Mars Studio: a pilates and barre studio in Vilanova with self-managed bookings

The challenge

Local SEO was critical: competition in Vilanova and Sitges includes traditional gyms, franchises and other pilates studios that have been ranking for years. Reaching the first page for "pilates Vilanova" or "barre Sitges" demanded technical work from day one.

What we did

We chose WordPress with a custom child theme and a booking plugin (Amelia) for Mars Studio because the challenge was local SEO + automated bookings in a boutique studio with few slots. WordPress lets us iterate on the content architecture without touching code, while Amelia covers the full cycle: calendar, slots, payments and notifications. The combination is ideal for local businesses with a recurring service where every lost slot is lost margin.

A warm, feminine design with a neutral palette (soft terracotta, cream, off-white) that reflects the studio's atmosphere. ACF Pro let us model each class as structured content: type (pilates, barre, pregnancy, seniors), duration, slots, teacher and price, with its Service schema auto-injected for SEO.

Integrated booking system: the student sees the live calendar, picks a slot, pays by card (Stripe) and receives email confirmation. The studio owner sees every booking in a single panel and free slots sync with Google Calendar. Before launch, she was managing around 40 bookings/month via WhatsApp; by month 3, 70% of bookings arrive already through the website.

Local SEO from day one: LocalBusiness schema with a stable @id, consistent NAP on the home and every service landing, unique zone pages for Vilanova, Sitges and Sant Pere de Ribes, and strategic internal linking towards the highest-converting pages. Within 4 months, Mars Studio ranks in the Top 10 for "pilates Vilanova" and "barre Vilanova".