client
The Painted Ram
sector
e-commerce
year
2026
scope
Website & branding
The service
that stayed out of the cart.
the
brief
Rae Holliday styles interiors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Paint, furnishings, lighting, art, and the details that make a room feel like someone lives there. No construction, no permits, no contractors.
In January 2026 she had the practice and none of the apparatus. No site, no storefront, no way for a homeowner to find her or book her. She treated the website as the launch of the business itself, which set the shape of everything that followed.
The explaining was the harder half of it. Homeowners who want a different-feeling house tend to assume the answer is renovation, and they price that assumption before they call anyone. The site had to make styling legible as its own service, show what it costs, and take money for it.
We signed on January 13 for a phased build. A landing page first so she had an address, then the full commerce site behind it.
the
work
Rae earned a color certification partway through the build. That added a service the January brief did not have: paint consultations, where she selects the actual colors and sheens a homeowner is going to live with for the next decade.
A virtual version would have been the easier product to sell. It books itself, it scales, and the site already had a working virtual session at $175. We left it off.
Color does not survive a screen. A shade reads one way under a client's north-facing window and another way compressed and backlit on a laptop, and the mistake is expensive to undo. Repainting a full interior runs into the thousands.
So the paint consultation is in person only. It starts at $300, and it is the one service on the site with no Book Now button beside it. It routes through Contact, because Rae needs to see the house before she quotes it. The instantly bookable product stayed the $175 virtual session, where what a client leaves with is direction rather than a committed palette.
The rest of it was commerce that kept turning out to be not quite standard. Squarespace would not take $6 for the first shirt and $3 for each one after, so the rate is built as $3 per order plus $3 per item, which lands on the same number at checkout. Posters ship at $12 for the 18x24 and $18 for the 24x36, $6 for each additional. Chapel Hill buyers pick up free, and most buyers so far are Chapel Hill buyers.
Sizes are labeled unisex fit and women's fit. Apparel carries the clothing and footwear tax code, posters carry general tangible goods, and North Carolina sales tax lands at checkout rather than inside the price.
The portfolio page came before the social campaign, on the advice of a marketing consultant Rae was talking to: people want to see the rooms. Each project runs a short written narrative against a before-and-after pair, built from photography she had already sorted by project in Drive.
Search came last. Searching the brand name in February returned nothing, so the SEO work covered alt text, page titles, meta descriptions, H1 corrections, a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console, a Google Business Profile, and a redirect from paintedram.com, a domain Rae bought to keep the two names from splitting traffic.
Scope
Design and development of thepaintedram.com on Squarespace in two phases: a landing page, then the full six-page commerce site behind it, with scheduling, payments, shipping, email capture, and a search foundation.
Delivered
Six-page Squarespace site: Home, About, Shop, Gift Cards, Portfolio, and Contact, plus a separate booking page
Squarespace Commerce build: posters and apparel with size and fit variants, inventory tracking, low-stock alerts, and gift cards
North Carolina sales tax by product code, USPS flat-rate shipping with per-item increments, and free Chapel Hill local pickup
Acuity scheduling with a 50-minute $175 virtual consultation, reserve-without-paying, and a pay-balance link in the confirmation email
Payment processing configured after a fee comparison across Stripe, Square, and PayPal
MailChimp integration: homepage lightbox, branded confirmation email, and a custom welcome page for new subscribers
Services page covering five tiers from $175 to $1,500 and up, with the paint consultation routed to Contact
Portfolio page built from Rae's project photography, with short written narratives and before-and-after galleries
SEO audit and implementation: alt text, page titles and meta descriptions, H1 corrections, a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console, a Google Business Profile, and the paintedram.com redirect
what
happened
thepaintedram.com is live, and the shop is open. Rae sells posters, apparel, and gift cards out of it, ships them herself with branded labels, and hands orders to local buyers directly.
Her first paid campaign was booked to start at seven the next morning while we were still configuring shipping rates the night before. The shop went into the nav bar, the ad links were repointed at /shop, and the campaign directed visitors to a store that could take an order.
“
Justin built the site at the same time I was building the business. He was flexible and supportive as I figured out my brand and voice. He made sure I can easily add products, run email campaigns, and update pages on my own, which is exactly what I needed.
Rae Holliday
Owner, The Painted Ram
what they
run now
Rae runs her own store. She adjusts inventory in Squarespace when a poster leaves the house, sends campaigns from MailChimp on her own login, and gets a low-stock alert when something needs reordering.
The shop takes new products on the pattern the first ones were built on, so a new drop is data entry rather than a build.
Credits
The Justin Scott Group
Web Development & Design — Justin McKee
The Painted Ram
Copy & Photography — Rae Holliday
Graphic Design — Amanda Slatter
Photography & Video — Rob Holliday