The average revisit period for hair and beauty in both New Zealand and Australia has remained stable over the past few years, but increased considerably due to lockdown restrictions in Q2 2020.
We looked into the data to find out what the average revisit periods are for the hair and beauty industries in both New Zealand and Australia, and have provided tips for reducing your own revisit period to help increase your revenue.
What is client revisit period and why is it important?
The client revisit period is the average number of days between a client returning for an appointment. The regularity of your client revisit period has a huge impact on your annual revenue. Make a small change to the revisit period (i.e. reduce the length of time between visits and get clients coming back more often) and you’ll see a massive jump in your revenue.
Here’s an example:
If your annual revenue is $400,000 and your average revisit period is 8 weeks, by reducing this to 7 weeks and 6 days (that’s an easy one day improvement), you will increase your annual revenue by $7,200.
Reduce your client revisit period by one week and your annual revenue will increase by a massive $56,000.
To calculate the average client revisit period for the hair and beauty industries in New Zealand and Australia, we used Kitomba Benchmark, a feature of Kitomba Salon and Spa Software that compiles and compares anonymous data from the industry.
Client revisit rates for the hair and beauty industry
The client revisit rate has been fairly stable over time for both the New Zealand and Australian hair and beauty industries.
Trends since 2017 have included a slight improvement in the revisit period in Q4 in both New Zealand and Australia as clients get extra visits in before Christmas, but revisit periods increased considerably in Q2 2020 due to the effects of lockdown restrictions from COVID-19, as clients weren’t able to visit as often as usual, if at all.
When looking at the graphs below, the revisit period is on a reverse scale (left-hand axis), where an increase in number does not indicate a positive change. A smaller number, i.e. shorter period between visits, is better for revisit.
Average revisit period for the New Zealand hair industry
For the New Zealand hair industry, the average client revisit period (indicated by the pink line) has been relatively stable since 2018 when it was 6.8 weeks on average. Client revisit period extended to 9.1 weeks in Q2 2020 (between Q1 and Q3 2020) due to lockdown restrictions, but returned to 6.7 weeks in Q3 2020, increasing slightly to 6.9 weeks in Q4 2020.
Average revisit period for the Australian hair industry
The revisit period for the Australian hair industry has been relatively stable over time and peaks in Q4 each year, but increased in Q2 due to lockdowns from COVID-19. It stabilised back to around 6.9-7 weeks in Q3 2020, but increased again in Q4 2020 to 7.7 weeks. This is likely a result of more lockdown restrictions in different Australian states.
Comparing Q4 year on year, the average revisit period was 6.6 in Q4 2017, and 7.7 in Q4 2020.
Average revisit period for the New Zealand beauty industry
Indicated by the black line, the client revisit rate for the New Zealand beauty industry has remained fairly stable since 2017, except for Q2 2020 when lockdown restrictions increased client revisit from 39 days (5.5 weeks) in Q1 2020 to 57 days (8.1 weeks). However, client revisit returned to normal levels in Q3 and even saw a slight improvement in Q4 2020 at 38 days (5.4 weeks).
Average revisit period for the Australian beauty industry
For the Australian beauty industry, the average revisit period has been stable over time but increased over lockdown to 63 days (9 weeks) on average as clients were unable to visit. It returned to normal levels in Q3 2020 at 40 days (5.7 weeks).
However, comparing the average client revisit period of 37 days (5.2 weeks) in Q4 2017 with 41 days (5.8 weeks) in Q4 2020 tells us that the client revisit period has been slowly increasing over time.
The verdict
So, what can we learn from this data?
The client revisit period has been relatively stable since 2017, but was severely impacted by lockdowns and restrictions resulting from COVID-19, which caused client revisit periods to increase considerably. Client revisit rates returned to near normal levels after restrictions eased, but there is much room for improvement.
In Q4 2020, the average client revisit period for the New Zealand hair industry was 6.9 weeks, the Australian hair industry was 7.7 weeks, the New Zealand beauty industry was 5.4 weeks, and the Australian beauty industry was 5.2 weeks.
If hair and beauty businesses want to increase revenue, reducing the client revisit period is a way of achieving this.
If you want to know what your own revisit period is, you can use Kitomba Benchmark in Kitomba 1 to see your business’s average revisit period and how it compares to the industry average in real time. You can also see what the individual average revisit periods are for each staff member.
Tips for reducing your client revisit period
Here are our top tips for reducing your revisit period:
Educate your clients
Your team should be educating their clients about how to maintain their look, including when they need to visit again for optimal results. This helps to ensure the client understands what’s required to achieve the results they’re looking for, and sets an expectation of when to return. To be able to do this confidently, it’s important that your staff receive ongoing training.
Document service and treatment plans
Formalise your treatment plans with a digital form that outlines what they can expect, such as how many treatments it’s likely to require and how often they’ll need to return. This ensures you’re on the same page and your client understands when they need to book their next appointment.
You can create bespoke digital forms in Kitomba that clients can fill out on tablets in your salon, spa or clinic, or you can send it to them in advance by SMS or email. Once filled out, the information saves automatically to their client card so you don’t need to enter the information manually.
Find out more about Kitomba’s customisable digital forms.
Rebook your clients
When you educate your clients about when they need to return for their next appointment, it makes rebooking easier. Rebooking your client for their next appointment before they leave your premises locks in future revenue and also is an opportunity to reduce their average revisit period.
Kitomba knows the average revisit period of every individual client and tells you this at the point of rebooking, making it easy for your team to reduce this period. If a client usually comes in on average every eight weeks and six days, you could reduce this to eight weeks and five days. Or if they prefer a Thursday appointment, reduce their revisit period by a week and offer them the earlier Thursday appointment rather than the one a week later.
Use repeat appointments
Creating recurring appointments in advance will help to secure future appointments with that client, and future income. Because you can customise the frequency of the appointments, it’s also an easy way to reduce your revisit period, which equals more secured revenue for you.
Kitomba Repeat Appointments makes it easy to create multiple appointments for a client at once. It’s perfect for booking all the visits required to complete a treatment plan, or for booking your regular clients in for an entire year of appointments. Whether you need to make five appointments or 50, you can do it easily in Kitomba 1.
To find out more, check out the Kitomba Repeat Appointments support guide to find out how to create a series of appointments to your specifications and resolve any scheduling conflicts.
Offer memberships and concessions
Selling concessions means taking payment for a number of the same service in advance. This secures future appointments with that client and can help to encourage them to visit more frequently as they’ve already paid for the service ahead of time and it will have an expiry date.
With Kitomba Concessions you can easily offer your clients the opportunity to purchase a number of services in advance. You may want to offer a discount as an incentive to your clients to purchase concessions. To learn how to set up Concessions in Kitomba, visit our support guide: How to create a Concession.
You could also create a membership programme allowing your loyal clients to become VIP members with access to bespoke concessions and packages that they can pay off over time, as well as special offers, which can inspire them to visit more regularly.
Kitomba enables you to achieve this by using Salon Pay. To find out how you can offer memberships to your clients, read this article about Kitomba and Salon Pay memberships.
For more tips on securing future revenue, read: 5 proven ways to fill your appointment book.
Follow up with your clients
Automate your follow-ups with the clients that haven’t rebooked. If your average revisit period is eight weeks and you’d like to reduce this to seven weeks, set up an automated marketing campaign in Kitomba and it’ll automatically text or email clients that came in six weeks ago and haven’t rebooked to remind them they’re due for an appointment. Include a link to your Online Booking site in the message so they can book with a few clicks.
To find out how to set up an automated marketing campaign, view our support guide.
How this data was collected
The data outlined in this article was sourced from Kitomba Benchmark, which is a feature of Kitomba Salon and Spa Software that compiles and compares anonymous data from the hair and beauty industry. Data from Q4 2017 and Q4 2020 was analysed.
Permission to use this content
When using information from this article in other publications please include a reference link to this article in attribution of the original source.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below or contact us.
Read more articles like this:
- Industry insights: Average client spend for the hair and beauty industry
- Industry insights: COVID-19 impact on the hair and beauty industry
- Industry insights: Rebooking rates for the hair and beauty industry
