Pricing grooming for online booking
Fixed price, size bands, or quote on arrival. All three work. Each one fails in a specific way, and the failure is what you are choosing between.
In a salon you can look at the dog before you commit to a number. Online you cannot, and every pricing model is really a decision about who carries that uncertainty: you, or the customer.
Option one: one price per service
Full groom, $75, whatever turns up. It is the easiest listing to understand and it converts best of the three, usually by a wide margin.
It fails on the tails. Two hours on a matted bernese for the same money as forty minutes on a shih tzu is not a rounding error, and if word gets around that you are the cheap option for big coats, that is who books you. Groomers who use flat pricing successfully almost always restrict which breeds they accept.
Option two: bands by size and coat
Small, medium, large, then a surcharge for double coats. This is what most established salons land on, and it is what the Petsocare calendar is built around: each band carries its own duration as well as its own price, so the calendar stops overselling your afternoon.
It fails at the boundaries. Owners underestimate their dog, consistently and sincerely, and a springer booked as a medium will cost you twenty minutes. The defense is a photo at booking and permission to move the band once, which owners accept readily when it is stated up front.
Option three: quote on arrival
Perfectly defensible, and the worst performer online by some distance. A listing with no price is competing against listings with prices, and most people will not book an unknown number for a service they can buy elsewhere for a known one.
If your work genuinely cannot be priced in advance, publish a floor. "From $60, confirmed after assessment" recovers most of the lost bookings while keeping your discretion intact.
A price with a condition attached still counts as a price. No price at all reads as expensive.
The part that actually moves revenue
Whichever model you pick, add-ons are where the difference shows up. Nail trim, teeth, de-shed, a hand-strip, a bow. Offered as tick boxes at checkout they attach to roughly a third of bookings; mentioned at the counter while the owner is putting the lead on, they attach to almost none.
Partners who moved add-ons into the booking flow report average tickets up by a fifth or more without touching their base price. That is the cheapest price rise available to a salon.