The Website Design Guide for Interior Designers
Over 1100 Simple Luxury Websites Designed Since 2010
This guide covers just about every question interior designers have about website design. Since 2010, our design team has designed over 1100 websites for interior designers all across the United States & Canada. Our goal is to help interior designers create a simple, luxury aesthetic for their website in order to attract the best, high-end interior design clients.
1
The Website Design Process
Simple Luxury Website Design
We focus on simple, elegant website design because it associates your brand with the top luxury brands in the world such as Louis Vuitton, J. Crew, or the Ritz-Carlton that also use simplicity and luxury in their design. We want high end homeowners to associate your own interior design firm within the same high-end luxury part of the industry.
Since 2010, I have spoken with hundreds of interior designers about why their interior design website is important to their business. In most cases, it is all about establishing credibility and creating the perception of luxury with existing clients and their referrals.
I also carefully study how affluent homeowners contact interior designers through their website. The most successful result of a well-designed website is when an affluent client says something like this:
“I just purchased a new home in Malibu, California with 4,000 S.F. and a renovation budget of $500,000. I really like your interior design style and want to see if this is something you can help with.”
The interior design website is the centerpiece of credibility for an interior design firm. When an affluent homeowner gets a referral from a friend, family, co-worker, or neighbor, the number one item they ask for is the interior designer’s website so that they can verify your firm is credible and see your portfolio for themselves.
Your interior design website sets the tone for your firm. It becomes the ultimate perception and greatest visual statement of your brand. The interior design website has become the modern-day equivalent of being published in a magazine like Architectural Digest, or having your work printed in a large coffee table book.
While books and magazines continue to hold prestige with high-end clients, the website has been the third major element that continues to hold additional prestige with affluent homeowners. An interior design website does not need to be complex or include a lot of information. In fact, the more simple your website is, the more likely it will impress clients.
THE WEBSITE DESIGN PROCESS FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS
Since starting Justin Page Wood in 2010, my team and I have launched over 1,100 websites for interior designers in the United States and Canada. And because of this extremely in-depth experience, we’ve been able to design a process that ensures the highest possible result for websites made uniquely for design firms. The process can be overwhelming, which is why we break down everything step-by-step so you can move at the pace that works best for you. You’ll be working with 2 designers on your website, a team leader and a lead designer, who will both carefully work on your website step by step.
First get on our waitlist at www.justinpagewood.com/waitlist - Our design team will then follow up to schedule a website consultation with you over the phone. We will discuss the best website option for your firm and then you can reserve your spot on our waitlist during the consultation. Once you reserve your spot, there are 4 website design phases.
Phase 1 | PREPARING FOR YOUR WEBSITE
This is where we will ensure we understand exactly what you’re looking for, and get any initial logo designs or photos from you. We can do additional phone calls with you to make sure we completely understand what you’re wanting to achieve during this phase.
Phase 2 | Concept Designs & Website Build
This is where we will design several website design concepts based on your ideas. Once you have approved a concept we will create an initial build of your website so you can see how the concept design will work with each page.
Phase 3 | Design Refinements
Even after concepts and building out your website, there are always design details, revisions and edits needed to make sure you love your new website. And then we will review your website via email, over the phone, or other interactive tools to make sure we get every detail beautifully designed.
Phase 4 | Website Launch, Training & Support
Once you’re ready, we will help launch your website by connecting your domain name and email to your new website, creating custom training videos for you to learn how to edit your website, and be available for support even after the launch at any time you need help, have questions, or want to expand upon your website.
HOW LONG does THE PROCESS TAKE?
While you’re on the waitlist to kick-off your new project, we will begin Phase 1 which includes collecting your photos, logos, text and any initial ideas you have. Once we officially kick-off your project, we’ll begin the remaining phases which typically takes 6-8 weeks on average, to complete depending mostly on how many photos and projects you’d like to have on the launch day of your website.
Show the best of the best photos
For all interior designers, we always recommend that your website is the best-of-the-best presentation of your work. You want to put the design aesthetic and quality in front of your clientele that is most important for them to see. Remove the projects that are note the best representation of your brand and keep only what put your firm in the best possible light. This especially goes for the home page of your website which is the very first impression clients will get of your firm.
THE 5 BEST WEBSITE PAGES FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS
Since we’ve designed hundreds of websites for interior designers, the 5 most important pages to include on your website are the Home, Portfolio, Services, About, and Contact pages - in that exact order. These are the pages your clients are definitely going to look at. Other pages are less important, and are less likely to be viewed by clients.
Other Optional Website Pages To Include
The 5 Primary Pages of your website are the most important to include for Home, Portfolio, Services, About & Contact. Other pages you may want to include are a Press or Awards page. You can also add a Careers page for hiring new employees, or a Client Questionnaire or Calendar so they can schedule a time to speak with you. The cost for each additional page is $120.
HOW MANY PROJECTS TO SHOW ON YOUR WEBSITE
The number of projects to show on your website depends on your goals. For most interior design firms, we recommend anywhere between 1 and 12 projects to showcase on your website. This way you are focusing only on the best-of-the-best photos and projects to show your clients - a focus on quality over quantity. The cost for each individual project gallery is $120.
What is a Project Gallery & How many photos should I show?
This is one of the most common questions we get. A project gallery is typically a collection of about 5 to 20 photos on a page organized by Client Project or by Room Type. For instance, you may want to show 20 photos from the Smith Residence, 15 photos from the Jones Residence, and 12 photos from the Brown Residence - which would be 3 different project galleries in total. Or, you could have 4 different Project Galleries for Kitchen, Bath, Bedrooms & Living Rooms.
Here is an example of a website with just 1 project gallery: garacompany.com
And here is an example of a website with 8 project galleries: eastdesignhouse.com
ADDING & REMOVING PROJECTS OVER TIME
Each website we design is created so new projects can be added to your website, and older projects can be removed. Most of our clients prefer help to continually add projects or update their website. The cost to add new projects or pages is $120 each.
How to Send Photos Of YoUr Work
We will set up a Google Drive account for you to add your photos to. We recommend organizing your photos by Project into separate folders and numbering each photo in the order you would like them to appear. If you prefer you can also use Dropbox.com, Box.com, or another photo sharing program.
Will it be easy to edit the website on my own?
We only use the most simple and up-to-date website technology available. The platform we use for all of our interior design clients is called Squarespace, which has by far gotten the highest satisfaction rating from our clients since starting in 2010. Once your new website is done, our design team will record custom training videos for you and your team to refer to.
However, if any design you request requires custom code, we will let you know before starting. Custom coding is very difficult to edit, so we always recommend going with a more simple option for your website so that you can easily edit on your own.
Can I get help with my website once it is finished?
Once your website is launched, we are always available to help add new projects or make changes to your website. The cost is $120 per page or project and you can reach us any time by email for help.
Invite Clients to a request information or a Consultation
The most important element on your Contact page is by far the contact form. I have personally reviewed hundreds of Contact form submissions on interior design websites to see how the high-end interior design client uses them. When your website and Contact page are done correctly you can get some incredible clients reaching out to you.
Your contact form needs to have two main sections. The first section simply captures someone’s personal contact information - usually their name, email, and phone number. The second section is used to ask leading questions that help your prospects ‘formalize’ their ideas into writing.
These leading questions should be meaningful and help you easily screen prospective clients as soon as their form submission gets into your email inbox. For interior design services, I find that most good clients are willing to explain the following:
Their project location
The square footage of their project
The project budget - either their furniture & decor budget or the overall construction budget
When they’d like to get started
If you find you need more or less information, you can customize this however you would like. But most high-end homeowners across the entire country, from California to New York, explain their project in this way. I won’t give a real example for the sake of client privacy, but a good lead will look something like this:
‘My wife and I are in escrow for a new home in Atlanta that is only 1,500 square feet and we’d like to make some renovations to the home once it closes. We really love your interior design style and hope you’ll be able to help us. We may need a contractor to help build an extra room as well. Our renovation budget is 350k’
Almost every serious client will explain their project in a similar manner. And so you know your website is designed properly once you are getting inquiries like this on your Contact page.
Logo Design
The most powerful luxury brand names and logos are simple typeface logo designs that people can easily read. Only a few brands are so common that consumers can see their icons and know the brand, such as Apple, Starbucks, Target, and Nike. But these companies are worth billions of dollars and are very rare.
Many luxury brands are known instead by a simple, clear name with an easy-to-read font, such as Louis Vuitton, or Banana Republic, Williams Sonoma, J. Crew, and so many other luxury brands.
Because of this, I highly recommend that you use inspiration from luxury-focused companies, instead of common retail or consumer brands so that your interior design firm can be visually associated with luxury as soon as a high-end client sees your website.
The most compelling brands - especially when it comes to luxury, hospitality, or service brands - are simple, clean, and elegant. And they all have a similar look and feel.
Copywriting
For the text on your website, we have a questionnaire we will send you to collect your ideas and feedback on what the text should say for your website. Our design team will then make design edits and refinements to the text.
CUSTOMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR EACH DEVICE
A crucial part of elevating your brand with your website is to ensure that it looks perfect on every single device. Although most interior design websites get 75% of their views on a desktop or laptop, 20% will still view on a mobile, and 5% on a tablet. No matter what view people look on, it is important that each view is fully customized, and this requires every view using a certain level of custom coding to get to that level of perfection.
Our entire team will work to ensure that your website will be fully customized to look good on an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook computers, as well as other phone and tablet devices so that your website is beautiful on all screen sizes and computer types.
ADDING AN INSTAGRAM FEED & social media icons
We can add your Instagram Feed or a link to your Instagram account through the website. Typically, we recommend select 6 to 8 of your favorite Instagram photos to showcase on your website, so that the design integrates seamlessly with the rest of your website, rather than a live feed of Instagram which can sometimes ruin the aesthetic of your website.
Moving to a new platform
Many of our clients have an older website or hosting platform like WordPress that has no longer become easy to use. The two most stable platforms right now are Wix and Squarespace. We use Squarespace for interior designers because they have the most up-to-date tools and for years have prioritized high-quality photography for visual businesses like photographers, weddings, architecture & interior design. Our design team will help with all the logistics in moving over to a new website hosting platform if you are not currently on Squarespace.
WHEN TO USE A TEMPORARY SPLASH PAGE
For all of our clients, we provide a complimentary 1-page splash website. This is ideal if you do not currently have a website up online or want to hide your current website from the public with something new. All we need is your logo, at least 1 photo, and your contact information, and we'll create a one-page temporary website for you as soon as possible, after we receive the above listed information from you.
USING THE IMAGES & TEXT FROM YOUR OLD WEBSITE
Our design team will do as much as possible to take content from your current website and use it for your new or upgraded website. And we will do as much of the work as possible for you. However, if you have higher resolution images available on your computer, in Dropbox, Google Drive, or another file storage system, that will usually give better results. Some older platforms like WordPress or Wix compress images to have a grainy or blurry look. So it’s best to add the original, high-resolution images.
Usually, there are only three items needed: 1) The login to your Domain Name company. Most businesses have GoDaddy or something similar. 2) The login to your old website hosting company or platform, such as Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Wix, WordPress, etc. 3) In rare instances, we may need the login to your Email account in case we need to make any modifications. We understand that your email is important to keep safe, so we can always find a work around or avoid touching your email at all costs. It is very important to keep your Email untouched as much as possible, so we will access your Email accounts only if it is 100% necessary.
HOW TO HANDLE YOUR DOMAIN NAME, Email & website hosting
As much as possible, we will help take care of all the technical website details for you with ensuring your domain name, website hosting, and emails connect together and work properly.
The domain name is like the “Address” of your website. Instead of a home address like 123 Main Street, New York, the address of your website is www.yourcompanyname.com - The most common domain company is GoDaddy.com.
The second part of your website is the Website Hosting, which is like the physical structure of your Home. While a home contains all of the structure, rooms, furniture, and decor, the Website Hosting contains all of the photos, text, and other graphics all in one place.
The third and final piece is your Email Address, which is like the Mailbox of your home.
The Physical Address, Home Structure & Mailbox are all connected, but they are all 3 distinct things. Just like the Domain Name, Website Hosting & Email are all connected but three separate parts.
For your website all we are changing is the Home or Website Hosting. Your Domain Name (Address) and Email stay the same and get connected to your new Website Hosting. We take care of all this connection for you.
If you need new email addresses set up, we recommend hiring a local IT firm that can help you set up email addresses in person to sync with your computers, laptops, tablets, and phones - which is very difficult to do remotely.
Ongoing Costs for a New Website
The newest website platforms require an on-going website cost of $36 per month. This helps to ensure you website is up and running as smoothly as possible, with as few ongoing issues as possible. There is also a roughly $20 per year domain name cost which goes towards your domain name such as www.yourcompanyhere.com. For email addresses, we recommend hiring a local IT expert that can help set up or change your email addresses for you and your team on all of your devices.
KEEPING YOUR OLD WEBSITE DOMAIN NAME & EMAIL ADDRESSES
This is a common question most business owners have. Let’s say your existing website is www.designfirm.com and you want to move to a new website or upgrade your existing website. On your new website, you can still keep your old domain name as well as your company email addresses. The only thing that will change is your website hosting, which includes the files, logos, images and text on your website. We will move the website hosting to your new website at Squarespace, but keep your current custom Domain Name and custom Email Addresses exactly as it is now.
Website Hosting with Squarespace
For all of our websites we use Squarespace so that your website is as stable as possible long term. In the past we tested platforms like WordPress for interior designers but long term got unhappy clients with the experience. With Squarespace, you’ll get access to the backend to the website so you can make any changes as needed and you’ll have access to everything as a primary Administrator.
If you already have a squarespace Account
We use the latest Squarespace technology for all new websites which will help your website last even longer with fewer problems down the road. If you already have a Squarespace account, we set up a 2nd account for the new website while your old website stays live. Once the new site goes live, we will help you get a refund for the old website and move everything to the new website. You may also get a temporary landing page website if you prefer to have a “Coming Soon” website while the new one is being designed.
What if I recently renewed my old website hosting & domain name?
Most companies will give you a refund if the payment was within the last 30 days. However, our website design process typically takes at least 2 months so we recommend you keep your old website hosting up during the website design process and then cancel your old website hosting later. It depends on the timing of your old website hosting, but sometimes we can create a “Coming Soon” website for you to get your old website taken down while we work on the new website. We can do our best to customize the design and launch process that works best for you.
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Custom Features
Can I let my clients Schedule A Call through my website?
We recommend the tool called Acuity Scheduling, which will integrate directly with your website and make it very easy for you to manage. Also, Acuity Scheduling has tons of great customizations that integrate with your calendar, and give your clients reminders on upcoming appointments. In fact, our own scheduling tool on our website uses Squarespace Scheduling. The cost is currently around $18 per month for Acuity Scheduling, which is in addition to the website hosting.
As an alternative, any interior designers want to use third-party tools like Calendly, Dubsado, Ivy and others on their website. All of these tools will work great on your website, and our design team can help integrate those tools into your website. Third party project/business management tools may have additionally monthly costs depending on which features you plan to use.
Can I capture email addresses on my website?
There are numerous ways you can capture email addresses on your website. For instance, an email newsletter sign-up, a simple contact form, or a project questionnaire form. You can also offer PDF downloads or offer clients to schedule a consultation with you.
Using Project Questionnaires
We find that project questionnaires for interior designers actually help generate more leads, and convert more leads into clients. So, we highly encourage you to have a project questionnaire that clients fill out on your website especially on your main Contact page.
The Press & Awards Page
When I review the data of all interior design websites, literally no one looks at these pages. Even though this is the case, if you have lots of press and awards, your website is a good place to archive them for your own records so you can draw on them later. A serious client may look back at the Press & Awards later, but virtually all your clients will skip it over on the first visit to your website. Aside from the 5 primary pages for your website, Press is the only optional one I would recommend including alongside your Portfolio, Services, About & Contact pages. Adding any more than that will get too long and will distract clients from reaching your Contact page
SHOULD INTERIOR DESIGNERS HAVE A BLOG?
About five percent of interior designers want to include a Blog page on their website - even though many of them don’t like to write blogs in the first place! It is better to have no Blog on your website than a Blog with the last article written in 2015 about ‘Why hire an interior designer?’ or ‘Welcome to my blog!’ - which are the most common blog post titles out there. If you choose to keep a Blog on your website, I recommend you hide it down in the Footer of your website, in small text at the bottom of each page. This is because - just like your Testimonials, Press, and Awards pages - only about 1-5% of visitors will ever bother to look at it. And if your visitors look at a blog post, it eats away at the time they will spend on your website and cause them to leave before they fill out your Contact form.
Can my website be fully custom?
While each website we design is fully custom, we try as much as possible to avoid too much code so that you will be able to easily edit the website on your own. If an item you request is highly custom, we will let you know before making those adjustments. Anything that requires a lot of code will make it very difficult for you to edit on your own, so we generally try to find alternatives when something is too custom to edit without coding.
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Ecommerce
Should Interior Designers Have a Shop?
If you already run a showroom and sell inventory, you know how complex having a Shop is. Running an interior design firm and a Shop are two totally different businesses that require entirely different approaches. If you want to sell furniture and decor on your website, I highly recommend a tool called SideDoor, which allows you to sell high-end furniture brands on your website like Four Hands, Bernhardt, and hundreds more, right on your website. This way, you sell popular brands to your clients, and then SideDoor ships and tracks the items for you, just like if you were ordering items to-the-trade as part of your normal interior design process. If you plan on selling your own physical items that require taxes, shipping, and inventory management, I recommend a totally separate website from your interior design website on a platform like Shopify or WordPress. Again, because E-commerce is totally different from interior design services, I won’t go into detail on the right approach for an online Shop because it will distract high-end clients from contacting you about interior design services.
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SEO
SEO FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS
Since we design websites for interior designers, our specialty is on design aesthetic. This is to ensure that your website looks as good as possible, without messing it up with a lot of text and technical set up. However, we still focus on ensuring you get the best possible SEO keywords without compromising on design. While most website design firms will simply add SEO keywords to your website, for interior design firms we always recommend focusing on your number one cities or regions that you serve. Focusing on cities or regions is the best way to rank for interior design services.
For instance, if you serve clients in the Los Angeles area, it’s best to focus on smaller neighborhoods that you really want clients from, such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, or Malibu. It’s much easier to rank high in Google Searches in smaller cities than it is in a larger metropolitan areas.
Focusing on a small geographical area for a long time will also help you rank higher and higher in Google. Another important step is to set up a Google Business listing if you have not already at www.google.com/business
Get On the Waitlist
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