Developing a Winning Website With These Key Elements for a Designer’s Online Presence
What do you think of when you imagine digital marketing for designers? Maybe your mind goes to interior design social media pages filled with alluring photos of new spaces. Or maybe you think of a progressive interior design email marketing campaign that slowly draws your prospects in.
When you’re brainstorming how to get interior design clients online, it’s easy to forget the nexus that holds all your digital marketing efforts together: your website. An effective website is an indispensable part of online marketing for architects and interior designers. Here’s how to create one.
Why Do You Need a Website?
In today’s digital world, an online presence is essential to business success. As of 2023, 73% of small businesses had their own websites , and that number continues to grow. A great website sets you apart from the competition, helps you reach new clients, and establishes authority in the field.
However, if you aren’t particularly tech-savvy, the prospect of creating a website can be pretty daunting. It might help to think of it like designing a space. You want to draw in visitors with the overall aesthetic, but you want the finer details to keep them there.
Of course, placement is everything — the arrangement of your logos, photos, and call-to-action buttons can make the difference between a customer converting or going elsewhere.
Elements of a Winning Website
It takes a lot more than four walls and a couple of pieces of furniture to create a beautiful space. Likewise, if you want to create a successful website, you need to bring together a number of different elements.
SEO
You might already be familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). If you’re not, SEO involves carefully selecting keywords and strategically placing them throughout your text.
When your target audience searches for these keywords, your site is more likely to show up high on the search engine results page (SERP). The higher the rank, the more likely it is you’ll get a click. Finding a website this way is known as “organic search,” and it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies for interior designers.
SEO might sound simple at first, but there’s an art to it that can be hard to master. Keyword research tools like Semrush can help you discover what keywords your audience is searching for. Optimizing your content for these keywords can bring more traffic to your website.
There’s a significant learning curve to SEO, but don’t skip this strategy because it’s time-consuming. A full 71% of bloggers say that SEO is the most important factor when it comes to website traffic. The research backs up their thinking, too; approximately 53% of businesses get most of their website visitors from organic searches.
Keep in mind that while drawing in customers via organic search is arguably one of the most important parts of marketing for interior designers, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Often, business owners creating a design or architecture marketing strategy will use paid search advertising to draw in customers in the near term while they’re building an organic search strategy.
Meaningful Content
You want your SEO strategy to bring visitors to your website. But if you want each visit to result in a sale, a social media follow, or anything else, you need to make sure your content is engaging enough to keep your visitors there.
You have some latitude when it comes to choosing and creating content for your website. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to have pages like these:
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Note that it’s important to keep your content not just meaningful but fresh. If you’re constantly updating your blog with exciting new posts, it signals to readers that you’re active and committed to your profession.
Beautiful Design
You’re a designer, so you already know this one. Even before they click through your portfolio or read about your creative process, website visitors will see your site’s layout. If your homepage is poorly designed, visitors will probably assume your interior design skills are similarly lacking!
Remember that being a talented interior designer doesn’t necessarily make you a talented web designer. If need be, work with a professional web designer to create a top-notch website. If you take a collaborative approach to site creation, you can ensure the website design is consistent with your work's general mood and aesthetic.
Lead Magnets and Clear Calls to Action
You want the content on your website to convert, which means that site visitors “convert” to customers. But how do you get your content to convert? You include calls to action (CTAs) that encourage the visitor to take the next step — and make it easy for them to do so.
For example, let’s say someone has found your blog and they enjoy your content. They enjoy it so much that they think they want to book a consultation with you. To increase your chances of a conversion, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch, so you include “Book today!” as a simple CTA at the end of the post.
This might sound like a solid strategy, but there’s just one problem: your visitor doesn’t know where to click! Would-be customers often aren’t willing to dig through your website to find out how to get in touch. If you make it easy by including a clickable “contact” link (or something similar), you’re likely to find more success.
Often, conversion is a multi-step process. Some site visitors might read a blog article and decide to book a consultation with you, but most will need some more time. This is where lead magnets come in.
A lead magnet is something you give a potential customer in exchange for information. If you get a potential lead’s email, you can continue to market to them via an email marketing campaign.
However, most people aren’t going to just type in their email address and send it to you. To get more leads, entice visitors with something valuable and design-related, like an e-book, a list of at-home design tips, or an instructional video. They get information, you get a lead — everybody wins!
Mobile Accessibility
Does your website work just as well on mobile phones as on computers? More than 58% of website traffic comes from mobile devices , so if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you risk alienating a significant portion of your possible future clients. If you’ve ever tried to navigate a non-mobile-friendly site on a mobile phone, you know just how frustrating it gets.
If you aren’t familiar with web design, this might sound like a massive undertaking. However, if you work with a capable web designer, it’s not difficult. Before letting your site go live, always test it yourself on a computer and a mobile device. If you have trouble navigating it, your visitors probably will, too.
Create a Website That Converts With Behind the Design
If you’re looking at how to start an interior design business or how to grow the one you have, the right marketing strategy is essential. But if you’re like most designers, there’s simply not enough time in the day to develop an interior design marketing strategy while still doing your job.
That’s where Behind the Design’s marketing service comes in. We specialize in digital marketing for architects and interior designers, so we’re uniquely equipped to connect you with your future clients. Get in touch today to see what we can do for you!