What makes a truly excellent architecture website and why should you care to invest seriously into creating an awesome web experience for your architecture practice?
These two questions are highly related. The strong drivers are the many benefits and the momentum that arise from creating an inviting and engaging online experience around your business. Learn more about the compelling benefits of a well-crafted architecture website and find best practices!
The first touch point
Your website is one of the first and often the first touch point of a new relationship. When you go out for a meeting or a conference, you care about the way you are dressed and groomed. You want to make the first connection with potential clients and new people as effectively as possible.
In comparison, your website is part of a 24/7 worldwide conference, every second can be the first connection to someone unknown. Make sure you shape this connection as compelling and rewarding as possible. The quality of your website communicates so much about your company. Often between the lines, often unconsciously.
Make sure you invest in an appearance that represents the aspiration of your company.
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There is no second chance for a first impression.
On top, your online appearance shows whether you made it to the 21st century or not, and maybe more important, whether you are the right partner for shaping the future. As being one of the first touch points, your website communicates an important first sense of your values!
The revealing benefits:
Build trust upfront
Your site is an incredibly powerful tool to build up trust and relation to almost strangers. By sharing an appealing and high-quality website with personal and professional insights and compelling content, you are able to create a connection to your audience.
If done the right way, you are able to give people a good reason to feel confident about working with you. An excellent architecture website can pave the path to a successful connection with young talent and future clients.
You are able to build a reputation by letting people know what you value, what you are doing at the moment and what you’ve done in the past. Make the experience as personal as possible by keeping a vivid news section with recent updates about projects, talks, interviews, publications, insights, and emotions.
Brand building
Your website is your big stage. A stage that is opened to millions of people every day. Everything you do on your stage has an influence on your audience and shapes the way people think about you and your company. What people see and learn when attending your stage has an immediate impact on the perception and awareness of your brand. Therefore, your website is the first and foremost tool when it comes to shaping your brand perception. Invest in quality content and make your stage as rewarding and valuable as possible to a worldwide audience.
Separate yourself from the masses
Everybody and every firm can create a website. What distinguishes yourself from the mass is the quality and individuality you put into the experience. Your site opens up the ability for you to stand out and separate yourself from thousands of competitors by sharing what makes YOU special and unique.
You are able to share your company mission, what drives you and your staff every day? You can express your approach to architecture through text and imagery. You can easily provide insights into your daily routine and the people behind the practice. You are able to share imagery of your office space and give people an idea of the atmosphere where the magic happens. Separate yourself by creating an individual experience by “inviting” people into your practice and create a connection through insights (personal and professional) and “behind the scene” content.
Attract talent
There is one buzzword of today’s search for highly qualified employees – “War of Talents.” It has become increasingly difficult for companies to find young talent in search of growth.
Put yourself into the shoes of a young professional: They are about to bond themselves to a company for the month and years to come. Therefore they want to find out up front, whether the values are congruent with their own. Use your website to make it easier for young professionals to find a connection. Provide insights through imagery, film, and text. Give them an idea of what they can expect from working with you. The way you present your company online can have a tremendous impact on your attractiveness to young and talented architects.
Attract clients
A more obvious benefit is your ability to attract new clients. Based on the previous idea that your website is an incredibly powerful tool to build trust and relation upfront, you are in charge of the first impression. Make it count!
There are two primary ways people find their way to your website. Either you get in touch with someone in person and he or she will google you afterward. Or someone hears about you somewhere without any previous in-person connection and will check out your website first and foremost to get an idea of your company and who you are.
The first impression is already paving the path of trust and comfort or uncertainty and dislike towards your reputation. If it is the second impression, your website can do a fantastic job to support the initial impact.
Either way, your website is, more than ever, an incredibly important touch point that needs to be crafted in a way it provides the most significant value for a trustful relation and future collaboration.
Reach into the world
Increase your reach into the world through social shareability and quality content. If people like something in a way that it resonates with their values, they are likely to share it as an expression of who they are. Simply put, if you put in the energy to create appealing, high-quality content on your website you will increase the odds that people share it on social media. In that way, you are able to gain an organic reach into the world. This is one of the most powerful ways to increase your reputation by having someone else talking positively about you and your work.
Quality content resonates with people. That can be a design project with quality graphics and well-written explanations, amazingly documented construction processes with drone images and overall impressive imagery, short project films, documentaries about the people behind your practice or blogs posts on your website about your values and approach to architecture. Invest in quality content that resonates with people to create a social shareability and ultimately increase your reach into the world by word to mouth.
The sum
Choosing an architecture firm to work with is nothing you make an impulse decision about! Therefore your architecture website becomes a much more valuable and magical tool. Clients do their research. Your architecture website is the perfect opportunity to get your best content in front of your audience as quickly as possible.
Hub of your brand ecosystem
Even though many firms started to use social media channels like Instagram to build brand awareness – in the context of an architecture firm, the primary goal of those other channels is to drive website traffic. Potential clients and potential recruits might first see you on social media or elsewhere, but the place they’re going to dig deep and form their lasting opinion of you is your website.
The place people are going to dig deep and form their lasting opinion of you is your website!
All that puts great emphasis on your architecture websites as “the hub of your brand ecosystem” and is, therefore, one of the most valuable places to built trust and relation.
Website = valuable asset
If you don’t treat your website as a valuable asset in an interconnected world, you leave a lot of business potential flat on the table. Everything you are able to achieve is dependent upon the design quality of your website and the user experience.
If you are in search of a custom website experience for your architecture firm, let us know. We are in touch with some amazing agencies!
Best practices
Finally, we collected six best practices of well crafted and engaging architecture websites:
ODA Architecture
Jensen Architects
Ennead Architects
VMDO Architects
Dorte Mandrup
Skylab Architecture
If you need more inspiration, explore the top 20 most exciting architecture websites as industry-leading best practices and cutting-edge examples of how to present your architecture studio.
The most exciting and best Architecture Websites of 2019
In the subsequent article, we also identified the main factors of what makes a great architecture website:
What makes a great architecture Website?
(in progress, coming very soon …)
Hopefully, you are fired up to seize those benefits for your practice and create momentum for your reach into the world. I‘d be happy to hear your thoughts on that topic. Feel free to Say Hello!
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