May 26, 2007 Opportunities Missed (A Call to Architectural Firms) 
I'm really hungry to take on a project for an architectural firm's portfolio.
I've become a bit of an architecture enthusiast the past few years, subscribing to Dwell and Metropolis, reading books like Karrie Jacobs' "Perfect $100,000 House." I browse around the Dwell Connect community site and peruse firm lists at the Boston Society of Architects, AIA, and Dwell DesignSource and am left woefully disappointed by what I find.
I recently contacted a local firm by e-mail:
In a five-minute survey of your site, I found:
* Valuable text (including page content) embedded in images, rendering it unfindable by search engines.
* Inconsistent naming in your site's page title and body ("[Name] Associates" vs. "[Name] & Associates"), thwarting effective search engine indexing.
* Table-based HTML layout code, thwarting search engine indexing.
* Frames, popup windows, thwarting search engine indexing.
* A splash page for a homepage, with no indexable content, and no immediate value for the user.
* A required three clicks from the homepage before seeing a single example of your work.
Either the sites I'm finding are just really stale or there's a huge disconnect here. Architects: Entrust your designs and portfolio photographs to the hands of web designers who can:
- Design optimal navigation so that end-users and prospects don't have to spend 1 second figuring out what they're looking at or where to look.
- Adapt your stories, testimonials and accreditations to fit the web, so that they're accessible, readable, and findable by search engines.
- Put your work front and center on the homepage in a format that is visually compelling and stimulating, and formatted to fit in a browser window.
- Make your portfolio easy to administer and update so that your site is always fresh and relevant.
I wholeheartedly believe that architectural professionals have ridiculously high standards for any work that bears their name. In some regards they have to with the responsibility they hold, but they've also chosen to engage in a practice that demands both creative excellence and meticulous details. Those high standards have to translate to your brand and to your online marketing efforts. Maybe you're doing fine with what you've got. Maybe architects don't win business via the web. But, I have to say, it won't take a tremendous amount of effort to be that firm in a competitive space who does stand out on the web. You've got the raw materials for a great showcase at hand in your studio. Again, I implore you!, entrust them to someone who can really polish them and make them shine online.
What do I think a great architectural firm site would entail?
- Strong emphasis of your brand, value proposition, and differentiation
- Your best portfolio cases, right on the homepage
- Big, beautiful imagery of success stories, with objectives, challenges, and accomplishments identified, along with client testimonials
- Dead simple navigation and identification of what users are viewing and reading. Remember: This is a powerful tool to educate your clientele.
- Dead simple portfolio management tools that enable you to migrate project collateral right onto your web site. The more content that's up there, the more there is for a prospective client to quickly identify with.
- Tracking & reporting tools to learn who's checking you out, and how you can better serve them.
- Flash can achieve these goals just as effectively as HTML markup if it will add value to your brand and the experience you wish to engage site visitors in.
If a web site overhaul's been on your back burner, or if you now realize you've never really thought about your web site or what it's doing for you, let's have a conversation about what it can do for you. I have to call the bar pretty low today, and I'd love to help your firm raise it higher.
