How many portfolio examples should I include in my interior design or architecture website?
/You want to show your absolute best work. The projects you want to do more of. The ones your clients are most impressed by.
Here’s how your clients navigate your website
Here’s what happens on almost all interior design & architecture websites and the steps your visitors go through to look at your website:
Step 1: Home Page
Your clients quickly view your home page
Step 2: Portfolio Page
Over 50% will then click on your Portfolio/Projects/Work page to very quickly scan the work you’ve done. Put your absolute best work first.
Step 3: 1 Individual Project Page
This one is important! About 50 to 90% of your client will ONLY look at 1 individual project page. Usually, this is the very first one you give them! So it’s important that you don’t just put a random project in the first slow. Instead, put your absolute best, client’s most favorite project in that slot, always. Even if it is not in chronological order!
Step 4: Maybe your About or Services page
About 25% of your clients will look at an about/services page, which is often times the least visited page. Here, it is important again to show examples of your best work, one testimonial, and then lead them to the ultimate page: The Contact Page.
Step 5: The Contact page
This is where you want everyone to end up. Although, although 25% of your clients will go there. It’s important to have a button to lead clients to a Contact/Questionnaire/Schedule A Call page so everyone knows exactly how to get info from you to start a project.
So how many projects should you show on your website?
Based on the information above, you can see that most clients are just skimming your projects and look at a few random photos, based on what you present.
This means YOU are in control of how these projects are presented, and you most choose correctly.
There are 3 options you should choose from for your website when presenting photos:
Option 1 | Show everything on one page
This option is good if you are okay with showing only your best work. This guarantees that visitors to your website will only see your best work. They scroll down the page, see your awesome work, and then click a “Get pricing for your project” button. This optimizes the website nicely, and makes it easy to set up a website. This option also works great if you only have 1 or 2 projects you’ve ever done. And that’s okay, because most clients are not going to look at every single project page anways!
Option 2 | Show up to roughly 6 of your best projects
If you don’t like the idea of just 1 page for all your projects, then showcasing about 6 of your best projects is best. Again, most clients will only look at the first 1 or 2 pages you give them. So you need to put your BEST example first, your second best example second, and so on. In this option, you cut out your worst projects. No one needs to see them anyways! Unless they get in touch with you for a 2nd time, you can show smaller projects later as appropriate depending on the client.
Option 3 | Show every single project on it’s own page
This option only makes sense for one reason I know of:
Most architectural firms or commercial interior designers have clients who want proof of EXTENSIVE experience in their field. In this case, it’s not about nice photos, it’s about experience and expertise. In this situation, it might be good to show as many projects as possible to give your clients clear proof that you are very experienced.
Which option should you choose?
SMALL DESIGN FIRM
If you’re a smaller design firm, or specialize more in design aesthetic and less about function and technical work, go with option 1 or 2.
LARGE TECHNICAL FIRM
If your a technical design firm, commercial designer or architect, option 3 is best to showcase experience and trustworthiness.