One owned platform that runs the practice — and the search that fills it
This is a multi-year engagement with a specialty tattoo studio, and it has three chapters. It began with an organic-first website that took the studio from no online presence to a fully-booked calendar. We then built a custom platform the studio owns — one place that runs the entire client lifecycle, from first enquiry through consultation, deposit, sessions, healing and follow-up. And on top of that sits the growth engine: an organic search foundation and, more recently, accountable paid search. Everything below is described against the running code, the live site and the reports we pull — the studio owns all of it.
In plain terms
The studio’s whole operation on one platform we built and they own — the public site, the bookings, the deposits, the admin, and the search and ads that bring new clients in.
Runs the whole practice
Portfolio, consultations, deposits, multi-session projects, client messaging and aftercare all live in one place — replacing Instagram DMs, spreadsheets and manual invoicing.
Fills its own calendar
First through organic search that took the studio from no presence to fully booked, now with paid search on top — every enquiry tracked, so spend is accountable rather than a guess.
The studio owns it
The platform, the client data and the site are theirs to keep — built and maintained by us, not a rented tool that stops the day the bill lapses.
The problem
A specialty tattoo artist does distinctive work, but ran the business the way most do — through Instagram DMs, manual calendar entries, cash or bank transfers, and verbal aftercare that gets forgotten. There was no tracking for multi-session pieces that span weeks, no financial protection against no-shows, and no online presence to match the quality of the art. New clients could only find the studio by word of mouth.
The studio needed two things at once: a single platform that handled the whole client lifecycle with the polish to match the work, and a way to be found — organic visibility in a crowded local market where the top search positions had been held for years, and later paid search that could be measured rather than guessed at.
What we built
A custom platform the studio owns — a public portfolio and marketing site, a client self-service portal, and an artist admin dashboard, with integrated deposits, booking and automated communications — and a growth engine layered over it: an organic SEO foundation and accountable Google Ads, every enquiry tracked end to end.
Deposit-first booking that protects the calendar
Consultations are booked through the platform; once a project is agreed the artist raises a Stripe deposit checkout, and unpaid bookings are cancelled automatically after 24 hours by a scheduled job — so a held slot always means a committed client.
Multi-session project tracking
Projects follow a ten-state lifecycle — enquiry, consultation, deposit, session, in-progress, complete, healed, archived — each transition validated by a tested state machine, so both artist and client can see exactly where a multi-session piece stands.
A client portal and automated aftercare
Clients log in to see their projects, bookings, payments and documents, message the artist, and upload references. Booking confirmations, deposit receipts, reminders and a timed multi-step aftercare sequence go out automatically, with failed sends logged and retried.
An artist admin dashboard
Revenue tracking, a booking calendar with conflict detection, a client CRM with tags and source tracking, and waitlist and portfolio administration — the whole business in one interface.
An organic search foundation
The studio went from no presence to a fully-booked calendar through organic search first — location-specific targeting, a Google Business Profile, schema, and a premium site built to convert consultations. On the owned platform the organic foundation keeps compounding, deliberately kept out of collision with the paid landing pages.
Accountable paid search
A live Google Ads account drives high-intent local searches to the site, structured around the niche the studio can actually win. Every conversion is tracked — GA4, the Google Ads tag and enhanced conversions all fire in production — so spend is measurable end to end. We state the numbers plainly: an early clean month recorded roughly A$1,146 in spend for about 677 clicks and 3 booked-consult conversions — the honest base to optimise from, not a headline.
How it fits together
One platform, the whole studio
Read it as a wheel: the studio’s own platform sits at the centre, and every part of running the practice — and filling it — hangs off it.
The studio’s own platform
The studio owns the whole platform outright — the site, the client data and the booking history are theirs to keep.
Inside the build
Real screens from the running platform, captured with placeholder data.
The outcome
The relationship runs across the studio’s whole growth. The organic-first website took it from no search presence to a fully-booked calendar — 398% organic growth over eleven months, no paid advertising. We then built a custom platform the studio owns, replacing Instagram DMs, manual invoicing and spreadsheets with one professional interface that runs bookings, deposits, multi-session projects and automated aftercare. And paid search now sits on top, every dollar tracked end to end — modest today, and honest about it, but measurable and built to compound. The studio owns the whole thing outright.
“Instant results, instant leads and my website was revamped which became more user friendly. Couldn’t speak highly enough.”
Studio owner
Specialty tattoo studio
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