The Academies of Knoxville

The Academies of Knoxville is the parent company of two schools on one campus in West Knoxville. The Master Academy of Barbering, open since January 2015, is Knoxville’s only barber-exclusive school, with a 1,500-hour Master Barber program and day, part-time and evening schedules. The Academy of Nail Artistry (TANA) is Knoxville’s only exclusive manicure academy, with a 600-hour Manicure Program and day and evening classes. Both schools offer High School Early Enrollment, interest-free weekly tuition payments and a student salon open to the public.

The challenge

Pioneer Media has worked with owners Zuri Carroll and Bianca Gilmore since 2018, when we took over their WordPress websites for Dyon Construction (now 865 Coatings, which we no longer manage) and The Master Academy of Barbering. When they opened a nail school beside the barber school, the two schools needed one home online: a website that helps a future student pick a career quickly, then gives each school its own look, programs, tuition and contact details, and works just as well on a phone.

What we built

• A client since 2018. We took over and improved the owners’ WordPress websites for Dyon Construction and The Master Academy of Barbering, and have looked after their websites ever since.
• A new parent website (November 2026). The Academies of Knoxville brings the barber school and the nail school together under one address.
• A high-performance static website instead of WordPress. Every page is a ready-made file, so there are no plugins, no database and no login page for hackers to attack. Pages load much faster, and the site is much more difficult to hack. It is the same approach we used to rebuild our own website.
• Choose your career path. The landing page presents two career paths, barbering and nail artistry, side by side. Each path leads to its own sub-site, told apart by color: red for the Master Academy of Barbering and purple for The Academy of Nail Artistry.
• A modern, custom design. Every page was designed for these schools, with photos of real students at work, clear Call Now and Book Now buttons, and a “The Short Answer” summary near the top of each school’s homepage.
• Interactive earnings potential calculators. Each school shows what the career can pay using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage figures, and a calculator we developed lets a future student estimate what their own book of clients could bring in (see the calculator section below).
• A fullscreen overlay menu on mobile. On phones and tablets the menu opens as a full-screen panel with the school’s logo, the menu links, a Get In Touch button, a student review or instructor quote, and a quick switch to the other career path.
• Enrollment and booking built in. An enrollment form for more information or a campus tour, and online booking for the student salons, sit one tap away on every page.
• Accessible to every visitor. The site was built to WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards, with a skip link, labeled buttons and forms, and readable contrast. See the accessibility report below.
• Search engine and AI friendly. Plain-language copy, a page for every program and a perfect 100 SEO score help search engines and AI assistants understand both schools.
• Ongoing care through our Website Care Service: hosting, SSL security, updates and backups.

An interactive earnings potential calculator

The question every future student asks is “What can I earn?” So we developed an interactive Earnings Potential Calculator for each school. On the barbering side, four sliders set the average price per service, clients per day, days per week and average tip, and the calculator instantly shows the estimated weekly earnings and yearly gross over 50 weeks. For example, $30 services, 10 clients a day, 5 days a week and a 15% tip come to about $1,725 a week, or $86,250 a year.

Beside the calculator, cards show official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wages for barbers: the top 10% earn $76,460 or more a year, the median barber earns $38,210 and entry level is $28,600, with 7% projected job growth from 2025 to 2035. A short note explains that the estimate is an illustration, not a promise of income, and is gross revenue before booth rent, commission splits, supplies and taxes. The nail school has its own version for nail technicians.

A perfect PageSpeed score

We tested the homepage with Google PageSpeed Insights on November 12, 2026. On desktop it scored 100 for Performance, 100 for Accessibility, 100 for Best Practices and 100 for SEO, and it passed 2 of 2 Agentic Browsing checks, Google’s test of whether AI assistants that browse the web can read and use a page. On mobile it scored 95 for Performance and 100 in the other three categories.

• First Contentful Paint: 0.2 s
• Largest Contentful Paint: 0.5 s
• Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
• Cumulative Layout Shift: 0.004
• Speed Index: 0.3 s

A Speed Index of 0.3 seconds means the page essentially loads in 300 milliseconds. Speed Index measures how quickly the visible page fills in, and a score this low means visitors see the finished page almost the instant they tap the link.

Most future students look up schools on their phones, so fast, accessible pages help them find the right program and get in touch. See the full PageSpeed report (opens in a new tab).

Why a static website instead of WordPress

A WordPress website builds each page on request, using PHP code, a database and a stack of plugins. A static website is built ahead of time, so the server only sends finished pages. That makes AcademiesKnoxville.com:

• Much faster: there is no database to query and no plugin code to run before a page appears, which is how the homepage reaches a 0.5-second Largest Contentful Paint on desktop.
• Much more difficult to hack: most hacked WordPress websites are broken into through an outdated plugin, a theme or the admin login. A static website has no plugins, no database and no login page for attackers to target.
• Simpler to keep running: no plugin or core updates are needed to stay secure, and the site cannot break because an update went wrong.

Accessibility report

On November 12, 2026, we tested all 14 pages of AcademiesKnoxville.com with two automated accessibility checkers, at desktop width and at phone width:

• axe-core 4.10 (the engine behind many accessibility checkers): 0 critical and 0 serious issues, and no WCAG 2.2 Level A or AA failures on any page, with 38 WCAG rules and 22 best-practice rules passed across the site.
• Google Lighthouse (the Accessibility score in PageSpeed Insights): 100 on the homepage and both school homepages, on desktop and mobile, and 98 or higher on every page.

What the site passes

• Images and color: every image has alternative text, text meets the WCAG AA color contrast ratio, links can be told apart without relying on color, and visitors can zoom and change text spacing.
• Navigation: a “Skip to main content” link, a descriptive title on every page, one main heading and one main landmark per page, and a clear name on every link and button.
• Phones and touch screens: buttons and links meet the WCAG 2.2 minimum touch-target size of 24 pixels, and pinch-to-zoom is never disabled.
• Forms: every enrollment and tour form field has its own label, and fields use the correct autocomplete settings, so phones can fill them in.
• Screen readers: the page language is set, ARIA roles and attributes are valid, hidden menus and dialogs cannot be reached by the keyboard until they open, and lists, tables and embedded maps are correctly structured and labeled.

Automated checkers catch many accessibility problems, but not all of them. Learn more about how we approach accessibility in our website accessibility guide.

See the live site at academiesknoxville.com.

Responsive design screenshot

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What the client says

I have 2 businesses that Leighton has taken over for me! He has made them more user friendly and made all the updates needed in less then a week! He is very easy to work with!