✒️ Shona Louise Tattoo
Creating a bespoke website for a local tattoo artist, to promote their work and take bookings.
🧾 Background
A local tattoo artist approached me needing an online platform to showcase her portfolio and streamline her tattoo booking process. Without a centralised website, she was missing the opportunity to connect with potential clients and faced difficulties managing bookings scattered across various social media platforms.
I took on the challenge of crafting an engaging and intuitive website that would effectively meet the client’s objectives and user expectations. Here’s how I approached the project:
🔍 Discovery & Wireframing
The process began by conducting a meeting with the client, Shona, in order to help me understand her vision, target audience, and preferences. We talked through ideas, analysed competitors’ websites and identified industry trends, which gave me a strong idea of the direction and priorities of the project.
We also uncovered the pain points of her situation, which revolved around her lack of online portfolio presence, which was leading to poor client outreach and frustrations with bookings being requested from several different social media platforms.
”I’ve always struggled with client communication due to the nature of social media, it would be great if I could have my portfolio of work and an easy way for clients to book in, all in one place.”
Shona
Having a clear set of problems to solve, I started sketching some hand-drawn wireframes to map out the website’s structure and functionality. These sketches served as a visual guide, allowing us to align with Shona’s vision and preferences early in the process, as well as providing a solid foundation for the subsequent design phases.
Following the initial hand-drawn sketches, I translated the concepts into rough, lo-fi digital wireframes. This conversion process allowed me to refine the website’s layout and functionality in a digital format while preserving the simplicity and clarity of the original sketches.
By digitising the wireframes, I could easily iterate on design elements and incorporate feedback from Shona throughout the process, ensuring the final product closely aligned with her vision and goals.
🎨 UI/UX Design
Having iterated upon the wireframes and validated my layout and structural decisions with Shona, my focus was now on creating a seamless and intuitive experience for visitors to the site.
I aimed to ensure that every interaction with the website would be engaging and straightforward. Through careful consideration of layout, navigation, and visual elements, I crafted a simplistic yet stylish design that prioritised Shona’s portfolio, while making both the essential information and a user friendly contact form easily accessible to users.
The final UI design was kept to a deliberate monochromatic style, perfectly encapsulating the traditional blackwork tattoos which Shona specialises in.
🧑💻 Development and Implementation
I hand-coded every aspect to ensure precise implementation of the design and functionality. Leveraging HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I meticulously brought the UI/UX designs to life, focusing on responsiveness and browser compatibility for a seamless user experience across devices.
Upon completion, the website was deployed to a reliable hosting platform, ensuring optimised performance and security. This approach guaranteed that Shona’s website not only met her needs but also provided a stable and accessible platform for users to engage with her work and services.
🚀 Launch, Evaluation, and Results
Following the website’s launch, thorough evaluation and feedback collection were conducted to gauge its performance and user reception. Additionally, feedback from Shona and her clients provided valuable insights into areas of improvement and user satisfaction, as well as new functionality that could be added to the site in the future.
Post-launch, the new website translated directly into increased inquiries and bookings for Shona. The new site also simplified the process of managing bookings via the website’s user friendly booking form.
”The new website has made it so easy for me to display my latest tattoo pieces in one place. It’s also been so much easier to manage bookings through my contact form, rather than from scattered social media messages.”
Shona