An Atlanta sign fabrication shop was running on a template website, text messages, and memory. Every inquiry looked the same, every client update was typed by hand, and nothing showed the state of the pipeline. We replaced all of it with one system the owner runs himself.
The problem
Custom signage is a quoting business: a storefront channel-letter job and a quick vinyl banner arrive through the same contact form, but one is worth twenty times the other. The shop had no way to tell them apart, no pipeline, and no system for keeping clients informed while their sign moved through design, fabrication, permitting, and install.
Every lead equal
No qualification, no scoring
Inquiries arrived through a generic template-site contact form with no questions about project type, budget, or timeline. A high-value storefront job and a tire-kicker got the same follow-up, in whatever order they were noticed.
Typed by hand
Client updates on memory
Signs take weeks: design approval, fabrication, permits, install. Clients who wanted to know where their sign stood called or texted, and every answer was a manual message. Updates happened when the owner remembered, not when the status changed.
No pipeline
Jobs tracked in his head
There was no view of active jobs by stage, no dollar total on the pipeline, and no queue of new leads. Marketing had the same problem: a portfolio of finished work sat on a phone instead of feeding the website or social channels.
The solution
One application: a new marketing site feeding a scored lead queue, a project Kanban, automatic client updates on every status change, and a social composer for the shop's own work photos. Every setting the business might outgrow, from pipeline stages to scoring rules to message templates, is editable in a settings screen. No developer needed after handoff.
A public intake form asks what a sign buyer actually knows: project type, timeline, budget range. Every submission is scored automatically and lands in the lead queue as HOT, WARM, or COLD, so the owner works the storefront job before the banner inquiry. A honeypot field silently drops form spam, and the questions and scoring weights are editable in Settings.
Stack: Next.js form routes, configurable scoring rules in Supabase, honeypot spam filtering.
New leads queue in their own board; accepted jobs become cards on a drag-and-drop Kanban that follows the shop's real stages from design through install. The dashboard shows a live dollar total for the pipeline and a live count of new leads. Moving a card is what triggers the client update, so keeping the board current and keeping clients informed became the same action.
Stack: Supabase (PostgreSQL) with row-level security, optimistic Kanban UI, live aggregate stats.
When a job changes stage, the client gets told without anyone typing a message: email through a verified sending domain, and WhatsApp through six Meta-approved message templates, including a review request that links straight to the shop's Google listing when a job completes. Bounced addresses are suppressed automatically so the shop's sending reputation stays clean.
Stack: Resend with bounce-suppression webhook, Meta WhatsApp Cloud API, per-stage templates editable in Settings.
Finished signs are the shop's best marketing, so posting them had to be trivial: upload a photo, write a caption, publish to Facebook and Instagram from one screen. Every upload is re-encoded server-side to a format Instagram accepts, so phone photos post without mysterious failures. We staged the first twenty posts from the shop's own portfolio as ready-to-publish drafts.
Stack: Meta Graph API via OAuth, server-side image conversion with sharp, draft queue with one-click publish.
A new site on the shop's own domain, built around a gallery of 29 real jobs pulled from their archive instead of stock photos, a process section that sets expectations for how a custom sign actually gets made, and LocalBusiness structured data for Atlanta local search. The intake form is the site's front door, so the website and the lead system are one thing, not two.
Stack: Next.js static marketing pages, LocalBusiness JSON-LD, same app and domain as the dashboard.
Branding, pipeline stages, notification templates, lead-scoring rules, and the intake form's own options are all editable from a settings screen, and changes flow through to the public form immediately. The business can rename a stage, reword a message, or reweight its scoring without calling anyone. That is what made the full handoff honest.
Stack: Config layer in Supabase read by both the dashboard and the public site, per-table row-level security.
The results
The system went live on the shop's own domain in August 2026, replacing the template site outright. The outcomes below are structural: they are what the system enforces, not projections.
24/7
Every lead captured & scored
No inquiry waits to be noticed. A real qualified lead arrived through the form and was scored and queued automatically within the first two weeks live, with zero human involvement.
0
Manually typed status updates
Moving a job on the board is the update. Email and WhatsApp messages go out from templates the owner can edit, including the automatic Google review request at completion.
100%
Owned by the client
Code repository, database, hosting, domain, and every connected account were handed over. Fixed project price, no monthly fees to Aplos, no dependence on us to operate it.
Built for one shop. Replicable for yours.
We scope, build, and hand off custom software for service businesses. Fixed price, you own the code, no retainer after delivery. Book a free 30-minute audit call and we'll tell you exactly what we'd build for your workflow.
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