Finding the right class among 200 live listings

The problem

The Art Studio NY offers a wide and constantly evolving range of classes: painting and drawing across every medium, for every skill level, for kids and adults, in person and online, one-off and multi-week. That variety is the studio's strength — but with anywhere from 100 to 200 live listings at any moment, prospective students had to scroll long pages and guess. The biggest source of friction between "I want to take a class" and a booked seat was simply finding the right class.

The approach: no second catalog

The obvious solution — manually tagging every class in a separate directory — would have gone stale in a week, because the catalog changes constantly. Instead, we built a custom WordPress REST API that reads the live registration data and derives the facets shoppers actually filter by: skill level, age group, format, and pricing. New classes appear in the finder the moment they go on sale, correctly categorized, with zero extra work for the studio.

The build: a tiered architecture, tuned for speed

The finder is deliberately tiered. The server does the heavy lifting once — the REST API derives the facets and serves a compact, structured catalog. The browser loads that catalog a single time, and from there every interaction runs in highly optimized JavaScript, entirely client-side. Tap a filter and the results update near-instantly: no server round-trips, no page reloads, no spinners. It's the kind of speed you have to feel for yourself.

And it all runs inside the studio's existing WordPress site and registration flow — no migration, nothing new to maintain.

Built to convert

Every class listing ends at a checkout, so we optimized each step on the way there: filters that mirror how students think rather than how the database is organized, instant results that keep momentum going, prices visible up front, and a direct path from any result to registration. Every decision aimed at the same number — completed registrations.

Where it landed

The finder now fronts the studio's full catalog — 100–200 live listings at any given time — and stays current automatically as classes open, fill, and change. Students filter to the right class in seconds instead of scrolling and guessing.

The finder is also one chapter in a longer engagement: we've run the studio's digital growth program (site, SEO, and paid ads) through a steady 30% revenue increase year over year, and in 2020 helped the studio pivot to bring its classes online to a global audience.

Try the live class finder →