Concept site · Tattoo studio concept · Cape Coral, FL
Obsidian Tides
Tattoo studio concept · the arm
The brief
What we built.
A concept site for an appointment-only tattoo studio, built around one idea: every tattoo starts as a conversation. A concept we built unprompted, to show what the site could be; not affiliated with the business.
- A tattoo sleeve that fills in as you scroll, from stencil to finished colour
- The artist’s styles up front: neo-traditional, colour realism, cover-ups and custom pieces
- His Ink Master: Angels credit, and deposit and consent forms that work on a phone
- 21 pages with local search markup. Google mobile speed 59 to 100
The numbers
Google Lighthouse, mobile, their site before and our concept after. Official Google PageSpeed (mobile, 2026-10-25) for performance 59; accessibility, best practices and SEO from local Lighthouse 13.5 (43/94/100/100) · Official Google PageSpeed, mobile, 2026-10-25 (100 / 100 / 100 with SEO 69); local Lighthouse drafts 98-99 The SEO score is left out of the comparison: concepts are hidden from search engines, and that alone caps Google’s SEO score at 69.
The business
Who we were dealing with.
A high-end, appointment-only custom tattoo and cosmetic artistry studio specialising in vibrant full-color neo-traditional and color realism.
Their brand as it was
- Circular 'OT' logo in copper and teal
- Swamp / cypress-water photo backgrounds
- Teal and cream palette with serif type
- Tagline: Crafting eternal tales through artistic self-expression
- Calm 'Florida sunshine' studio vibe: teal walls, navy velvet sofa, koi/octopus art
Worth knowing
- The artist was a contestant on Ink Master: Angels Season 1 (from his own social bios; not mentioned on the old studio site)
- Deposit required and non-refundable; not booked until the deposit is paid
- Two people run the studio per the About page
- Old site was a Squarespace template
The research
How we studied the industry, top to bottom.
Why this business
- Picked directly by the user, who was already talking to the artist (no 10-candidate search)
- Old portfolio page showed one tattoo; homepage had none
- Ink Master credit was completely absent from the old site
The industry
- For a tattoo artist the portfolio is the whole sale: clients judge by photos of finished work
- Clients expect to book from the phone: request form, deposit, consent paperwork, aftercare and FAQ
- Style pages (neo-traditional, color realism, cover-ups) and city pages help Google match searches
- Flash and events are common secondary offers
The local market
- Studio moved to Cape Coral, with Fort Myers, Naples and Lee County as the wider area
- Concept includes Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Naples tattoo pages
- Southwest Florida tattoo market positioned against generic shops with a calm, private, appointment-only studio
- Gallery and editorial tattoo-site patterns explored in the mockup rounds (ink bloom, gallery black, shattered, koi river)
What we found
- No tap-to-call and no booking button on the first screen
- No style pages, city pages or cosmetic page
- No reviews, FAQ, aftercare, artist bio or deposit explanation
- No credit for the TV appearance
- No H1 on the homepage
The audit
What was holding it back.
Tested 2026-10-25
- Local Lighthouse performance 43; PageSpeed 59
- Main content (LCP) 9.9 s (local)
- First paint 3.4 s (local)
- Blocking time 910 ms (local)
- Page weight 4.0 MB
- 0 tel: links on the site
- Portfolio page has one image of tattoo work; homepage shows no tattoos at all
- No tap-to-call anywhere; the phone number is plain text on inner pages only
- No booking button on the first screen; appointment request lives only in the menu
- Main content takes nearly 10 seconds to appear on a phone and the page weighs 4 MB
- No H1 on the homepage
- No reviews, artist bio or photo, styles explained, aftercare or FAQ, and deposit rules only as a caps-lock warning
- Only 4 pages: no style pages, no Cranberry / Zelienople / Pittsburgh pages, no cosmetic service page
- Low-contrast text over the swamp background
- Typo in the copy ('feeel right at home')
- Generic Squarespace template
Brand & design
One Tattoo (the arm) direction.
One life-size forearm is pinned in the middle of the page and gets tattooed in stages as you scroll: stencil, linework, color, finished, healed. All content floats around it as annotations, so the site shows the craft instead of describing it.
- Obsidian#030304
- Ink black#0c0c10
- Bone#efe8dc
- Gold#d4a24c
- Magenta#d4106a
- Bright magenta#ff2e88
- Tide teal#2ee6d6
- Sunset orange#ff7a2f
- Stencil purple#8b6dff
Type
- Bodoni-style high-contrast serif for big headlines
- Barlow for body
- Caveat handwritten script for notes and annotations
Signature moments
- Pinned forearm that crossfades stencil to lines to color to healed on scroll
- Thin hand-drawn leader lines and a 01-05 progress rail
- Neo-traditional wave and peony art spilling out of the tattoo at three moments
- Torn-paper cover-up before/after
- Arm dipping into black water at the booking form
- On phones the arm turns horizontal and crosses the screen between sections
Imagery
- Generated photoreal arm in six matching stages made as edits of one finished image
- Generated wave, peony, smoke, gold dust, water, line-art and paper elements; all text set in code
- Placeholder studio, artist-hands and cover-up images are AI-generated pending real photos
- Gallery links to Instagram until real work photos arrive
Three rounds of mockups: round 1 (Ink Tide, Gallery Black, Shattered), round 2 (One Tattoo 9/10, Koi River 8.5, others), round 3 refinements; v3-B (gold accents, script notes) 9/10 locked with a mobile version.
Under the hood
How it is built.
Built to convert
- Tap-to-call and a sticky mobile Request / Call bar
- Booking request form that opens an email with fields filled in, plus call and Instagram alternatives
- Deposit page (card, Cash App, Venmo, or a link texted after consult)
- Built-in online consent form
- Flash claim page, Events page, Pricing & Deposits explainer, Aftercare, FAQ, Pay a Deposit
- Google review card with QR code
- Cover-up before/after
Built to rank
- TattooParlor, Person, Service, OfferCatalog, Event, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and GeoCoordinates schema
- Pages for tattoo in Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Naples
- Style pages (neo-traditional, color realism, cover-ups and more)
- Sitemap, robots, 404; kept noindex until the artist approves
Built to be fast
- Inline CSS and per-element scroll writes brought performance from 79 to 98 across drafts
- No mailto form action; self-hosted woff2 fonts
- Full-sleeve arm draft held 98 with a 1.9 s LCP
Good to know
- SEO is 69 only because the concept is noindex until the artist approves; local Lighthouse with the site indexable gave SEO 100
- Local Lighthouse draft 3 (full-sleeve arm): 98 / 100 / 100 / 100, LCP 1.9 s
- Re-run once public to confirm 100 / 100 / 100 / 100
- Real tattoo photos and a real cover-up before/after pair must be supplied; current ones are AI placeholders or Instagram links
- Studio photo is an AI placeholder of a teal studio
- Google rating and review count not checked; site only links to Google
- A concept built unprompted: the business did not commission it, and the details (reviews, photos, prices) would be confirmed with the owner before any launch.
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