About the Author
Here are three different tattoo studio/artist designs (shown in photo above) that I’ve made over the years, to show you that you can use your artistic skills and get creative when making your own website!
Table of Contents
We live in an age where social media is king, where the biggest spectacles of amusement ascend to the throne! I’m sure you’ve seen the growing trend of tattoo studio ‘skit’ style videos, which can make you feel like the tattoo artists that climb to the top are picked less and less for the quality of their work, and more for their personalities or unique quirks.
Look, if you don’t enjoy to play the ‘game‘ of social media in the tattoo industry, all is not lost. I’d actually say you’re smarter for not participating in it, especially now becoming increasingly impossible to grow from it.
(Above photo from jessevanderhurst TikTok)
Here’s my take on why- I recently made an artist website for a client, and during the process, I came to learn a TON about the tattoo industry. The biggest problem i found was the frustrations of 90%+ of tattoo artists who aren’t hyper TikTok or Instagram personalities. It’s the majority of these guys who come to feel increasingly invisible online.
This is why I decided to put together this website guide for tattoo artists. Here you can follow along and make yourself your own tattoo artist website. This means you can start having people ‘come to you’ while searching google, rather than have to play a social media ‘game‘ that you dislike or never felt like you signed up for!
Straight up, It’s really easy now, even if you don’t get on too well with tech. There are quite a few ‘easy’ options, starting from the easiest and most well known ‘Wix and Squarespace’ to ‘WordPress’ and its simple drag and drop website builder. My advice, pick one, it’ll work.
(Above Image Showing website builders and a tattoo artist website)
It can be from as little as £30 per year, that’s around $40 USD. If you’re alarmed by this number being too low, it’s not. All your website really is, is a domain name (your website.com) and a provider that hosts it for you. Some host’s charge more as they include extras, my advice is go for a basic £30 package, and don’t think too hard about it for your first website.
(Above Image Showing namecheap UK hosting prices)
Let’s talk about ‘why’ you should build your tattoo showcase website then. Now you got the gist, I’ll lay out what I’ve found for you,
I’ll start with a quote from the black and grey realism artist, Joel Ven from Birmingham Tattoos, he say’s that he found “many (of my) clients first spend hours searching through Instagram, trying to find the right artist”,
Upon first hearing this, my ‘web design’ brain gave me some alarm bells. What he was saying to me was saying that people are struggling to find a range of different artists on google, which is generally the first port of call for finding the services you need.
I tested my theory out and found that when searching for specific niche tattoos, I get repeat results from a couple of ‘big names’ and nothing more. This is because on the whole tattoo artists are playing the social media ‘game’, and not taking advantage of the low competition for a place on the search engines.
(Above photo from google search engine showing large chain tattoo studio)
Problem two occurs that when people DO find you on Instagram, they’ve already got several questions to ask about your ‘waiting list’, pricing, and even the simple stuff you think of as common sense, like having great hygiene standards.
These are all things that are too long and detailed to go into your bio, but with a website you can quite easily have these answered in a FAQ section. This way, you can have these answered and dive straight into the initial tattoo ideas and qualify/disqualify the client with much less back and forth in your DM’s.
(Above photo showing FAQ section from Tattoo Artist website that I made in June 2024)
The strength of having your own website also allows you to make sure that your clients attention is not captured by that social media ‘noise’, as social media creates cues that continuously try and pull you in so that you remain on their platforms (Koessmeier and Büttner, 2021). These social media platforms can even remove your clients attention away from what they were originally attempting to ask you in the first place. If nothing else, THIS HERE is my favourite reason to recommend a website to ‘Instagram only’ tattoo artists everywhere. You can even go ahead and add it to your link tree or bio on Instagram too!
If at this stage you’re questioning whether you ‘should’ have a website, possibly you feel like you’re not ‘big’ enough, I understand. I had the same feeling about my website business. But one thing that helped me realise it’s okay, is that there are far worse people out there, doing what you already do, and getting paid more money for it. I’m certain you’ve had this realisation too at some point too!
Having imposter syndrome is common these days, and with the rise of social media and the constant exposure to hyper personalities of the internet, it does no good for getting rid of it either.
(Above photo showing a tattoo artist imposter)
But you’ve got an edge. If you’ve tried the social media game and come out realising how difficult and exhausting it really is in 2024 – just start making your website. Get yourself visible on google and the quicker you do this the better. As google comes to trust your website it will also recommended it to more people searching for your style of tattoos.
Even if we take the high end of popular tattoo artists, Kat Von D (someone who’s now known outside the tattoo world for tattooing), a repeating message she’s given is that “becoming a brand as a tattoo artist means more than just creating great art, it’s about building a reputation”, and if you struggle to do this via social media, your next best friend is google.
Sure, it’s the less travelled route by tattoo artists in general but as we’ve discussed, you’ll face a lot less competition in this space.
Now when it comes to the content on your website, it can be quite stressful to think about but it doesn’t need to be.
I’ve included a full website page layout for your first tattoo artist website below. You can just simply use it to make your website and it will attract clients. No problem. Again I created this layout and very similar for a previous client and it’s why i suggest you use it too.
For starters, what you probably already know about tattoos is that they can be quite emotional for the client,
(Above photo showing tattoo artist working on a client)
I realise you might not feel that it’s this deep, but using marketing that reaches out to your potential tattoo clients that includes a type of ‘transformation’ or emotional message, is so much more likely to engage them, and keep them as a returning customer.
I always advocate that you include this type of messaging in your tattoo marketing simply because it’s hard to go wrong with it. Remember to take this into account when making your website!
Now again, the downside of social media, whether it’s TikTok or Instagram, is that the space for a bio is so small, it makes it difficult to include reviews and other types of ‘social proof’ to show a complete stranger that you’re trustworthy and a real person!
People now scour online reviews, and if you don’t have any visible reviews within your content, this is more likely to lead to a potential client moving on from you, to find another tattoo artist WITH reviews,
While creating your website, it’s so easy to add a mountain of your reviews, which does two things:
As you know by now, having a place that is free from distraction and that also shows that other people have received a great tattoo from you, is a recipe for success.
Another of what i’d call ‘key’ sections is showing your expertise as a tattoo artist. It works in what i like to call the ‘mechanic trust lingo’
Now, we’ve all most likely been to a mechanic, a dentist, or doctor at some point in life, and one think you’ll notice fast is that they use a lot of terms we don’t understand,
(Above photo showing example expertise ‘lingo’)
But we trust them anyway, with our cars and with our health on the line too. This is because as we’ve evolved we came to realise we can’t learn or understand everything (it’s not like a mechanic would understand your tattoo lingo either, right?).
We work like this because “Trust is essential because it allows us to use information from others to make decisions, especially when we can’t check all the information ourselves. ” (Carter and Simion), simply put we can’t, as humans anyway, go and learn 10 years of mechanic skills and lingo in 5 minutes,
Same as your client’s can’t learn 5 years of tattoo lingo, even in a full 8 hour day session. This is why my advice is simply take a word that is common knowledge to you, such as ‘blending’ and you then go into depth about how you use blending in your work. Really show your expertise in a dedicated space that you’ve made for it on your website!
(Above photo showing example tattoo artist ‘lingo’ for client benefit)
This is how a complete stranger comes to trust your skill. Just like it works for a mechanic, it can work for tattoo artists too.
When it comes to choosing how you’re going to build your tattoo artist website, it’s easy enough these days to head straight to somewhere like Wix or Squarespace and start making your site in minutes,
But based on what I’ve learned about tattoo artists is this, you’ll want to change your website, the same way you look back at old tattoos and think “why didn’t i do this?”, or “I’d change that now!“, etc. It’s simply just a part of being an artist, as Denis (2020) concludes “Artists often tend to be critical of themselves during the creative process”
(Above photo showing stressed tattoo artist)
I’d recommend the WordPress ‘drag and drop’ style builders that emulate Wix or Squarespace for a tattoo artist making their own website for the first time. Simply just install a plugin like Elementor and in seconds you’re away!
It just means you have complete control over changing your theme, including a blog, increasing your portfolio and tons of extra functionality that comes free, that you unfortunately get charged for with Wix and Squarespace – even the simple stuff like a contact form now requires your credit card with these two,
If this sounds scary, don’t worry I have a complete 3 part series on making a website for tattoo artists, feel free to check this out. I leave no stone unturned and any of your questions are welcome! I’ve even included the page layout I use for it right below. Feel free to use this for your own site.
The hero section is at the top of any website you land on. Here we pretty much include a nice big tattoo image, or picture of yourself and just say who you are and what you do. An example of this could be ‘I create vibrant watercolour tattoos for East London Mums’
We can also include a button here for people to go ahead and book with you right away.
Next up is the ‘trust’ section, here we simply include a primer about you, and your work, and add a small review – if you think of it from a strangers perspective, they really want to see if you’re trustworthy and real! So here we just give them a quick showcase of this and cap it off with a review to show others have had a good experience with you too.
Let’s start by explaining a little about what makes you and your style unique and a little about how you came to be at your level. This might be that you’ve combined some unusual techniques or even come from an art background where you skill there helped you be great at your tattoo style today. Essentially write what sets you apart and give it a nice title, for example ‘My Crisp and non-fading linework’.
This is my favourite part when building an artist website, here we want to take the reader through your journey. So go ahead and tell them how you started out tattooing and at what level you were (it’s okay to say you were an apprentice that was prone to blow outs)! It could be that you worked harder than everyone else, spent more time at the weekends practising! But you got to the level you are at now somehow! People love stories, tell yours! If you struggle here, pretend you are writing it for someone else. I know the feeling of cringe.
This part is simple, include a few pictures of your best work and explain a little bit about 1 or 2 of these works in those photos. Let’s say for example your client wanted a rose on their shoulder and you added tons of detailed background work or filler to balance it out. Use this section here to say why you did that, and what the client thought of it afterwards.
One of the most important parts of the layout for any business, let alone a tattoo artist or studio is the ‘process’ section. Without one, people coming to your website can get confused with ‘how you work’ or ‘how to contact you’ to get a tattoo. Here it’d suggest keeping the process short, make it 2-3 steps and as easy as possible for a complete stranger to understand. An example process is to ‘message me here‘, ‘I reply‘, ‘You get your tattoo‘.
We added 1 review earlier but now here is our complete reviews section. Here include multiple great reviews that you’ve received! This just backs up everything we’ve been saying and that people really have a great experience with us. Add the photos that pair with these reviews here (if you can).
Coming to the end of the page, we must add our google maps link that shows people exactly where to find us. It’s a no nonsense way for them to click maps and have zero confusion to whether we’re in for example ‘Birmingham, UK or Birmingham, Alabama’. I’ve seen this one happen before! A map link sorts it.
Last but not least, i suggest adding a booking form that sends client messages directly to your email. This is so that anyone that is interested in your services can ask a question or book in with you right away. If they have no way to contact you on your website, they’ll most likely revert to an Instagram DM, if they can find you there.
Hey, I hope i have been of some help to you and given you some reason to think about creating your own tattoo artist or studio website. If you have any questions please let me know or leave a comment down below! Cheers, I’ve been Josh Venables of Venetix Web.
Venetix Web provides premium quality, end to end web design with an emphasis on staying true your brand.
