The photography is the pitch. Most practice websites make people wait two seconds to see it.
A practice site has the same job as a studio's: show the work before the visitor gives up, and be findable in the towns where projects start. We build fast, photography-led websites for UK practices, inside one retainer from £1,000 a month plus VAT. We have not built for an architecture practice yet, and this page says where we have.
A practice site fails in the first second, not the third click
Practice websites tend to be beautiful and heavy. Full-bleed imagery, a considered typeface, and 700 KB of page weight in front of the only thing the visitor came for. On a phone, on a train, on a rural connection, that is the difference between someone seeing your work and someone seeing a grey rectangle.
The second thing is structure. A practice with fifteen good projects will often have one page called Projects and a gallery, which gives Google one page to rank and gives a prospective client no way to find the extension that looks like theirs.
Neither is a design problem. Both come from how the site was built.
We have not built for a practice yet
No architecture practice on the books, and you should hear that now rather than on the fourth call. The closest is a design-and-build studio in Harrogate: different profession, same problem. The work is judged on photography, the decisions take months, and two buyers, a private client and a developer, want different things from the same site.
That rebuild went from 729 KB and 1.94 seconds down to 178 KB and half a second, across 21 pages with one term each and a separate route for developer enquiries. The parts that would carry over to a practice are the speed, the page-per-project structure and the second enquiry path. The parts that would not are the sector language and the local terms.
If having a practice to reference matters to you, that is a fair thing to want and we are not the right fit yet. If the problem above sounds like yours, it is the same job.
What we would build
A page per project, not one gallery
The brief, the constraint, what you did about it, what it is like to be in. Fifteen projects is fifteen chances to rank and fifteen ways for someone to recognise their own situation. A single gallery is one of each.
Images that load before the visitor leaves
Properly sized, modern formats, loaded in the right order. It is unglamorous work and it is the single biggest thing standing between a practice site and the people looking at it.
Local pages for the towns projects start in
Someone searching for an architect qualifies by place before anything else. One page per town you genuinely work in, written properly, beats a services page listing a county.
Somewhere for the person who is not ready
Most people land on a practice site a year before they appoint anyone. A contact form serves the one who is ready. The site needs something for the other twenty.
The Glide Retainer, from £1,000/mo
The build, the hosting, the SEO foundations and the local SEO in one fee, with no five-figure build cost to find first.
See pricingPractice websites, answered
Not yet, and we will tell you that on the first call rather than the fourth. The closest work is a design-and-build studio in Harrogate, where the problem is the same shape: photography-led, long decision cycles, two kinds of buyer. If you would rather hire someone with a practice already on their books, that is a reasonable thing to want and we would say so.
Less than most agencies would like to sell you. For most practices it is three things: a site that shows the work quickly and properly, local search so the people planning a project in your area find you, and a Google Business Profile that is not half filled in. Referrals and planning-stage relationships do the rest, and no amount of content marketing beats them.
Local search does. Someone typing "architect Chelmsford" or "extension architect near me" has a project in mind and a postcode. National terms are a different matter: you are competing with directories and magazines for traffic that will not convert. The winnable ground is your towns, your project types, and the questions clients ask you before they commit.
Six to ten weeks for most, and the thing that decides it is how long the photography and project write-ups take to gather rather than the build. If your images are already sorted, the build is the quick part. We give you the list of what we need on the first call so nothing sits waiting on a folder.
Yes, and the ordering matters. Finished photography sells the practice, drawings and CGIs explain it. A project page that opens on a render when a photograph exists is usually the wrong way round, because the render tells the visitor what you hoped for and the photograph tells them what you delivered.
The Glide Retainer starts at £1,000 a month plus VAT and covers the site, the hosting, the SEO foundations and the local SEO, with no five-figure build fee to find first. £1,000 is the floor rather than the average, and you get your number in writing before you commit to anything.
Websites for the studios next door
The same build, written for the buyer each one is trying to reach.
For the whole offer, see marketing for interior designers and design studios.
Want a site that shows the work properly?
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