Vellero — the studio site as public case study

The brief

Build the Vellero studio site from scratch — in the open, as the first live case study. The constraints were immediate: zero existing case studies, zero brand recognition, zero Google Business Profile, zero citations. The site had to do two jobs at once.

Job one: be the first piece of evidence for the pitch. If Vellero sells fast, well-ranked small-business websites, the studio's own site had to demonstrate that — Lighthouse scores, schema coverage, ranking trajectory — publicly and verifiably.

Job two: generate qualified quote requests from Northern Rivers small-business owners who were already unhappy with their current sites.

The implicit third job was to set the upper bound on what the studio could ship. Every future client build gets compared to this one.

The approach

Stack

Next.js 16 App Router + React 19 + Tailwind 4 + TypeScript strict, with MDX for journal content and case studies. Hosted on Vercel. Transactional email via Resend. DM Sans and IBM Plex Mono loaded through next/font/google.

Stack choice was deliberate: the fastest, cleanest modern framework available, with no CMS layer to slow the build or complicate the handover to future care-plan maintenance. Data-layer TypeScript files in src/data/ are the single source of truth — adding a location, a service, or a journal post edits one file and every dependent route regenerates.

Architecture

Thirty-seven pages at launch:

• 11 global pages (home, about, contact, quote, FAQ, pricing, process, journal index, work index, legal privacy, legal terms)
• 2 service hubs (/services/website-design, /services/care-plans)
• 8 location hubs (Byron Bay, Ballina, Lismore, Tweed Heads, Kingscliff, Murwillumbah, Mullumbimby, Lennox Head)
• 5 long-form journal guides (1,500–2,000 words each)
• 1 live case study (this one)
• 3 system files (sitemap.xml, robots.txt, llms.txt)

Every indexable page ships with stable schema @id URLs resolved from an env-aware business.domain helper. That means preview URLs on Vercel resolve correctly (sitemap, canonical, Open Graph all work), and the production domain swaps automatically with a single environment variable change when DNS is configured.

Schema coverage

Every page emits JSON-LD at minimum for:

• ProfessionalService (subtype of LocalBusiness) with geo, areaServed, openingHours
• Organization with sameAs
• WebSite
• Person (Christopher, as author and founder)
• BreadcrumbList

Page-specific schema adds Service (on service pages), FAQPage (on FAQ + embedded on services and location pages), Article (on journal posts), HowTo (on /process and selected guides), and PriceSpecification (on pricing).

Every @id is URL-based and stable. Nothing hardcoded.

The constraints, and how each was handled

Constraint 1 — Zero case studies at launch

The problem: a studio selling web design with no portfolio is invisible.

The solution: ship the Vellero site itself as case study #1, transparently. Every live metric (Lighthouse Performance, LCP, schema validity, indexed page count, local-pack rankings) is published and updated monthly. The bet is that radical transparency beats polished-portfolio-with-no-substance.

Plus an early-client offer: priority scheduling and a discount for clients open to being public case studies. No hard-capped slot count — accepted on fit as projects come in.

Constraint 2 — Brand new entity

The problem: a brand-new business has no entity strength. No citations, no reviews, no Wikipedia, no LinkedIn company page, no press.

The solution: a 90-day entity-build plan, documented in seo/02-seo-geo-baseline.md:

• Week 1: GBP creation, DNS TXT verification of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
• Weeks 2–4: five Tier 1 citations (Yellow Pages AU, True Local, Hotfrog, Start Local, Yelp AU)
• Weeks 5–12: fifteen Tier 2 citations across Australian business directories and Northern Rivers-specific sources
• Reviews: first 3 requested from early clients as each project completes

Constraint 3 — Owner writes the code and the content

The problem: Vellero is a solo studio. Content bandwidth post-launch is limited; shipping eight weeks of journal content takes real time.

The solution: front-load. Five long-form journal guides written before launch, banked for weekly publication over the first five weeks post-launch. Weekly cadence maintained from there by carving out one scheduled writing block per week.

The results (updated monthly)

Launch baseline (2026-04-23, pre-public-DNS)

• Lighthouse Performance (mobile, home): 95+ ✓
• LCP (mobile, home): under 1.2s ✓
• CLS: 0 ✓
• INP: under 150ms ✓
• Schema validity: 100% across all page types ✓
• Build output: 37 pages prerendered, first-load JS 102–107 KB (under 130 KB target)
• Pages indexable: 30 (all /legal included)

Rankings log

Populated after domain goes live and Google Search Console has first data.

Target milestones:

• Day 30: indexing confirmed across all 30 pages
• Day 60: first local-pack appearance for long-tail terms
• Day 90: local-pack top 10 for web designer [town] in at least 3 of 8 hub towns
• Day 180: local-pack top 3 in at least 2 hub towns, top 10 in 5+
• Month 12: defensive top-3 in Byron + Tweed + Ballina; maintaining positions in secondary towns

Citations log

Populated as citations are submitted and indexed.

Why this case study is the most important page on the site

Prospective clients reading this page are running the critical trust check. Every other page can be marketing — this page has to be evidence.

That means:

• Every metric above is real, audited, and updated monthly.
• Every claim about what the studio does is demonstrated by what the site does.
• Every failure mode (missed ranking target, performance regression, dropped citation) gets documented here rather than hidden.

If this page stops being current, it stops being the strongest asset on the site. That's the discipline of running a transparent case study: the bar doesn't lower over time.

What's written about this build elsewhere

• How to rank a small business website on Google locally — the local SEO framework this site implements.
• What should a small business website cost in Australia in 2026? — the pricing thesis Vellero operates inside.
• Local SEO 101 for Northern NSW service businesses — the sub-market analysis the 8 location pages are designed against.

Want the same build?

If you're running a Northern Rivers small business and want a site built to these standards, send a brief. Four to six weeks, flat quote, care plan available. Early clients get priority scheduling and a discount in exchange for public case-study rights.