The Tanning Shop: nearly tripling traffic across 90+ salons
Client: The Feel Good Group Ltd
Web Consulting
A national tanning chain’s website was under attack, struggling with traffic, and eating up staff time. Over two years, I stabilised it, automated the admin, and helped nearly triple its monthly visitors.
200%
Monthly visitors, 70k to 200k+
99%
Performance Grade
-80%
Time to update prices, 13.5h to 2–3h
A national brand on a site that couldn't keep up
Situation
90+ salons, one website
The Tanning Shop, part of The Feel Good Group, is one of the UK’s largest tanning salon chains, with over 90 locations across the UK and Northern Ireland. As a franchise business, it has to balance a consistent national brand with the flexibility each salon needs locally. I was hired as a Senior Consultant in August 2022.
Challenge
Under attack, slow, and hand-edited
The site was being hit by malware with no reliable backup, scored an E for performance, and fell over on shared hosting exactly when customers wanted to book. Meanwhile every price change meant hand-editing more than 90 location pages, and a national brand had surprisingly little visibility in Google.
Solution
Three phases, in the right order
Fix the emergencies first, then fix the way the site was run, then improve it for customers.
- Stop the bleeding — security, backups, hosting and speed.
- Make the site easy to run — custom plugins so the team manage it themselves.
- Improve things for customers — apps, performance, GDPR and local SEO.
Three things going wrong at once
Strain
The website was under strain
- Hit by malware attacks, with no reliable backup system.
- Slow, with a performance grade of E. Visitors left before pages loaded.
- Shared hosting that couldn’t cope with busy periods, so it went down exactly when customers were trying to book.
- The iOS and Android apps had persistent login problems, frustrating regular customers.
Admin
Simple updates took far too long
- Every price change meant manually editing more than 90 location pages: around 13.5 hours of staff time each time.
- Offers, opening hours and service details were edited by hand, in code, page by page.
- Because each location page was managed separately, the brand looked inconsistent from salon to salon.
Missed
Opportunities were being missed
- For a national brand, the site had surprisingly little visibility in Google.
- No easy way to run time-limited offers, or promotions for particular regions or salons.
- Security gaps that needed closing urgently.
Emergencies, then operations, then customers
1
Phase one
Stop the bleeding
Nothing else mattered until the site was secure, backed up, and on hosting that stayed up when it was busy.
WordfenceSuccuriKinstaCDN
Security
- Set up reliable backups, both on-site and in the cloud.
- Cleaned up the malware and installed Wordfence to keep it out.
- Found and closed several serious security gaps in the site and its connected systems.
Hosting & Speed
- Made the case for moving to Kinsta, a premium hosting provider, and led the migration.
- Moved heavy images and files onto a content delivery network, so they load quickly wherever the visitor is.
- Added caching and cleaned up the database.
2
Phase two
Make the site easy to run
I built a set of custom WordPress plugins so the team could manage the site themselves, without editing code.
Custom PluginsPHPJavaScriptAJAX
Pricing Manager
- A spreadsheet-style screen for editing prices across every location in one place.
- Bulk upload by CSV or XML.
- Regional pricing, so groups of salons can have their own prices.
Price updates dropped from around 13.5 hours to 2–3 hours for all 90+ locations.
Offers and banners
- Offers set nationally, regionally or for a single salon, appearing in the right places automatically.
- Each offer has a start and end date, so it goes live and comes down on schedule.
- Built-in tracking shows which promotions actually drive visits.
The marketing team run all of this without technical help.
Sunbed database
- One central record for every sunbed model and its specifications.
- When equipment changes, every salon page that features it updates automatically.
Opening hours
- Opening hours managed centrally, including bank holidays and one-off changes for special events.
3
Phase three
Improve things for customers
With the foundations fixed and the admin automated, the work turned to the people using the site and apps.
Rank MathSchemaGDPRFIREBASE
Mobile apps
- Fixed the persistent login problems on iOS and Android.
- Made sure logins are stored securely, so customers stay signed in safely.
- Brought both apps in line with GDPR, and handled app store compliance and security certificate renewals.
Website
- Improved the performance grade from E to A.
- Cut page load times by more than 60%.
- Put a full GDPR and cookie consent setup in place.
- Built an interactive Christmas campaign to drive seasonal bookings.
Search visibility
- Worked alongside the company’s newly hired SEO manager on the technical side of their strategy.
- Set up Rank Math for local SEO, and added structured data to every location page so Google understands each salon’s details.
- Built location landing pages that feel local while staying consistent with the national brand.
Traffic nearly tripled
Organic search drove more than 60% of all visits, even as paid advertising increased. The site handled three times the traffic without slowing down.
“I’ve worked with many developers over the years but Dan is by far the most gifted. With skills ranging from web design to in depth security measures and server configuration, his problem solving ability is second to none. Unlike many in his field, he is also able to communicate complex technical issues and logic to those who are unfamiliar with technical jargon. I highly recommend Baltic Design for your website needs”
P
Paul Briggs
SEO Manager
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