The Client Portal Playbook for Boutique Brand Studios
Small brand studios punch above their weight when every client touchpoint feels like an agency-grade production. Here is the exact portal flow we ship with Pinna to impress enterprise stakeholders from the first login.
Brand the entry point
Spin up a subdomain that matches the studio’s identity — e.g., studioatlas.usepinna.com — and treat it like a microsite. Above-the-fold cards show project health, decision deadlines, and who owns each workstream so the client never wonders where things stand.
Add an announcement bar with the latest delivery, approvals needed, and the next live review call. Clients stop digging through email threads because the answer is waiting on the home screen.
Make deliverables impossible to miss
Each milestone lives in its own card with the Loom, Figma, or PDF already embedded. Stakeholders can preview, comment, and download without leaving the portal, and internal notes stay hidden so the studio can keep messy drafts private.
Pair every asset with a short AI-generated summary or manual status recap. Decision makers skim the recap first, then dive into files only when they need detail.
Close the feedback loop
Clients drop annotated feedback inside the same view—no more screenshots in Slack. Studios resolve threads, mark blockers, and auto-notify the client when something ships.
Weekly recap emails pull the most important portal events so executives stay informed without logging in every day.
Takeaway
When your client portal feels like a bespoke product, renewals stop being about price and start being about confidence.