Websites, booking and reminders for nail salons in Glen Ellyn, IL.

How much is a full set is the question you never get asked.

It gets typed into a phone instead. Gel, dip, acrylic, builder gel, a fill against a fresh set, soak-off charged separately, art priced per nail — the customer knows there's a range in there and assumes the worst when a salon hides it.

Publishing a service menu with honest prices and honest timings does two jobs at once. The person booking already knows what she's spending, and the person who was going to call and ask never needs to pick up the phone.

A two-hour set and a thirty-minute fill can't share the same slot.

Most booking tools treat every appointment as one length, which is how a book ends up with a full set jammed against a pedicure and somebody running forty minutes behind by noon. Here each service carries its own duration and its own technician.

Clients pick the person they trust rather than the salon in general, so the booking page shows who's working, what she does, and what is genuinely open on the calendar you already keep.

• Per-service times, so the book stops lying to you about the afternoon.
• Requests by technician, with a first-available option for the people who don't mind.
• Add-ons priced and timed properly — art, French, removal, paraffin.
• Cleanup time held between chairs automatically, without anyone blocking it out by hand.

The one o'clock cancellation doesn't have to stay empty.

Someone calls off at eleven. In most salons that hour simply evaporates, because filling it means ringing round while your hands are in a bowl. A waitlist does it for you — everyone who wanted today gets a message saying one o'clock just opened, and the first to tap has it.

No-shows get caught earlier than that. A reminder the day before, another that morning, a card held on file for the services that warrant one, and a policy written where people actually read it, which is before they book and not after they miss.

Your work is the advertisement, and it's already on a phone in your pocket.

Nobody chooses a salon from a paragraph. They choose from a photo of a shape and a color they want on their own hands — and they want to believe it came out of your chairs rather than a stock library full of somebody else's fingers.

So the site is built around a gallery you can add to from the front desk, the Google Business Profile carries the same photos, and a review gets asked for automatically once a client walks out happy.

Two plans, both priced out loud.

You sign for twelve months and the bill arrives on the same date each month. If you want out early, tell us in writing: you pay the current month plus one more, and the domain, the Google profile and the customer list leave with you.

• Foundation costs $250 monthly, and $250 once to build it: your own domain and site, Google Business Profile set up properly, business email, local search work, and one change a month on request.
• Growth costs $500 monthly, and $500 once: all of the above, and then booking synced to your Google Calendar, the CRM, automatic review requests, reminder and follow-up messages, card payments, expenses in one place, a monthly report and a clean line into QuickBooks.
• A year in advance takes 15 percent off, which is $2,550 on Foundation and $5,100 on Growth, build fee not included.
• If the front desk is whoever isn't currently with a client, phone answering is $100 a month. Automatic replies to your Google reviews are another $130 a month.

Book a manicure in the salon we built.

Knox Nails takes real bookings and sends a real confirmation, so you can walk through it as your own client and see what turns up on her phone.

We're new and we say so on our own homepage. There's no list of salons to show you yet, only a system you can open, use and judge for yourself this afternoon.