For tattoo shops ยท E-commerce
Merch, prints and gift certificates, sold online.
A tattoo shop's following buys more than tattoos. Shirts, prints of flash, sticker sheets, gift certificates. Most shops sell those at the counter and nowhere else.
Or text (508) 546-9942
Slide it
You vs. Average Joe Ink.
Left is your website today. Right is the one Average Joe Ink has. Drag the line, then hit the button.
Crickets on the left. That is the problem.
Welcome To Our Web Site
Visitors: 000417
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Illustration. Joe is made up. Your competitor is not.
What you are paying for
E-commerce.
A store built end to end, from the name on it to the checkout.
- The storefront, designed and built on Shopify
- Product pages that answer the question before it is asked
- Collection architecture, so browsing goes somewhere
- Visual merchandising, and the photography direction to feed it
- Mobile checkout flow, tested on an actual phone
- Launch assets: banners, email, social, the lot
Next step
Book thirty minutes and I will tell you exactly what it would take.
What I would build
For a tattoo shop.
Prints of flash and original pieces, each credited to the artist on the product page. Collections by artist, so a client who follows one person lands straight on their work. Settle how print sales are split with each artist before anything goes live.
Tees, hoodies and sticker sheets on print-on-demand where the quality holds, so the shop is not storing boxes in the wrong sizes. Art prepared for the print method, including limited color counts where screen printing makes more sense.
Digital gift certificates sold by amount and delivered by email in time for the holidays. The product page states the terms plainly: they apply toward a session with any artist, your deposit and minimum still apply, and the recipient books their own consult.
Photography direction so merch looks as deliberate as the work on the walls, mobile checkout tested on an actual phone, and launch assets: a site banner, an email, posts and a counter sign pointing to the store.
The tattoo shop version
Why it matters.
Someone follows your artist for a year before booking. In that time, they would have bought the shirt, the sticker sheet and a print of the flash they are saving up for. Right now they cannot, unless they drive over on a day the shop is open. A store turns that waiting period into sales and keeps the shop on their wall, their laptop and their back while the books are closed.
This one is close to home. I built the Shopify store for my husband's apparel brand, a dark-alternative print-on-demand label, and I have built stores for clients too. Tattoo merch should look like it came out of the shop, not a generic template, and the art your artists already make is the strongest product you have.
The mistake I see
Selling an artist's work without asking first
The mistake is putting artist designs on shirts and prints because the shop happens to have the files. Flash and original art belong to whoever your agreements say they belong to, and a client's custom piece is not merch at all. Get permission and the split in writing, and never sell a design that was drawn for someone's skin.
How it goes
For a tattoo shop, step by step.
→ Keep scrolling. It moves sideways.
Know the shelf
What you sell, who buys it, and what they compare it against.
Structure first
Collections, categories, the path through.
Look, then build
The look applied to templates rather than to one page, then products loaded and the buying flow tested end to end.
Launch and watch
Watch what people actually do, and fix that.
Step five is you.
The free Receipt shows what your tattoo shop should fix first. Free, no card.
Print my Receipt →
Questions
What tattoo shops ask.
Should we sell aftercare products online?
Only products your shop already stocks and recommends, with the manufacturer's own directions on the page. I do not write health claims for them. Aftercare tends to sell at the counter right after a session, so online it works as a reorder option rather than the main event.
Can clients pay deposits through the store?
Deposits belong in your booking system, tied to an appointment, not in a store checkout where they float free of a date. The store handles things with no appointment attached: merch, prints and gift certificates. Keeping the two separate saves a lot of confused messages.
Will a store take time away from tattooing?
It can, if every order gets packed by an artist between sessions. Print-on-demand handles apparel and stickers without anyone touching a box. Prints and anything stocked in the shop need one person who owns shipping. Decide who that is before launch, or keep the catalog to on-demand items.
Everything else
Other services for tattoo shops.
Same service
E-commerce for other businesses.
Where I work
Southeastern MA, Worcester County, Cape Cod, RI and NH.
Start here
See what your customers see.
The Receipt looks your tattoo shop up the way a customer would and itemizes what is costing you calls. It is free. Or skip it and book fifteen minutes with me.
Or text (508) 546-9942