At the chair
One tap or scan while they still like what they see in the mirror.
Review cards · Salons & barbers
Ask at the mirror, not at the door.
A card at the chair that sends clients straight to your Google review page — one tap, or one scan of the QR if their phone has no NFC. A card each, so you can see which stylist is actually asking.
For salons & barbers
Reviews asked for at the right end of the appointment
Before the till
The window closes when the card machine comes out. Ask before it does.
Per stylist
A card each, counted separately, so you can see who is asking.
No gating
Everyone goes to Google — no sorting the happy from the not.
The window is about ninety seconds, and it closes at the till
There is a moment at the end of an appointment when the chair turns round, the client looks in the mirror and likes what they see. That is the moment. It lasts roughly as long as it takes to get the gown off, and then the client is at the desk thinking about money, the card machine, whether they need to rebook and where they parked. The review you were going to get quietly stops existing somewhere between the chair and the till.
A card at the station closes that gap. The client is still sitting down, still pleased, and already holding a phone because they have been holding it for forty minutes. One tap or one scan and the Google review box is open in front of them before they have stood up.
A card each, because the review is about a person
This is the argument that belongs to salons and to almost nobody else we sell to. A salon is not really one business asking for reviews — it is four or five people who share a room, and a client’s review is about their stylist, by name, not about the building. Give every chair its own card and the arrangement matches the reality.
It also makes the scheme survivable. Every card carries its own code and is counted on its own, so a fortnight in you can see that two stylists are asking every client, one is asking sometimes and one has left the card in a drawer. Without that, a review push in a salon lasts about three weeks and then quietly stops, and nobody can say why. If the cards are for a team rather than one owner, cards for small teams covers how several people sit under one account.
A stylist who rents a chair and has their own following is a slightly different case: point their card at their own listing rather than the salon’s, and if they move on, repoint the code instead of reprinting anything.
Tap or scan — it works on whatever they are holding
Every card carries an NFC chip and a printed QR code, both pointing at the same place. Modern iPhones and Androids read the chip when the card is held near the top of the handset. Anything that does not — an older phone, a work phone with NFC switched off — reads the QR with the camera. You are not asking your client which kind of phone they have; you are putting a card in front of them that does both.
Nothing needs installing either way. More on how the QR side works.
Asking everybody, which is the only version we will sell
Some review tools ask the client to rate the visit first, then send high scores to Google and low ones to a private form the public never sees. That is review gating. It is against Google’s policies, the FTC banned it outright in the United States in 2024, and the CMA has been increasingly explicit about manipulated reviews here.
Our cards send every client to the same Google page. You will occasionally get a review you would rather not have. A salon profile sitting at 4.7 with a couple of mixed ones reads as a real salon; a wall of unbroken fives reads as a salon that bought them, and the people most likely to notice are exactly the clients you want. What you can properly control is when you ask, and the mirror is a perfectly fair time. The honest way to ask for reviews goes through the rules.
What you get, and what it costs
Review cards are quoted rather than bought off the shelf, because they ship already pointed at the right Google listing and we would rather set that up than leave you to it. Tell us the salon and how many chairs and we will come back with a price and a proof of the artwork before anything is printed. The dashboard, the per-card counting and the ability to repoint a card later are included, with no subscription attached.
If you want cards that hand over a stylist’s own details as well — for the clients who ask for a number rather than leave a review — those are our ordinary contact cards and they have a published price.
The bit that ages well
The card never changes. Where it points does.
This is the difference between a card you own and a card you are stuck with, and it is worth understanding before you buy anybody’s.
A cheap NFC card
The web address is written onto the chip itself. That is why it is cheap, and it works fine — right up until something changes.
- New number? The card still points at the old page.
- To fix it you need every card physically back in your hand.
- Some sellers say “reprogrammable” — that means you re-encode each one yourself with a phone app.
- Lost one? It carries on working for whoever picked it up.
One of ours
The chip carries a permanent code, and we decide what that code opens. The card is a key; the lock is ours to change.
- New number, new role, new company — change it once, in a browser.
- Every card you have ever handed out follows, including the ones you will never see again.
- Point a card at a different profile entirely, whenever you like.
- Lost one? Switch it off from your dashboard and it stops opening anything.
Which is why we can sell you a card and then never charge you again: the thing that keeps it working is not a subscription, it is that the destination was never on the chip. What happens when you change your number goes through all three arrangements in full.
Common questions
Should each stylist have their own card?
Usually yes. Every card carries its own code and is counted separately, so the dashboard shows who is asking and who is forgetting — which is the difference between a scheme that works for a fortnight and one that sticks. They can all point at the same salon listing.
Do clients need an app to leave a review?
No. They hold their phone near the card, or point the camera at the printed QR, and your Google review screen opens in the browser they already have. Nothing to install, no account to make.
What about a stylist who rents a chair and has their own following?
Point their card at their own Google listing rather than the salon’s. The card belongs to whoever the reviews should belong to, and if they move on you repoint the code rather than reprinting anything.
Is it allowed to ask every client for a review?
Asking everybody is fine. Asking only the clients you expect to be pleased is not — sending happy ones to Google and unhappy ones to a private form is review gating, which breaches Google’s policies and is exactly what the CMA has been warning about in the UK.
Our reviews are about individuals, but the listing is the salon. Does that work?
It is the normal case and Google handles it: clients write about their stylist by name in a review on the salon’s listing, which is worth more to the salon than a scattering of individual profiles. Counting per card is what lets you see which stylist generated which review without splitting the listing.
What if a card is lost, or a stylist leaves?
Disable the card from the dashboard and it stops resolving immediately, or repoint it at somebody else. Nothing on the card identifies a person beyond the code, so a lost card is a lost piece of plastic rather than a data problem.
The moment is different in other trades — see review cards for trades, where the ask happens on the doorstep, and for cafés and restaurants, where a stand on the counter does the asking. Also pubs and garages. The review cards overview covers all of them.
One thing worth knowing before you order, because it is the step people expect to be harder than it is: the card does not have your review page written into it. You paste your Google review link into your dashboard once, and every review card, sticker and stand you own points there from that moment. Change your listing later and nothing has to be reprinted.