Your portfolio is the entire pitch, and portfolio sites are the slowest category we audit. Both things are true at once.
An interior design or architecture website is a portfolio, and portfolios fail on two things: image weight that makes them unusable on a phone, and no budget signal, which produces enquiries from clients who were never in range. Project pages that rank need to be pages, not a gallery grid with no text.
This is the defining technical problem of the category. Modern formats, correct sizing, lazy loading below the fold, and never lazy loading the first image. Done properly a portfolio can be image-rich and fast; done carelessly it is neither.
A grid of images with no text ranks for nothing. Each project needs a page: brief, constraints, what you did, materials, area, location and duration. That text is what makes the project findable.
Interior projects range enormously and enquiries from people expecting a fraction of your rate waste everyone's time. A per-square-foot range, a minimum project size, or an indication of typical spend filters early.
Design only, design and execution, turnkey. Clients frequently do not know the difference until it becomes a dispute, and stating it removes a category of problem before it starts.
Property type, area in square feet, location, timeline and rough budget. Short enough to complete, specific enough that your first call is useful rather than qualifying.
Registration where applicable, years, completed project count, named clients where permitted. Someone about to spend significantly on their home is checking whether you are real.
| Problem | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Uncompressed project photography | Site unusable on a phone, which is most visitors |
| Gallery grid with no project text | Nothing to rank for |
| No budget indication | Enquiries from clients never in range |
| Design and execution scope unclear | Disputes later about what was included |
| Projects undated and unlocated | Cannot rank locally, harder to trust |
| Contact form asking only name and email | First call is spent qualifying |
| Instagram as the only portfolio | You do not own it and it does not rank |
| Ask them | A good answer sounds like | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the site and files? | You do, unconditionally, in the contract | Ownership depends on staying with them |
| Built for this sector before? | Live URLs in your industry | Generic portfolio with nothing comparable |
| What is explicitly not included? | A written list with change pricing | Everything is included, which means nothing is defined |
| How will we know it worked? | A metric agreed before work starts | They report activity rather than outcome |
The exclusions question decides whether the final invoice matches the quote.
Room and property type pages plus projects. Residential and commercial are different buyers and usually deserve separate paths.
Longer cycles, larger budgets, more institutional clients. Process, approvals experience and completed scale matter more than styling.
Scope clarity is the whole battle. What is included, what is billed separately, and what happens when the client changes their mind mid-execution.
Almost always uncompressed project photography. Images exported at full camera resolution and displayed at a fraction of it mean the browser downloads all of it. Modern formats and correct sizing typically halve page weight in an afternoon.
Yes. A gallery grid with no text ranks for nothing. A project page with the brief, constraints, materials, area and location is findable and does far more to convince a prospective client than the image alone.
A signal rather than a price list: a per-square-foot range, a minimum project size, or typical spend. Interior budgets vary enormously and no signal at all produces enquiries from clients who were never in range.
No. You do not own it, it does not rank in search, and a serious client spending significantly will look for a website to verify you are real. Instagram is a good feed and a poor portfolio of record.
Property type, area in square feet, location, timeline and rough budget. Short enough to complete, specific enough that your first call is a real conversation rather than qualification.
Usually yes. They are different buyers with different concerns, timelines and decision processes. One page hedging between both tends to speak clearly to neither.
Project pages with real locations named, plus a complete Google Business Profile. Someone searching for an interior designer in a specific part of NCR is a strong lead, and located project pages are how you reach them.
Send us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you what it takes, what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it. If we are not, we will say so.