Website design for architects: show the work, win the commission

Two audiences, one portfolio

An architecture site is read by peers, press and potential clients, and they want different things. Peers look at images and detail. Press want credits, dates and high-resolution downloads. Clients, such as homeowners, developers or institutions, want to know whether you have done work like theirs and how a project with you runs.

Most studio sites serve the first group well and the third poorly. A client looking at a beautiful grid of photos cannot tell what the brief was, how long the job took or what the studio did, so the enquiry never arrives.

Press and awards help in some markets, but the quiet metric is repeat and referral work. A site that lets a past client send a link to a friend, with a clear page of recent work and a direct contact, supports that quiet channel better than any slider on the home page.

How to structure a project page

A portfolio of eight well-told projects beats forty thin ones. We help you choose which projects lead and which move to an archive.

Image weight and speed

Architecture sites are image-heavy, and many are slow. Full-bleed photos at 6000 pixels wide, autoplaying video and heavy sliders push load times past what a phone on a mobile connection can bear. We serve responsive images in modern formats, lazy-load below the fold, set sizes so the layout does not jump, and keep fonts light.

Speed affects both clients and search. Our Core Web Vitals checklist lists the measurements we test against. Slow pages also hurt accessibility, so we add alt text that describes the building rather than stuffing keywords.

Dark mode, grain and custom cursors are popular on studio sites. They are fine when the contrast stays readable and the focus states are visible, but they should not hide the menu or the contact details. We test with a keyboard and a screen reader before launch.

Enquiries, planning and professional rules

A good enquiry form for a studio asks for project type, location, a rough budget range and timing. It tells the visitor what happens next: a call, a site visit, a fee proposal. Some studios use two forms, one for residential clients and one for commercial or competition briefs.

• Show registration where your regulator requires it, such as the UK ARB register or a state license in the US. Check display rules with your professional body.
• Explain your stages (feasibility, concept, planning, technical design, construction support) in plain terms so clients know what they are buying.
• Mention planning or permit experience for named areas only where it is true and documented.
• Credit photographers and consultants, and check image licenses before publishing.

How the project runs and what it costs

We start with a call about your clients and the five projects you would like more of. Then we prepare a page structure and a design in Figma, build on the platform that fits your editing habits and migrate selected projects. You get training on adding a project yourself, which usually takes under an hour once the template exists.

Projects start at $1,500 at $30 an hour. The main cost drivers are the number of project pages, custom animation, and whether we write the copy or you do. See the website design service, our website cost calculator, and the SEO for architects page for how the site gets found.