05. SERVICE BUSINESS
Nails by Ava
Independent nail artist in Fargo, ND. Online booking with Square integration, built to replace a booking pipeline that had been living entirely in Instagram DMs.
TIMEFRAME
Q1 2026
ROLE
Design, build, Square integration, Google Business Profile setup.
LIVE SITE
Ava — an independent nail artist in Fargo, ND, working out of a rented chair and running her entire booking pipeline through Instagram DMs.
THE PROBLEM
Ava was losing booking hours every week to DM tag on Instagram — clients would ask about availability, she'd miss the reply, they'd book elsewhere. She needed a real booking flow without the overhead (or price tag) of Vagaro or GlossGenius.
THE APPROACH
- Portfolio site with a clear service menu and Square Appointments integration so clients can book any open slot without messaging anyone.
- Square Catalog + Locations wired through Square SDK v44 — every service is priced, timed, and syncs back to her dashboard. (SDK v44 has some real gotchas around BigInt and catalog.list vs searchItems that I documented in the codebase.)
- Progressive-Web-App install with offline fallback so clients can open the site even on spotty signal.
- Google Business Profile + service-area setup for 'Fargo nail artist' and 'nails near West Fargo' searches.
STACK
- Next.js
- Tailwind
- Square SDK v44
- React Email + Resend (booking confirmations)
- Vercel
- Google Business Profile
RESULTS
~1 week
TIME TO LAUNCH
DM → self-serve
BOOKING CHANNEL
enabled
PWA INSTALL
NEXT CASE STUDY
Peridot Properties
SHORT-TERM RENTAL