7 Reasons Every Architecture Firm Needs a Professional Website

When you think of an architecture firm's website, images of sleek, minimalist designs and portfolio imagery that take up nearly the entire website might come to mind. 

If you believe your firm’s website only exists to showcase your portfolio, you might start to ask yourself, “ why does an architect need a website?”

If you aren’t getting work, or anything of value, from the website, it can feel like a waste of time and money.

The real story is a professional website can act as a lead-generation machine – nurturing potential clients through the sales journey and towards beginning a project with you. You barely have to lift a finger, and you’ll have an influx of inquiries landing directly in your inbox, better connections with your current clients, and automated processes that make your life so much easier.

So, let’s get started and talk about the 7 reasons you should put more effort into your website.

1. Quickly and easily schedule your meetings and consultations

What’s your current process for scheduling consultations with potential clients or check-in meetings with current ones? A mess? Confusing? Takes forever?

If you’re spending too much of your time booking clients (or nurturing architect leads) in your meetings, or you find it challenging to keep track of them all, adding an appointment scheduler to your web design can solve all those pesky problems.

There are many meeting integrations on the market to choose from, like the ever-so-popular Calendly and Appointy. These schedulers can be easily installed on your own website, allowing your prospects and clients to book a slot that suits your schedule within a matter of clicks.

Adding a scheduling integration to your firm’s web design not only streamlines your administrative work and simplifies booking meetings with clients, but it also makes it less time-consuming and less intimidating for potential clients to make that first move.

2. You can qualify prospective clients with quizzes on your website

Everyone wants to attract their target audience and stop wasting time on bad fit prospects. But how to do that?

One easy way is to create a quiz on your website that filters out the bad fit prospects before you spend time selling your services to them.

This quiz should be integrated seamlessly with your web design to give you the answers you’re looking for while offering something of value for your potential new clients. So, what do we suggest your quiz should be?

Your quiz could provide personalized recommendations based on their preferences for design aesthetic, materials, etc., or possibly a budget or timeline estimation based on the criteria of their project.

This way you’ll know whether you want to work with them based on their preferences and also have an idea of the size of their project.

Set up your quizzes with multiple-choice questions, to help give the quiz-taker plenty of options. After all, your ideal client probably will have several different types of projects they want done.

Typeform and Riddle are popular choices for quiz integrations. They each offer a variety of templates for different quiz types and are very user-friendly.

3. You can attract prospects with lead magnets on your website

If you’re already running successful email marketing campaigns (and if you’re not, talk to us - we can help!), you’ll know that growing your list of prospects is a long process.

Most architecture sites will never receive as much traffic as a popular eCommerce store from the search engine results, so make sure you capitalize on the traffic you do receive with lead magnets.

A lead magnet is a gated piece of content that your website visitors must exchange their personal information to access. By offering your potential new clients something of real value in return for their contact details, you can increase brand credibility, hook them into your email software or content management system, and build a relationship with them through regular, personalized interactions and relevant content.

Lead magnets for architecture firms might include:

• A guide to hiring an architect
• A guide to hiring the right contractors 
• New construction design plan samples
• A beginner’s guide to building a new home 
• How to work with an architect
• Upcoming property trends
• Your company brochure
• Exclusive event invites 
• Live or recorded webinars

Whatever you choose as your lead magnet, it’s better to give your site visitors something worthwhile on your website that delivers on what it promises; otherwise, they’ll instantly lose trust in you. Don’t make prospects regret giving you their email address, make them glad because now they’re receiving super helpful content regularly! 

Learn how to create an Email marketing strategy for your business here.

4. Your website can help make your clients' lives easier

A client portal is an area of your site that only registered clients can access with their own login details. A client portal can help you by freeing up time usually spent chasing your architecture clients for the information you need, or trawling through long email threads.

You might be used to requesting document after document for legal permits, architectural plans, discovery questionnaires, project deliverables, timelines, and so on. 

By creating a client portal on your architecture website, you can keep all your client’s files in one place and make it easier for them to view and fill out documents shared between you.

Maintaining all records in one password-protected location adds an extra layer of security to your content and it improves your relationship with your client - by helping you collaborate more easily. 

When you make your clients’ life easier, they’ll think highly of you and enjoy the process more. Because nobody wants long, messy, exhausting emails that make it impossible to find important information or documents!

5. You can attract better clients & projects with a well-designed website

If you want to land those dream jobs and work with more perfect-fit clients, your firm’s website needs to reflect that goal and speak to the core motivators of the clients (Architecture leads) you’d like to attract. 

Let’s say your ideal architectural work falls within the realm of luxury residential designs; if your website’s content, visuals, functionality, and design don’t give off a luxe impression, it’s more difficult to attract those types of projects. 

When your website is easy to navigate, has a responsive web design that looks good on all devices, says all the right things, and, most importantly, resonates with the clients you want to attract, everything begins to fall into place. 

6. Your website can help you build trust with future clients

Your clients aren’t buying a designer handbag here; they’re investing possibly millions of hard-earned dollars on the commercial or residential property of their dreams, which, as you well know, means if you want them to choose you - building trust is key.

Your website can build that trust before you even meet them in the following ways:

• Uploading case studies show prospects how you solve their problems
• Adding testimonials to your web design creates essential social proof
• Blogging proves how passionate you are and demonstrates expertise
• Offering clients downloadable resources builds trust before they get in touch
• Lead magnets help you nurture a personal connection with your prospects. 
• Using search engine optimization tactics to appear at the top of search engines

7. Your website helps position you as an expert

When your website shows up higher in the search results thanks to a strong SEO strategy, or architecture firm marketing strategy your clients will see you as an authority because they know only well-established firms climb the ranks on Google. 

Using search engine optimization tactics, like including relevant keywords in your content to appear at the top of search engines, also delivers more traffic and more visitors to your site and, therefore, more opportunities for acquiring new clients.

You can confidently demonstrate your expertise in your architecture niche through blogging, case studies, project portfolios, and your website’s copy. These items encourage visitors to stay on your site longer and are incredibly important for delivering a great first impression. Learn more about Why Architecture Firm websites fail here.

An expertly-crafted web design is your chance to show off your industry insights, unique processes, and main differentiators - helping to solidify with your prospects that you’re the expert in a particular area.

Try out one (or more!) of our tips today and make your website do more

Archmark specializes in branding and digital marketing strategies for architecture firms. We work with architects to help them establish a strong position in the market, define their brand, and attract their ideal clients.

We focus on helping you build your business, so you can focus on leading your firm.

Get in touch with Archmark today to see how we can help bring your architecture firm’s presence to the next level with our our lead generation service. You can apply for your free Clarity call with Archmark, where we’ll discuss your goals and get to know each other a little better. Additionally, take advantage of our free architecture firm website audit here.