Building a Portfolio Forward Interior Design Website on Squarespace

August 8, 2016 Michael Conway

Building An Interior Design Portfolio On Squarespace

As an interior designer your work exists in the visual and tactile realms. Your art lives by creating the perfect environment for your clients and is all about how they experience those spaces. Because of the visual element of your work, from a marketing standpoint, it lends itself perfectly to the visual aspect of the web.

As a means of generating leads and sales, a portfolio driven website built on Squarespace is our favorite way to show your work and attract new customers. A visually appealing portfolio website with professional photography allows you to present your work to the world, making it easy for potential clients to see who you are and what you do. Your expertise lies in creating stunning homes and functional environments, not websites. That's why we only use Squarespace to build portfolio websites for interior designers.

Squarespace is a content management platform that consists of a website builder, blogging platform and hosting service. They eliminate the need to learn coding by offering a “drag and drop” style interface, meaning your can create the perfect website to promote your brand without having to learn complex code. You can track visitors and leads through their analytics, create a blog to drive traffic to your site, and grow your lead generation and sales online. Unlike a traditionally static “hard-copy” portfolio, Squarespace allows you to easily update, change photos, and keep your website full of current projects to establish your brand identity.

Let's look at the steps that are taken to build an interior design website on Squarespace using their web builder tools.

Step 1: Selecting A Template to Show Your Work

Squarespace features a template based design. All of their templates feature built in responsive design for mobile users and feature artful galleries. Templates are an easy way to show off your work while keeping your website design unobtrusive and professional.

Every template can display photographs, illustrations or designs. There are three primary ways of showing image sets.

   • Index pages – offer unique ways to display content and images. For example, Avenue and    Flatiron, allow you to create thumbnail galleries to organize images into a cohesive presentation, perfect for highlighting your interior design portfolio.

   • Gallery Pages – are available in every template, but offer distinct variations. Gallery pages can be used within index pages or separately. There are many ways you can structure your site using gallery pages.

• Gallery Blocks – Gallery blocks offer four standard designs including slideshow, carousel, grid and stack and can be used on any regular page, blog post or another content area. Perfect to add motion to your images.

Step 2: Developing Content, Adding Text, and Other Information

Adding text to any page is as simple as inserting a text block. You can use headers to help organize your text content into sections like “Our Design Process” “Kitchen Designs,” or “Publications.” You can also use a landing page to embed a downloadable .pdf which can be anything from a resume to a full-color brochure of your services.

Squarespace also offers many other features to organize your site. If you utilize multiple keywords, you can use the tags and categories function to organize your content into an easily navigable drop down menus. Content access can be restricted, for example, if you are sending private plans to a client for approval. You can even optimize your images for search by including image descriptions and captions to allow Google to easily index your site.

A portfolio website is a perfect vehicle for marketing your interior design business. Squarespace gives you an easy platform to design and create the perfect professional looking website to feature your work, along with a blogging platform and search optimization tools to help you get found online. The Squarespace Analytics area can help you see what webpages are popular, and where to add a call to actions and landing pages that allow you to capture their information for further marketing efforts. If you're looking for the perfect way to grow your brand, consider creating a portfolio website on Squarespace.

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About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.