Case study•Expressive Glass•3 min read•Featured by Squarespace
Making room for the art, and the business around it
Bringing commissions, direct sales, classes and studio services together in one digital home: expressiveglass.com
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Vicki Schneider is a flameworking artist, educator and founder of Expressive Glass, a working glass studio in Buffalo, New York. She creates commissioned glass sculptures for collectors and galleries, teaches students, rents studio space and sells smaller glass pieces.
Vicki built and ran the studio website herself from around 2010. It served the business well for years, but as the studio grew it became hard to maintain and navigate, and it gave her increasingly visual work too little room. Smaller pieces sold through Etsy, classes ran on an expensive scheduler without reminders, gift certificates were sold on paper, and commissioning a sculpture had become complicated.
The challenge
- An outdated visual experience. Glass is an intensely visual medium, yet the old design, small images and dense layouts didn’t do the work justice.
- Tools spread across platforms. Website, store, scheduling and other services had grown separately instead of as one customer experience.
- A difficult commission process. A tier system that made sense internally confused people seeing Vicki’s work for the first time.
So instead of simply redesigning the website, we looked at the studio’s whole digital presence.
What we did
01Structure first, then a refreshed identity
We mapped what visitors actually come to do (discover the artist, explore the work, commission a piece, take a class, buy something, give a gift certificate, use the studio) and wrote a full text prototype of the new site with Vicki before any design began. We kept the shapes and character of her logo, as she asked, but gave it stronger color, so it no longer got lost on the page.
02A site where the art leads
We designed an image-led site around the artwork: large photographs, generous spacing, cleaner type and simpler navigation. The biggest gallery is built around Mama’s Garden, Vicki’s signature glass flowers, so collectors can explore the detail of the work and see what she could create for them.
03Commissions, a store of her own and product photography
Commissions are now presented through examples of past pieces, with a simple inquiry form instead of several pages and an email. Smaller works moved from Etsy to a native store with Squarespace Payments and PayPal, which sold 18 items in its first months, from studio time to glass rods and art pieces. We also photographed the murrini beads and glass seashells specifically for ecommerce: clean backgrounds, accurate color and consistency across products.
04Classes, booking and gift certificates
The Classes section answers what a prospective student actually asks: what they’ll learn, what to expect and how to book. A gallery of real student work shows the results. Scheduling moved to a clearer system connected to the site, and gift certificates moved from paper to online, with branded designs that work digitally and in print. Classes are now booked two months in advance.
05A move that didn’t break anything
We built and tested the new site separately, then moved it to Squarespace on the established domain with URL mapping and redirects to preserve important existing links, connected payments and scheduling, and checked indexing after launch. We moved the studio email to Google Workspace without changing the address, worked on titles, descriptions and Search Console, and wrote an illustrated artist biography for collectors and galleries. Vicki launched the site with an email scavenger hunt that sent her audience exploring the new pages.
Results
Studio booking records and site analytics; July 2026, the first full month after launch, is the baseline
- A contemporary, image-led website that puts the art first
- A clearer commission journey with a simple inquiry form
- A direct online store with professional product photography
- Class scheduling built into the site, with classes booked two months ahead
- Gift certificates sold online instead of on paper
- Modern email and a stronger SEO foundation
- A platform Vicki can manage herself
- Featured by Squarespace in its October 2026 Circle newsletter
Many pieces that used to live across separate services now work together under one brand. The new site doesn’t just show what Expressive Glass does. It helps the studio do business.
“I’m extremely pleased with the website Avandiz Studio designed and implemented for my business, Expressive Glass. The feedback I’ve received from customers has been enthusiastically positive, finding the site attractive, comprehensive, and easy to navigate.
During the development process, Ilya took the time to understand my goals and educate me about how he was going to help me achieve them. He worked tirelessly to create my site and successfully transition it from the old to the new. Ilya was knowledgeable and served as a valued partner, always receiving my ideas and requests for assistance quickly and calmly.”
Our role
- Website strategy
- Information architecture
- Copywriting
- UX and web design
- Logo refresh
- Ecommerce
- Product photography
- Commission journey
- Scheduling and gift certificates
- Platform and domain migration
- Google Workspace
- SEO and redirects
- Launch email campaign
- Training and support
Now let’s build your presence.
Tell us about your business and the area you serve. We reply within one business day with clear next steps.