How to make a tattoo portfolio website with online booking

To make a tattoo portfolio website, start with your work. Pick your strongest pieces, healed as well as fresh, and group them by style. Then build the site around that gallery, with a short page about you, your contact details and online booking. Put it on a domain with your own name or your studio's name, and link to it from your social profiles. Clients can then go from seeing your work to booking a session in one place.

Why your tattoo portfolio needs its own website

If you already post your work on Instagram, keep doing it. But on Instagram, your work sits in a feed between everyone else's posts, and bookings end up in long message threads.

An online tattoo portfolio on your own website works differently. Your work is grouped the way you want, and clients can book a time without messaging you. Choosing who to trust with a permanent tattoo is a big decision, so clients want to see your work properly before they book. Your address also stays the same if you ever change platforms, as long as you keep renewing your domain. And because the site is yours, you can work on its search engine optimisation (SEO). Name your town and your styles on your pages, so your site can come up when someone nearby searches for a tattoo artist.

So use both. Instagram helps people find you, and your website is where they look through your work properly and book.

What a tattoo portfolio should include

A good tattoo portfolio website has five parts: a gallery of your work, a page about you, your contact details, links to your social media and online booking.

A gallery of your best work, grouped by style

Your gallery is the heart of the portfolio, so make it a careful selection rather than a complete archive. Leave out any piece you wouldn't want a new client to judge you by. Choose the pieces that best show your style and your technique.

Show healed work beside fresh work. Clients who take their time over the decision want to see how your lines and colour look once they've healed. Take your photos in good, even light, without heavy filters, so the skin and ink look as they really do.

Group the gallery by style, such as fine line, realism, colour, blackwork or traditional. People choose a tattoo artist by style, so this helps them find what they came for. If you draw flash designs, give them a page of their own where visitors can pick one and book it.

An about page with your story and your styles

The about page is where visitors meet the person behind the work. Tell them in a few honest sentences how you got into tattooing, what inspires you and which styles you specialise in. Naming your styles clearly helps the right clients recognise you as the artist they're looking for. You don't need to impress anyone here. Write the way you'd talk to a client in the studio.

Contact details and your studio's location

Put your contact details where clients find them easily, for example in the menu or the footer. Include at least these:

• An email address or a phone number, or both.
• A simple contact form for quotes and tattoo ideas.
• The address of your studio, if you have one.

If you run a studio, set up a Google Business Profile as well. It's free. It lets you manage how your studio shows up on Google Maps and Search, with your opening hours, phone number and a link to your website.

Links to your social media and a blog

Link to the profiles where you post regularly, such as Instagram, from your website. If you post most on Instagram, you can show your Instagram feed on your website, and our guide explains how. These posts work well on both:

• Short videos of your tattooing process, which show how you work.
• Photos of healed tattoos, which show clients how your work lasts.
• New flash designs, ready for followers to book.
• Reviews from happy clients, shared as stories or posts.

You can also add a blog to your site and write about aftercare, choosing a first tattoo or the story behind a recent piece. Posts that use the keywords your clients search for give people another way to find you.

What you need to build a tattoo portfolio website

You need three things to put your portfolio online:

• A domain name: your website's address, such as yourstudioname.co.uk. Each address can only be registered by one person or business at a time, so check that the domain is available first.
• Hosting: the server space where your website's files are stored, online around the clock so visitors can open your site at any time. If you build a WordPress website instead, it needs web hosting of its own, plus Managed Hosting for WordPress if you publish it from our Aida AI Website Builder for WordPress.
• A website builder: the tool you design and publish your site with. With the Aida AI Website Builder, you describe your studio in a chat and get a first version, which you then change as you like.

For a UK studio, we'd usually suggest you register a .co.uk domain. It's familiar to clients here, and with your own name or your studio's name in front of it, the address is easy to remember.

Our Aida AI Website Builder plans include hosting and email on your domain, and a free domain for the first year on selected extensions. So if you build your online portfolio with us, you don't need a separate hosting plan.

How to make your tattoo portfolio website, step by step

With the Aida AI Website Builder, you go from an empty page to a portfolio clients can book from in five steps:

1. Choose a plan with online booking, either Booking or Commerce (the comparison below shows which suits you), and pick your domain.
2. Describe your studio, your style and the site you want. The Aida AI Website Builder creates the first version from your description.
3. Refine the design and the sections, and upload your own photos for the gallery.
4. Set up booking: add your services with a short description each, and set your availability to match your opening hours.
5. Publish the site and connect your domain, so clients can find your portfolio at your own address.

How to set up online booking for tattoo appointments

With our online booking system on the Booking and Commerce plans, clients book a consultation or a session straight from your portfolio, at any time of day. You spend less time answering messages to agree on a date, and every appointment is in one place. Before you open your diary to bookings, settle these points:

• Your services: list what clients can book, such as a tattoo from their own design, a custom design and tattoo, a consultation to talk through an idea, or a flash tattoo. Give each one an estimated duration and a price range.
• Deposits: if a booking needs a deposit to hold it, put the amount in the service description and say whether it comes off the final price. If clients pay it outside the booking, tell them how to pay and by when.
• Your availability: decide when you take appointments and when you're away, and block those times out.
• Your booking rules: decide how much notice you need, whether clients can cancel or reschedule and how late, and how many sessions you'll take in a day or a week. Clear rules keep your schedule under control and help reduce no-shows.

The booking calendar syncs with Google Calendar or Outlook. Your bookings then sit next to the calendar you already use. Clients get a confirmation email they can reschedule from, up to the point you allow. If you build your site with WordPress instead, a booking plugin adds a booking system to it.

Which plan do you need for online booking?

Online booking comes with the Booking and Commerce plans of the Aida AI Website Builder. The Portfolio plan shows your work but doesn't take bookings.

Our advice: if you tattoo on your own, start with the Booking plan, which takes up to 25 appointments a month. If several artists in your studio take bookings, you book more than that, or you want to sell prints and flash sheets, choose Commerce.

With the Booking and Commerce plans, clients book straight from your website, and you manage your appointments, services and availability from one dashboard.

What to put in a tattoo apprenticeship portfolio

A tattoo apprenticeship portfolio is the set of drawings you show a shop when you apply, before you've tattooed any clients. Fill it with finished drawings and flash designs, not sketches in progress. Cover a range of styles, such as lettering, traditional pieces and realism, and give your strongest style the most space. That way the shop sees both your own ideas and that you can draw cleanly.

Bring a printed portfolio when you visit a shop. Put the same work on a website too, so you can send its link when you apply by email. Once you start tattooing, add healed pieces to the site, and your apprenticeship portfolio grows into your tattoo portfolio.

Put your tattoo portfolio online

Your portfolio starts with a short description of your work and a folder of your best photos, healed and fresh. With those ready, choose a plan with online booking, build your portfolio website and open it to clients.