Interior designers, professional organizers, and other lifestyle brands are built on visual identity. Professional photos of your work are the foundation of your brand. If you’re not updating your website on the back end, your photos aren’t living up to their full potential. So here are 5 tips for updating your interior design website that will make sure all those beautiful photos are seen and appreciated. The best part? These are all tips that you can implement TODAY – in any business!
1. Website Photo Sizing
First, make sure your photos are the proper size for your webpage. If they are too small they will appear blurry or pixelated and look unprofessional – the quickest way to lose potential business. More commonly for design professionals, photos are too big. They take too long to load and can prevent visitors from seeing your website at all! We suggest adjusting the size of your images to 2000px wide at 90dpi. Yes, this is still a rather large image, we know. But we want to ensure that your Pinterest quality photos are high-res across platforms. Using a plugin like Smush will help them load faster and ensure your interior design website is beautiful, convenient and accessible.
2. Use a Repeat Design Element
This is one of our favorites. Using a repeat design element throughout your website is such a simple yet effective way to create a cohesive portfolio for your business. Since no interior design or organization project is alike, maintaining a repeated element in your portfolio will create a signature look. This can become a valuable and recognizable branding tool as well! Whether it be an alternate branding mark, icon, pattern, or your logo. Include some professionally designed mark to ensure your images are instantly recognizable. Share it on your social media accounts and always link it through to your website - this way, clients will feel more comfortable and familiarized when visiting your site. This allows them to spend more time exploring your services while also boosting your SEO!
3. Use Keywords Properly
Keywords are another great SEO opportunity that often gets misused or missed completely. While coming up with keywords, try to think of words that someone would search on Pinterest. This will help you use keywords properly and successfully. Place them throughout your interior design project description but only as relevant. Don’t use unrelated keywords in your readable text - this comes across poorly and you can find ways to incorporate them elsewhere.
4. Photo Descriptions + File Names
Next, label each photo in your portfolio and blog posts to help make your website more searchable and will drive traffic to your site. Try including the colors, styles, materials, themes and other design elements you see in your photos in your file name and alt text descriptions. Remember, your alt text is the description that Pinterest will use when the image is pinned. Keep those accurate descriptions of what is in the photo to help drive traffic. Besides the photo description, the file name is another great place to hide those keywords that are relevant to your business but not a specific post!
5. Website Footers
A good footer is one of the best tips in our opinion. It is immediately effective and makes all the work you put into the tips above worthwhile! Make sure your footer includes a description of your services and your location. Having a footer with these key business points will ensure it is seen by every visitor that comes to your sight. Finally, it allows Google to see what you do on every page. This will result in higher search engine rankings. It will remind them throughout their visit of the valuable services you have to offer them. If your website footer doesn’t already include these elements, go update it right now! This is such a simple update with far reaching results.
What tips have you found to be effective for your website? We’d love to hear them in the comments below!