Here are five quick website tips for your interior design website. Make sure that your website is working for you. These aren’t tips you’ve heard before - and they can change your business.
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One major thing I don’t see enough on interior design websites is pricing. Pricing should be on your website. Pricing must be on your website. You’re probably losing good clients without it. Read Should You Put Pricing on Your Website to know all the reasons that you should include pricing on your website. #capellakincheloe #interiordesignbusiness #interiordesignpricing #interiordesignwebsite #interiordesignceo #businessofdesign
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There is one thing that can help provide a bridge between visitors to your website and those that become clients - a call-to-action (CTA). It’s important to lead people to the next step. Tell them what to do. It’s amazing to me how much this little instruction makes a psychological difference.
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You must have a specialty. Your specialty, or niche, will either be something you’ve figured out for yourself or if you don’t choose, sometimes it’ll emerge on its own just because of your natural talents and personality. Who you are, what you do, and who you attract all come into consideration for your specialty. Uniqueness is a beautiful thing.
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If Instagram is your online resume, do you want to have what essentially is someone else’s job on it? Time to think if that’s the message you want to send to potential clients.
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Are you selling yourself short by not selling and marketing your interior design business? It’s time to rethink your relationship with selling because as Robert Louis Stevenson said, everybody lives by selling something.
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You probably have a lot of questions about how to share your interior design projects online. How much to share online? What to share? How much is too much? What do people want to see? Where to share? How best to share? What’s the strategy or overall plan to share design projects? This article will clear things up for you.
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If your business is struggling you probably need to be doing a better job at marketing. And even when you are busy you can’t let up on your marketing efforts. In other words, you always need to be marketing because when you stop clients stop.
If you’ve never created a marketing plan now is the time. You may have been marketing and not realized it (and if you’ve had clients this is probably the case) but if you want to get more ideal clients, now is the time to focus on your marketing efforts.
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When clients can’t differentiate between you and another designer, they will always be making their decision to hire you based on price.
This is why you need to stand out and have a unique value proposition.
Now, unique value proposition is a fancy term for the unique advantage you bring to your clients.
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There are several dozen psychological triggers that can help increase your sales and one of my favorites is scarcity. For interior designers we have a limited amount of time and creativity to service clients, without wearing ourselves out or bringing in help. We naturally have a limited bandwidth. This is where you can use scarcity and a wait list to your benefit.
I have to mention, because I know that many people are going to feel a little resistance on this topic, that many designers I know have a scarcity mindset. It’s a bit of a natural state when you own your own business.
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Would you like a more steady stream of clients and projects? Would you like to keep new new business coming into your interior design business consistently?
Of course!
Keep New Business Coming
Interior design is naturally cyclical. There are naturally slower times. And it may depend on your ideal client and the location of your business. For example, in the US, you’re likely to be slower right before Thanksgiving if you live in a place with a lot of second/vacation homes. However, this is usually a very busy time for a lot of other designers around the country.
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Getting your work photographed is an important part of documenting your work as well as using it to attract new work. So, getting your work photographed needs to start at the beginning of the project, not the end.
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Three Reasons to Start an Interior Design Blog
1. SEO
You want more eyeballs on your website, this is how you do it. SEO is Search Engine Optimization and the more content on your website, the more Google has to troll, and the higher it'll appear in search rankings. IF you put the right keywords on your site - meaning your specialty, your location, your ideal clients, and what people are searching for in your area - literally what do they type into the Google search box.
Want more info on SEO? I'm hosting a webinar with Melissa of The Creative Potential on SEO for Interior Designers July 18th. Click image at bottom to learn more.
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Take a second to think about the last thing that you purchased - as small as a lipstick or as big as a car. I'd bet that you checked out reviews online before you committed to your purchase. We've come to trust the collective opinion of others - something called social proof to help us make decisions when we buy. Getting testimonials from your interior design clients is important because it boosts this in your own business.
Getting testimonials creates trust with potential clients and shows them the benefits of your service from a client perspective. Likely they will feel reassured that if another client was happy that you've done good work and they will be happy as well. Past performance says a lot about future performance.
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How do you get project photos without clients? How can you get clients without project photos?
Setting up a website is a bit of a chicken & the egg situation when you are just starting your business. You know a website is super important, but you may put it off because you don't have any portfolio images to display, but it is also harder to get clients without a proper website.
So should you put your website up without photos or should you try to get clients so you have projects to show on your website?
My advice is to…
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Your website is supremely important to your business success. In fact, in today's internet-driven culture, it can make or break your business. I suggest allowing your business to do a lot of the work of selling, educating, and qualifying clients for you. This way you don't have to spend time doing this with each prospect that contacts you.
You should be reviewing and updating your website regularly. Your website is never "done", it should be
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Creating more than one way to make money in your interior design business is like diversifying your portfolio. If something takes a downturn you have other places where money is coming in.
On the other hand, I don't want you to complicate your business so much that it becomes unmanageable or overwhelming. Too much on your plate and business becomes messy and you won't be able to do anything well.
Below are some ideas on how to add multiple revenue streams into your interior design business. A caveat, if you want to add anything, you should be able to create it and then set it and forget it.
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Most interior designers keep their portfolio on their website. There may be a little information about their services, but mainly interior design websites are put up to display designer's work and contact information. Some interior designers even have a blog. Although, I'd suspect that if those designers are reading this article, their blog probably hasn't been updated in awhile.
While interior design websites have a way for clients to contact the designer, they usually haven't created a way for the interior designer to contact clients. This is where an email list is useful to your business. Despite the spread of social media, email is still one of the best ways to be in contact with your potential clients and past clients - the ones that you don't talk to regularly.
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Pinterest has become one of the biggest search engines online and it's still growing. Now as I mentioned in last week's post on growing your Instagram following, social media is not one of my strengths. But I've been working on it recently and I'm going to share with you what I've learned. If you have tips, be sure to share them in the comments!
Pin It Button
Make it easy for website visitors to pin your images with a Pin It Button on your website. Beware of copyright infringement implications.
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For the past month, I've been putting some energy into social media. Social media is such a great tool and I've seen it make businesses - through followers, connections, and brands. It is not something that comes natural to me, in fact it feels very unnatural and revealing, but I am working on it. No matter where on the scale of social media comfort you are, the following tips are sure to help you get more eyes on your business.
I know this because the person I asked to give me her tips on growing your Instagram following amassed over 10,000 followers in about a year. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of them came in the last six months. Her name is Meg Hosler from Meggie H Interiors. Meg told me that with little to no money to spend on marketing and advertising Instagram has become invaluable to getting her name out there. She said, "The Instagram community within design and architecture is very supportive and interactive. I have met a number of my Instafriends in person and have made some great friends. It has also been the number one way my clients find me. Instagram is also how I was discovered by The Glam Pad blog which has been invaluable to launching my career." Below are Meg's tips on how to grow your followers:
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