Signals of Spring are popping up and we couldn’t be more excited for a new season. While Spring lends itself to cleaning, in this industry Spring often loads our calendars with new projects. Are we right?
While you may not be thinking a new website now, if we fast-forward through the milestones; New Projects = New Reveals = New Photos, you’ll likely be updating your website in coming months.
We’ve teamed up with our to – go website guy, Chris McAuliffe, for your cheat sheet to a powerful website. Before we can jump into the fun things, like design, branding and copywriting, we need to make sure your website has a solid a foundation. Here’s our 6 Website Must Haves for Interior Designers.
- It must be Fully Responsive
What does that even mean?? Fully Responsive is a term we use for a website that has been designed to display perfectly on all devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets & smartphones. This is not just a “nice feature” anymore. Most clients will initially visit your website on their phone and if it doesn’t display correctly then what kind of a first impression is that? Google puts a high value on a site being fully responsive and they recently started penalizing websites that aren’t responsive by lowering them in the search results! Uh-oh.
- It must be Editable
The days of having to contact your webmaster for updates are over. Your website should be on some sort of content managed platform (like WordPress or Joomla) so you can manage the content and make the updates yourself. This should be accessible through an administration area. How are you going to update your latest project or post your latest blog article if your site isn’t easily updatable? If your site isn’t fully content managed then you are missing out. It is vital for your web existence to be current and up to date in this competitive landscape.
- It must have Professional High-Resolution Imagery
As interior designers, photos are everything to your clients. Professional high-resolution photos are your lifeblood on the web. Most prospect clients will immediately look for photos of your work and if those photos aren’t high quality and easily accessible then you can say “ bye ” to that potential client. Ensure your photographer provides you with high-resolution web optimized photos so that you can easily add them to your portfolio and show off your amazing work.
- It must have a Call to Action
Are you making it easy for your potential client to contact you? Do you have your contact information available on every page of your website? Are you offering some sort of Call to Action? A sign up prompt for your newsletter or contact me now to get started are examples of a Call to Action. The objective of the website is to showcase your work and drive your prospective client to contact you. Make it easy for them to do this.
- It must be Socially Connected
I don’t need to tell you how important it is to be active on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc. Your website needs to connect your prospect client to these networks easily. An excellent option to integrate social media with your website is to showcase your activity on them via some sort of display feed like an Instagram feed on your website that shows your latest posts. Socially connected websites not only get +’s from the Search Engines (like Google!) but they also let your clients engage with you in a way that your website cannot. Viral marketing (also known as social media marketing) is the easiest way to get a new client – so be present and active!
- It must be Optimized for Search Engines
Google, Bing and other search engines are looking for something specific from your website when it compiles search results. It is a mystery to most people but if done properly with an experienced webmaster; it can propel your website to the top of the search results when someone searches the keywords “Interior Designer”. There are several tools that can help you accomplish this goal if your website is on a content manageable platform like WordPress. Yoast SEO is a favourite plugin of ours for that platform and will keep you on the right path with the search engines.
Your website is an important part of your business. Simply having a website presence on the web is no longer going to cut it.
I hope we’ve given you some insight on why your website needs to include all of the above as these small things can really propel your business forward. The best part? We’ve got you covered when you’re ready. Chris is our website guy, and we would love if he became yours too!
xo
