Many architects understand the pivotal role of their websites. However, the majority of them focus their attention on showcasing their portfolio and (maybe) demonstrating their expertise by including a Bio.
While this is a good start, it’s definitely not enough. Your website has three core missions: outstandingly present your work, show your expertise, and position yourself as a guide who clearly can understand the challenges clients face, and offer them guidance to solve them.
High-ticket professional services, including architecture and interior design, have a fundamental need to convey credibility. No amount of referrals from friends or family can help you get new work if the potential clients can not verify the referral and are not convinced of your credibility after checking your online presence.
With these 10 points in mind, you can craft an online presence that not only sits there and looks nice, but also helps you get new clients.
1. Strategic design
This is the key starting point if you don’t want a website that only sits there and looks beautiful, but also gets you new clients.
What is a strategic design in the context of web design? It is a process that allows architects to communicate important aspects of their business through their websites. A strategic design consists of three sequential layers:
- Strategy: a clearly stated vision that explains how you attract customers and employees, what sets you apart from your competitors, and what is your unique selling proposition in the marketplace.
- messaging: this includes not only the content itself but also the tone. That’s why it’s critical to identify whom you are talking to (your ideal client). Your messaging does not need to be salesy. It needs to be relatable.
- Visual identity: colors, images, typography, graphics, layout. The visual identity should be aligned with the strategy, so that together with the messaging it creates a strong emotional connection with your clients without them even being able to put a finger on what exactly attracted them.
2. Relevant Experience
10 out of 10 times your potential clients will choose someone with relevant experience and expertise in an area where they need help.
That’s why it’s not enough to identify just a buyer persona and list the demographics – their sex, age, income, and location. You need to identify what they want, what challenges they are facing, and position your services along their journey towards what they want.
Including relevant experience on your website is essential.
I studied over 300 websites of architects and architecture firms and sadly, most of them never include in their project descriptions the actual problem the client had and how they helped to solve it.
3. Blog
Yes, referrals are still a thing and not going anywhere but they don’t necessarily need to come from friends and relatives. Often, I refer someone to a friend, even though I have only known them through the content they share online.
Referrals can also come from online sources. That’s why building trust and credibility online is essential and a blog is an amazing tool to achieve that.
How does this work?
A blog is just another (yet one of the most powerful) tool to help you educate people and share your expertise online. Your potential client has a very particular problem. The first thing they do is to search online.
If your blog is helpful, SEO optimized, and shareable on social media, your potential buyers are going to find it, get educated, and then reach out to you, as an expert to solve their problem.
Have you noticed? That’s exactly what I’m doing here.
4. Address the needs of your potential buyers at every stage of the buyer journey
Your sales cycle can take months or even years. Your potential buyers encounter you long before they buy from you. That’s why it’s important to address the needs of potential buyers at every stage of their journey.
You can do it through a thoughtful content strategy, which can be implemented on your website, social media, or a combination of them.
On your website you can have two dedicated spaces for this: Blog and Helpful Resources.
5. SEO strategy
You can offer the best design services, yet not get any clients if people can’t find you. There are different ways to make yourself findable and SEO is one of them.
SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization. That, in a nutshell, means creating and optimizing pages of your website for specific keyword opportunities.
You can approach it as a combo of Onsite, Technical, and Off-site SEO.
On-site SEO means that you publish content that includes topics and keywords your potential clients are searching for.
Technical SEO means that you implement the best SEO practices on your website, such as
- website speed optimization
- mobile-friendly design
- SSL certificate
- Structured Data Markup
- Sitemaps
Off-site SEO: you participate in discussions and encourage other established websites to link back to your website.
For example, if you are an architect or a designer, you might want to publish on websites such as Archdaily, Houzz, or similar, and make sure to include a link to your website in the post.
It helps search engines, such as Google, consider you an authoritative source and rank your content higher in the search results.
6. Strategic Call-to-actions
I research hundreds of websites of architects or architecture firms. The majority of them shy away from placing a main call-to-action button, let alone the combo of the main and secondary one.
While having a main CTA button is an absolute must if you want a high-performing client-getting machine instead of a Branding brochure or a portfolio website, secondary CTA buttons play their role.
As I already mentioned, your potential clients find you on different stages of their journey. Not all of the website visitors are (just yet) ready to book a call or request the first consultation. That’s why, you need strategically placed secondary CTA buttons.
Think of it as a dating. Imagine that your goal is to get married. However, you don’t propose to someone at the end of the first date, do you?
You are more likely to get Yes if you ask them out on another date. If you do many “another dates” properly, eventually you will get Yes on your proposal.
Think of the primary CTA button as an engagement proposal and the secondary buttons as asking them out for another date to spend more time with you.
Link the primary CTA button to contact form, and redirect your potential clients to helpful resources with the secondary ones. Ask them out to spend more time with you.
7. Team member headshots and bios highlighting their expertise and experience
Whether you are a one-band architecture practice or a large firm, you sell the expertise. Yet, I don’t see websites of architecture firms celebrating their employees online and it’s a huge missed opportunity for two reasons:
- You could establish trust and credibility among your clients by showcasing the specific expertise of your team members and
- strengthen your brand as an employer by showing your investment in your employees’ success.
Encourage your employees to upgrade their qualifications and celebrate it by sharing the news with your (potential) clients.
8. Success stories and testimonials
Marketplaces, such as Fiverr and Amazon owe their success to the Reviews buyers leave after buying the product. Why?
Because the concept of social proof is profound in human nature.
Our brains are wired to minimize the energy we spend and having reviews and testimonials on a website we visit is one of the best ways to help us do exactly that. That’s why we like those yellow five stars and we look for them everywhere to save our brain energy for something else.
Don’t make your potential clients think too hard. Give them stories written by other clients about them being in need and you saving them.
Pro tip: ask for a testimonial at the most exciting part of the project.
9. High-quality images
One of the most effective ways to diminish perceived value, limit your marketing effectiveness and miss out on opportunities for exposure and recognition is to save money on project photography.
Low-quality or amateur photography will fail you to accurately present your designs and lead your potential clients to question the quality of your work.
In today’s visually-driven digital landscape, where everything needs to look Instagram-worthy, subpar photography will not help you to generate interest or audience engagement.
The moral of the story: don’t save on architecture photography.
Pro tip: instead of sterile minimalistic photographs, you might want to go for photography that includes the users of the space as well. This will further help your potential clients see themselves in their place and inspire them to book a call with you.
10. Videos
Nothing can build trust and connection between the service provider and a client more than a video. Yet, this is so underused in the industry of architecture.
Invest in videos where you talk through a project showcase, explain about the problem or the task at hand, the process, and the final outcome
Conclusion
In conclusion, crafting a compelling online presence for architecture studios goes beyond merely showcasing portfolios and bios.
By integrating strategic design, relevant experience, blogging, SEO strategies, strategic call-to-actions, team member bios, success stories, high-quality images, and videos, architects can effectively convey their expertise, build credibility, and engage potential clients throughout their journey.
Embracing these ten strategies can transform a website from a static online brochure into a dynamic tool for attracting and converting new clients.
You might also like:
SEO for Architects & Interior Designers
HOW CAN ARCHITECTS AND INTERIOR DESIGNERS IMPROVE ONLINE PRESENCE TO ATTRACT MORE CLIENTS
