01 / Context

The owner needs to run it without a developer beside her.

I built the public website and Studio Manager around one database. Customers can explore services, book with a deposit, and shop; staff work with calendars, stock, clients, and payments behind the scenes.

The handover needed to cover ordinary changes too. A new photo or a revised description should not require a development task.

02 / Constraints

What the system had to handle.

  • The studio already used Fresha; a new system needed to work with that calendar.
  • The owner needed control over live website copy and photographs.
  • Payments, bookings, and staff workflows needed to work as a connected system.

03 / Decisions & trade-offs

Key decisions and their trade-offs.

01

Give the owner a website editor

I built editing tools into Studio Manager so the owner can update public copy and photographs.

Alternative
Ask the owner to send every content change back to me.
Trade-off
An editor adds permissions and validation to maintain. It gives the owner independence for everyday changes.
02

Integrate the existing calendar

I connected the system to Fresha with two-way calendar synchronization.

Alternative
Replace the existing booking workflow entirely.
Trade-off
Synchronization adds an external dependency and failure cases. It avoids making the team abandon a tool they already use.
03

Prove the handover, not just the interface

The launch included a live payment and refund exercise, a restore drill, and owner training with a handover pack.

Alternative
Treat a successful deployment as the end of the job.
Trade-off
Operational exercises take time before launch. They make the delivery more useful to the person responsible for running it.

04 / Outcome

A connected studio, launched and handed over.

The system launched in October 2026 with live payments, the public experience, and Studio Manager. The owner can change website content herself. Later updates came from real requests by the studio, not guesses.

What I’d improve next

The calendar integration depends on an external service, so monitoring and recovery remain part of the work. I would measure owner task completion before claiming a quantified improvement in efficiency.

Project snapshot: 2 November 2026. Outcomes describe what was built and launched, not a measured rise in revenue.