booksalon
Starting as a simple prototype, booksalon has become one of the most promising Scandinavian scale-ups. The product combines both booking and payment services.
International product expansion started from Finland to the Scandinavia and UK regions, resulting in hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers.
Project duration
- Since April 2018 - over 5 years
Industry
- Wellness & Beauty
Team
- Tech Lead
- Software Architect
- Senior Full Stack Developer
- 3 Full Stack Developers
- Junior Full Stack Developer
- 2 QA Specialists
- Product Owner
Provided services
- Web App Development
- Mobile Application Development
- Business Advisory
- Cybersecurity Audits
- Technical Audits
- Serverless Services
- Quality Assurance
- Product Design
Countries covered
Finland
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Spain
Project summary
Most popular booking systems for beauty & well-being services in Finland.
All-in-one system for vendors. Provider of both booking and payment services, currently being used by over 5000 salons in Europe
The mobile app achieved the top ranking in the lifestyle category (#1 on App Store) during its first weekend post-launch.
How does the client perceive our cooperation?
Key numbers
- 5000beauty salons spread across Europe on the platform
- + 300%YoY growth
- 0.5%churn rate
About the project
Booksalon is a sophisticated system for booking beauty and wellness salons, physiotherapist offices, personal training venues, and similar vendors.
For business owners, the system allows the management of their salons as an organization, including staff & shift management, services management, product and sales management, accepting payments with a dedicated payment terminal, booking management, also via a widget embedded at their salon’s website with full customizable information for the customer.
But above all, booksalon serves thousands of customers to perform a complex service - smooth online reservation, starting from the payment, through automated SMS and e-mail reminders, the possibility to pay online and on-site via a credit card terminal, adding products to the basket, to ordering.
What challenges did the client face?
At the very beginning
Taking over the existing prototype
Unifying a set of unfinished or partially finished chunks of the system built by different teams.
Making the app production-ready
All the way through, from the setup of code quality tools, through the deployment process, to monitoring.
Refactor data model
With proper access and validation support to be implemented from scratch.
Along the way
Becoming an industry pioneer
To stay ahead of the competition, it was crucial to expand the range of functionality with what salon owners demandedEntering new markets
Finland has always been intended as a launch pad, not a target market, so the developed product had to be both technologically and business-ready for expansion.
Customer app release
Initially, booksalon was a vendor-only solution, which over time evolved into an all-in-one solution, offering the whole range of facilities to customers as well.
Result-first approach
Initially, the very first prototype was developed by only a single developer. Since then, our approach has evolved, but our principles have stayed the same.
Risk minimization was one of them. Back in 2018, there was no room for any mistakes for such a fresh product as booksalon. Therefore, it was essential to test business hypotheses as quickly as possible, and consequently, we organized the entire product development process in a lean approach.
As a result, every release or even a single feature moved us closer to the main goal. That’s not the only success factor - to provide meaningful increments, you have to be sure your code is future-proof. That’s why quality has been put first.
Constant testing helped minimize the client’s business risk and ensure the software created was a good basis for the future. With the current application size, testing became mostly automated - as a result, the product team can focus on the client’s business priorities.
Thanks to the fundamentals built, no matter whether we implement online payments, basket module, automated SMS/mail system, or anything else in the future, our client can be sure that everything will be smoothly delivered with a meaningful outcome.
Agnieszka Zacher
Product Owner & Customer Success Manager
Our approach to the process is about using it as a tool for the client's goal, not as a goal itself. That's why, particularly on booksalon, we work in Kanban instead of holding firmly to, for example, Scrum. Thanks to recent changes made in the development process related to the transition of the product into the next phase of development, as well as a significant increase in the development team, we are able to quickly deliver value to customers, flexibly adapt to changing priorities and smoothly launch releases even a few times in one week.
Delivered key functionalities
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Jonne Castren
Founder & COO of booksalon
I had my doubts about outsourcing some key development areas outside our company; however, people at Vazco have proven my doubts wrong. The team at Vazco has shown real commitment and product ownership at such a level that it would be hard to build even internally, and is definitely a rare experience when outsourced. They are also really nice people and fun to work with.
Before
- Product requiring investment
- Booking software only
- Only desktop version available
- Only a few beauty salons in Finland covered by the service
- 1 developer working on the prototype
After
- Self-financing product
- Both booking software and payment hardware
- Both desktop and mobile versions available
- 9-member development team working hard on the sophisticated system
- Several thousand well-being facilities across the entire Scandinavia (and beyond) covered by the service.
What’s next?
Our achievements at this point are far from what we are aiming for. We’ll do our best to make this product so good that it will be your first choice when booking services - no matter if it will be a massage in Helsinki or a haircut in London.
Business Expansion
Entering new markets and covering more salons across all over Europe.
Enhanced product development
In addition to the new client-oriented functionalities, Book Salon is expanding with a mobile application and new analytical dashboards for vendors.
Strengthening the cooperation
Mutual support and business understanding take cooperation to a whole new level.