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CASE STUDY 2 //
Doing Business
Multi-brand print and publishing group · WordPress + Elementor + ServiceM8 + Google Workspace automation
A convention sales system built into the website.
Connected to invoicing, CRM, and everyone's chapter at once.
Platform: WordPress + Elementor · Integrations: ServiceM8, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets · Industry: Print, Publishing, Craft
The Brief //
Doing Business is the parent brand behind five specialist businesses;
DB Bookbinders, The Picture Framers, Australian Teachers Chronicle, Cardline Cards, and Book.Made, each with its own audience, product range, and history spanning more than 160 years of combined trading.
The website brief was straightforward: hold all five brands under one digital roof without flattening any of them.
The convention sales system brief was anything but.Book.Made, the collaborative publishing arm, sells a specific product at conventions and BNI networking events: a shared book where each participant writes a chapter.
People walk up, express interest, decide what their chapter will be about, sign up, and leave. The sale happens on a convention floor in five minutes. Everything that follows — the invoice, the confirmation, the chapter planning, the production coordination — has to happen without the team chasing paperwork afterward.
That's the system I was asked to build.
The Problem //
The convention workflow had a very specific physical reality: staff and clients moving through a busy room, tablets in hand, making decisions quickly.
The interface needed to work as a series of clean, navigable page-tabs, not a form, not a checkout, not a standard website flow. Something closer to a digital questionnaire that someone could walk a prospect through step by step, or hand over for them to self-complete.Behind that interface, four things needed to happen without anyone doing them manually:A job needed to be created in ServiceM8 (their field service and CRM platform) the moment someone submitted. An invoice needed to generate and send via Gmail automatically.
A Google Doc needed to be created per client for their chapter. And their chapter topic choices needed to land in a shared Google Sheet where the whole room's answers accumulated - so the editorial team could see what everyone was writing about in real time.No manual data re-entry. No chasing confirmations. No lost leads from a busy convention day.
The Solution //
The convention interface
The selling system lives under the Book.Made section of the Doing Business website, accessible via URL but not wired into the main navigation, since it's an operational tool for convention use rather than a public-facing page.
It was built as a series of tab-based pages: each tab a step in the conversation, moving from interest and package selection through to chapter topic decisions. On a tablet, it reads naturally as a guided walkthrough.
The design was kept deliberately clean, large tap targets, clear labels, minimal distraction. It needed to work in a noisy room with someone who'd never seen it before.
The integration stack
When a form is submitted, a webhook fires and triggers the full automation chain:ServiceM8 receives the client details and creates a new job automatically, tagged, assigned, and ready for follow-up without anyone typing a name into a CRM.
Gmail sends a personalised confirmation and invoice to the client immediately, generated from their submission data. No manual invoice creation.
A Google Doc is created per client using a template, pre-populated with their name, package, and chapter brief, their personal chapter planning document, ready from day one.
Their chapter topic answers feed into a shared Google Sheet alongside every other convention participant's answers. The editorial team opens one sheet and sees the full picture of what the room decided to write about.
The main website //
The Doing Business homepage presents the group story and five brands clearly, each with its own section that breathes independently. Shared design tokens keep it coherent; each brand's distinct voice and colours are preserved. After resolving a Jetpack/Bluehost cache conflict that was quietly destroying performance, the site landed in the 90s on Google PageSpeed.
The Result //
-5 Brands unified under one site
-4 Systems connected in a single form submission
-0 Manual steps from convention floor to invoice, CRM entry, and chapter doc
A convention sales process that works as fast as the conversation. Someone expresses interest, fills in the tabs, and walks away. By the time they check their email, the invoice is already there. By the time the team sits down after the event, every lead is in the CRM and every chapter topic is in the sheet.
Contact //
Ready to build something that actually fits?
No cookie-cutters. No templates. Just your problem, solved properly.
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