

- Display the menu so that the customer can see it and wants to read it.

Write down the objectively strong and weak points of your trade menu and draw conclusions as to whether the customers visiting your salon consider the menu only in terms of price. Perhaps they take into account other factors?

Remember that if customers mainly care about the price, then in their minds, your menu and the menu of your competition are the same. And sometimes it doesn't hurt to ask your clients their thoughts on what you need to change as well, constructive criticism is key to development and improvement.