Instagram is where they check you out. It isn't where they find you.
Your feed does a real job, and it does it well — it convinces someone who already knows your name. But nobody opens Instagram to search "microneedling near me". They open Google, and whoever turns up there gets the booking.
Three things a feed can't do
None of this is an argument for posting less. It's the work Instagram was never built to do.
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Turn up in a search
Someone new to the area types "facial" and your suburb. A Google listing on its own is thin; a page naming your treatments and where you are gives the search engine something to match.
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Answer "how much?" without a DM
Plenty of people won't ask. Asking a price feels like starting a negotiation, so they quietly go to the studio that published one. A price list ends that.
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Stay findable
A post is buried by Thursday. A page still says what you do, what it costs and how to book, two years from now, without you having to keep feeding it.
One page, doing the whole job
Everything someone needs in order to book you, on one screen they can scroll on their phone.
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Your treatments, in your words
What each one is, who it suits, how long it takes. Written so somebody who has never had it done knows whether to book it.
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A price list
Published, or a from-price if your treatments vary. Either way the question gets answered before it becomes a message you have to reply to.
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Where you are, and parking
A map, the actual entrance, and where to leave the car. Small details, but they're what a first-time client is nervous about.
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A way to book
A request form that emails you, or a button through to whatever booking system you already use. I'm not going to make you change it.
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Your feed, still doing its job
Instagram and WhatsApp linked from the page, so the people who want to look through your work before booking still can.
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Fast on a bad connection
It loads in about a second on phone data. A slow page loses the booking to the next studio in the results.
R2,000, and about a week
R2,000 for the page. Design, writing, your photographs laid out properly, the booking or enquiry form, and getting it live. Changes while we're building it are part of the price — I don't charge for revisions on something I haven't finished.
More pages are R850 each. They reuse the design and the build, so they cost less than the first. The usual reason to add them is search: a page for a treatment you want to be known for means the person looking for that exact thing finds you, rather than a studio that only ever mentioned it in a caption.
The domain is separate. A name like yourstudio.co.za costs somewhere around R100 to R200 a year from the registrar. You buy it and it stays yours; I point it at the site. If you'd rather not, you keep the free address the site comes with.
R500 a month if you want me to keep running it. Hosting, updated prices when you put them up, new treatments, seasonal changes, and someone who answers when something breaks. Optional, no contract.
No charge, nothing agreed until you say so. Prefer the form instead?
If you sell products too
Not every studio needs this. If you sell your own range, or retail someone else's, the page can take orders properly rather than turning every sale into a conversation in your inbox.
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A real cart and checkout
Sizes and variants, stock that counts down, discount codes, and an order confirmation that goes out without you typing it.
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Card and instant EFT
Through Payfast or Yoco, in rands, into your own account. Instant EFT matters here — plenty of people will pay from their banking app who won't type a card number into a shop they've just found.
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Delivery you can actually charge for
Flat rate, by area, or collection from the studio. Set once, applied at checkout, so you stop absorbing courier costs by accident.
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Easy to keep current
Adding a product, changing a price and marking something sold out are done from a phone, by whoever ends up running it — which can be you or me.
Two ways to have one, depending on how much of it you want to touch.
You run it — R3,500 on top of the page, so R5,500 together. I build the shop, load the products you send me, set up the delivery rules and the payment side, and put a real transaction through it before a customer ever sees it. After that it's yours. The shop runs on a subscription in your own name — around R90 a month for a small range, more once you're carrying a hundred products or so — and you add things from your phone.
I run it — R6,000 on top of the page, so R8,000 together, then R750 a month. Everything above, and then the part most people actually dread: I write the descriptions for your whole range and sort out the photographs, rather than asking you to send me copy. The subscription sits on my account, so it's one less bill on your desk, and new products, price changes and seasonal swaps come to me instead of onto your to-do list. The monthly covers up to ten products — past that it goes up, because the platform's own price does.
Either way, the money is yours from the first sale. Card and instant EFT are set up in your name and paid into your account, so nothing routes through me and there's no month-end waiting on me to pass it on. Your payment provider takes its cut — roughly 2% on instant EFT, around 3% on cards.
And if you've only got a handful of products with no sizes or stock to track, say so — a simpler version with a buy button per product costs less and has no monthly fee at all.
Tell me what you do
Nothing needs to be prepared. Your treatment list and a few photographs from your phone is enough for me to start.