The Modern Interior Designer’s Website Blueprint: Build a Site That Inspires—and Converts

Your interior design company’s website should be more than just a convenient place for your portfolio to live — it should showcase your work and elevate your interior design brand in such a way that your dream clients can’t wait to book a consultation with you.

Getting potential clients to actually book a call or request a design consult is generally the action that converts them from leads to active clients. Your website design can encourage them along this path through strategic design choices.

We’ll show you how you can turn your website into your most powerful client attraction tool.

WordPress Development and Interior Designers

WordPress is like a big, blank white wall — you can do literally anything you want with it. Interior designers and architects like WordPress as a web host because it allows them to present a truly personalized brand identity to potential clients. 

If you’re using WordPress for a brand new website or already have a site that you want to update for advanced online visibility, our designers recommend paying attention to these elements:

• Make sure the navigation is clear and logical 
• Incorporate a fast-loading portfolio onto your site
• Prioritize clear calls to action throughout the site
• Check for outdated plugins that might be slowing your site 

Our development and design team can elevate your business with a customized WordPress site that showcases your design expertise — give us a call today for a customized quote.

Joomla Development and Design for Interior Design Businesses

Joomla is another effective content management system (CMS) that many small businesses use. Like WordPress, it’s a design-from-scratch provider, but it does have some helpful built-in SEO functions that make it a nice option.

Just like any other CMS platform, Joomla requires regular maintenance and updates to keep it functioning smoothly and attracting new clients to your door. Our team can help with that.

Squarespace Development and Design for Interior Design Freelancers

If you’re hanging out your shingle as a solo freelancer, marketing is just one of many tasks on your to-do list! Squarespace might be a good choice for you, thanks to its nice variety of elegant, easy-to-navigate templates.

Our recommendation when using Squarespace for the world of interior design is to ensure that you showcase your personality. You want your ideal client to get a feel for what you specifically offer that sets you apart from all the other designers out there. 

Even if you start with a template, you can still make changes to the color scheme, typography, and images that communicate your brand. 

HTML5 Development and Design for Commercial Interior Design Firms

Though different web design platforms offer different levels of control and personalization, at the end of the day, they are all built on the same basic web coding language — HTML5.

If you serve commercial clients, chances are you have grown far beyond the basic plug-and-play website template and need something a little more customized. A skilled HTML5 design and development team can get right into the code of your site to make your vision come to life — whether that’s a better UX for your case studies or a more personalized identity through branded design. 

Shopify Development and Design for Interior Design Companies

Product sales offer a supplementary income stream for many independent designers and firms. By offering your own range of products or a curated list of selected items, you can leverage your design expertise to earn additional revenue through direct or affiliate sales. 

Shopify is a great choice for organizing this, but you want to ensure brand consistency so that your clients have one seamless experience with your design company. Ideally, shopping your curated catalog of products should feel no different to visitors than browsing your portfolio.

Our Shopify experts recommend using the “Collections” feature on Shopify to its fullest extent to make sure that customers can easily browse and discover your products. Organizing products according to multiple criteria — like style, room, type, and price point — can increase views and sales. Finally, make sure that each product page is fully optimized for search so that it shows up in Google Shopping ads. 

Geo Landing Pages for Residential Interior Design Companies

If your company has locations in multiple cities or regions, then geotargeted landing pages are absolutely essential. These are critical components of your website that show different information to visitors based on their geographic location.

So, if you offer interior design services in both Atlanta and Decatur, you want the landing page to automatically display the information that is most relevant to potential clients in each location.

This can increase the number of inquiries you receive, since clients will immediately know that you offer services nearby, and can browse your previous projects in comparable homes or neighborhoods. 

Dynamic Landing Pages for Interior Design Studios

Similar to geotargeted landing pages, dynamic landing pages automatically update the information displayed based on predefined criteria, like the particular search term used or the demographics of the searcher.

For example, a term like “kitchen design near me” could trigger the display of a kitchen-specific landing page with images and text like “Get a new kitchen by Christmas!” A search like “home office design in Chicago” could display a landing page with the same personalized branding, but with images of an office you’ve designed with text like “Design the WFH space of your dreams today.” 

These increase conversions because they deliver tailored messages that specifically address what each client was searching for, while keeping all the rest of your content and branding consistent. 

Application Development for the Commercial Interior Design Companies

Consumer-facing interior design tools are all the rage, and forward-thinking interior designers should be incorporating these tools into their suite of offerings to attract clients. 

By offering your own app, clients can edit or create moodboards, room layouts, or wish lists and share them directly with the designers working on their project. 

Our application designers can work directly with you to create an app that facilitates communication with your clients and scales up your services — ultimately helping you expand your client base and even raise your rates. 

FAQs: Marketing for Interior Designers

The interior design industry is a unique blend of intense competition and personal branding. You’re not just communicating the services and prices you offer — you’re telling a story of why you offer the best interior design services for your particular client base.

Our team of pro web designers can elevate your online presence through conversion-focused web design that helps move browsers from “that looks good” to “that looks like the designer for me.” 

Here are some of the top questions we get from interior designers hoping to improve their digital marketing — when you’re ready to get your personalized, custom-quoted strategy, give us a call!

What should an interior design website include to attract clients?

Your interior design website should make it easy to move from browsing your portfolio pieces to booking a call with you. There should be an extensive catalog of past projects, including before-and-after photos. 

Your website should also answer all potential client questions. Include clear service pages, explain your processes, and offer an FAQ page that handles high-anxiety topics like timelines and price.

Finally, your website should include clear calls to action throughout that make it seamless for leads to move from browsing to booking.

Which website platform is best for interior designers?

Different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. Our content marketing experts tend to recommend WordPress for full customization power. This is important, specifically for interior designers, because you want to convey the uniqueness of your brand, and WordPress offers a “blank slate” on which to do that. 

If you want something that has clean, aesthetic templates ready to go, Squarespace is a great alternative that is simpler to get started with than WordPress. 

If you offer products for sale as part of your interior design business, then Shopify is the go-to for its catalog-style interface with a focus on visuals. 

How do I create a portfolio that stands out online?

If you want to attract more clients, then your portfolio needs to feature both a great design and an easy-to-navigate interface. People are drawn to stories, so you should format your portfolio into narratives, rather than simply an endless roll of photos for clients to scroll through. Make sure that viewers can browse your pieces using multiple organizational tags, like type, style, budget, or recent. 

To do this, your portfolio should feature high-resolution, professional photography that shows your design work in the best light to reflect the quality of your work. Emphasize the storyline of each project — one reliable method is by sharing the mood board that you and your client created, and then taking readers step-by-step through the design and implementation of the project. This also helps potential clients understand your process and builds trust in your work and responsiveness. 

Interactive elements like “before and after” sliders add a fun touch that inspires potential clients to imagine their own “afters.” 

What design elements help websites convert better for interior designers?

Building a website for your business is just as much about user experience as it is about visuals. Your brand identity should be consistently communicated across each page, and the navigation should be simple and intuitive.

Ease of access is a must for high-converting websites. Your website needs to load in under three seconds or risk losing visitors to competitors. Furthermore, it’s absolutely essential that your website and portfolio display properly on mobile devices if you want to reach a broader audience, since most people browse more on their smartphones than on their desktops.

Finally, your services should be clearly communicated — potential clients don’t want to waste time trying to figure out if you offer home office design or not. Make it extremely clear that you are the perfect match for your target audience. 

Can a professional website help interior designers raise their prices?

Absolutely. Presenting your design expertise through a polished, premium online experience helps communicate the value you provide to potential clients and grow your base into higher-paying projects and clients.

By communicating a consistent story of premium services, you are able to command higher rates. For example, a high-quality digital portfolio of commercial properties you’ve designed allows you to position yourself as a high-quality designer equipped to handle big-ticket projects skillfully and on time. 

Ready to get your personalized marketing strategies? Request your free consultation with SEO Design Chicago’s web design experts today!