One Site, Three Audiences: A Case Study on schuy.xyz
The hardest client I've ever had was me.
Short answer: Schuy.xyz is my own artist site, and the design problem it solves is one most creative businesses have: three different kinds of visitor arriving at the same homepage, each wanting something different, none of them willing to hunt for it. The fix wasn't more navigation. It was deciding what each audience's single next action is and building one clear lane to it, so collectors, creators, and commissioning clients all self-sort within a few seconds of landing.
Here's the whole build, including where I got it wrong first.
The setup
By day, Hample Design House is web and brand work for businesses. By night, I make 3D: DAZ figures run through a Blender pipeline, iridescent and chrome materials, surreal atmospheric compositions in a violet-magenta-blue palette. That work lives at schuy.xyz under the name Schuy, operating between Charleston and South Florida.
Which means the studio has a portfolio piece where the client was also the designer, the target audience, and the person signing off. Not recommended. Extremely instructive.
The actual problem: three audiences, one door
The site has to serve three people who have nothing in common except that they like the images.
- Collectors. They want a print on a wall or a tee. Their next action is a product page on Etsy.
- Creators. Designers who want texture packs and gradient systems, VJs and musicians who want seamless loops for Resolume, TouchDesigner, or MadMapper. Their next action is Gumroad.
- Clients. Art directors and brands looking for commissions, collaborations, or creative direction. Their next action is an email and, if what they actually need is a website or an identity, a handoff to Hample.
The failure mode for every artist site I've ever audited is the same: it optimizes for one of those three and treats the other two as footnotes. Or worse, it tries to be neutral and gives all three an identical, characterless "Shop" link.
What I got wrong first
The first version was a pure gallery. Hero, grid of work, contact link at the bottom. Beautiful, and commercially useless.
People would land, scroll the images, get to the end, and leave, because I'd never told them what to do next. The work was doing all the talking and none of the selling. I was treating the site like a portfolio when it's actually a storefront with a portfolio at the front.
The rebuild fixed that with one rule: every audience gets a named section with one verb in it. Selected work, then prints and apparel, then digital goods, then about and contact. Four stops, in descending order of how many visitors want them, each one ending in a single action rather than a menu of options.
Design decisions worth stealing
Let the work set the temperature. The site runs near-black (a deep #0a0a0f base) because the renders are lit, saturated, and high-contrast. On a light background they look like they're apologizing. This is the inverse of the Hample studio site, which is warm cream. Same designer, opposite decisions, both correct, because the contents are different. If your site's palette doesn't come out of your actual product, it's decoration.
Split the store by audience, not by format. "Shop" would have been one link. Instead there's a prints-and-apparel section written for collectors and a digital goods section written for creators, with different language, different framing, different destinations. A VJ looking for loops and a collector looking for a framed piece should never have to read each other's copy.
Route out, don't rebuild. Prints run through Etsy, digital goods through Gumroad. I don't run checkout, inventory, fulfillment, or tax on my own domain. The platforms are better at that than I'd be, and every hour spent maintaining a cart is an hour not spent making work. The site's job is to be the brand and the decision; the platforms' job is the transaction.
Put the phonetic in the About. "Schuyler (SKY-ler)." A tiny thing that removes a tiny friction for anyone about to email or say your name on a call. Creative sites are full of opportunities like that and almost nobody takes them.
Own the email list. Algorithms rent you an audience. The list is the only channel you keep. One section, honest about frequency (a few emails a year, only when there's something to see), which converts better than a vague "subscribe."
Ship it static. Hand-coded, statically hosted, no CMS, no plugin stack. It loads instantly on a phone on bad hotel wifi, which is where half of this audience is when they find it. Speed is a design constraint, not an engineering afterthought.
What this has to do with your business
Swap the nouns and this is most service and product businesses.
A restaurant serves diners, private-event bookers, and press. A SaaS product serves the evaluator, the end user, and the person approving the invoice. A studio serves the founder who wants a site and the marketing lead who wants an ongoing partner. Same homepage, different jobs.
The work isn't adding more navigation until everyone's covered. It's deciding the order (who matters most, who second) and then giving each one a lane that ends in exactly one action. That's the part an AI builder won't do for you, because it requires knowing your business rather than your category. More on that here.
Why the art practice makes the studio work better
Two practical reasons, not just vibes.
The first is that texture, depth, and real 3D are exactly what's separating memorable sites from generated ones right now, and I can make that in-house: a bespoke render instead of the stock illustration your competitor also licensed.
The second is taste, built by making thousands of images that had no client, no brief, and no one to blame. That's where a point of view comes from, and a point of view is the only thing on a website that can't be prompted.
You can see both applied to actual businesses in the concept builds: a restaurant, a SaaS launch page, and an architecture studio, each deliberately unlike the others.
FAQ
Should an artist sell prints on their own site or on a platform?
For most independent artists, route to a platform and keep your domain as the brand. Fulfillment, payments, and tax are solved problems you shouldn't be maintaining. Bring checkout in-house when volume makes the platform's cut genuinely painful.
What should an artist portfolio homepage include?
Work first, then one clear path per audience (buy, download, or commission), then a short About with a real name and a contact method. Four sections beats twelve.
Do I need a website if I have Instagram?
Yes, for the reason above: social is rented reach. Your site is the only place you control the framing, the quality of the imagery, and the email list you'd rebuild an audience from.
Can you design a portfolio site for my creative practice?
Yes. Portfolios, studios, and personal brands are a good fit for the studio's work, and it's a project type I understand from the inside. Tell me about it.
Hample Design House is an AI-accelerated web and brand studio in Fort Lauderdale, serving Miami and South Florida. The art practice lives at schuy.xyz.
