EOI for Website Nominations

In February 2021, Rachael Bernstone will present a CPD session for the Australian Institute of Architects on architecture marketing. As part of that session, she’ll conduct a free review of several architecture websites within the training itself.

The review will use real website examples to outline the key metrics that architects can use to keep tabs on performance, especially in relation to organic search and other traffic sources, such as social media and referrals.

Rachael will also share a series of free tools that architects can use to look into their website’s back-end – and “under the hood” of competitors’ websites. These tools can help architects to improve their own website performance by providing insights about which keywords to use to attract more organic visitors.

If you’d like to nominate your practice website to be included in this review – that will be presented live to all of attendees of the session, and recorded for future reference – please email Rachael to discuss what’s involved and grant permission for your website to be included. The deadline for nominations is Friday 15 January 2021.

Rachael has developed this training about architecture marketing with a focus on websites, because she observed several common themes and issues in 2020. Some examples include:

• A long established practice launched a new website in August 2020. Graphically it looked fantastic and the messaging was on point, but a quick review of the back-end revealed that the metadata fields – such as Headers, Titles and Descriptions – were not correctly populated. This is a problem because those fields provide data to Google so it can categorise the content and serve it up in organic search results. Online performance metrics suggest that this particular website has suffered a significant drop in organic traffic since the new site went live.
• The second example was a practice that had rebranded and launched a new website in early 2020. Six months on, they reported feeling as if the practice had “gone invisible” after the new site was launched. The number of inquiries had dropped to near zero. A quick look at the website’s back-end revealed that their SEO fields were also not correctly populated, which explained the sudden drop in traffic.
• The third example was a practice that developed a new website in 2020, working with a well-known designer, who didn’t offer SEO services. The practice engaged Rachael to develop a copy template that prioritised search across several key metadata fields and the copy itself.

Through these experiences with architect clients, Rachael has observed that many practices don’t realise that great website design typically relies on two distinct website specialists:

• A web designer, who oversees the look and feel, overall design and structure and navigation; and
• A web developer, who focusses on back-end functionality including SEO and Google ranking performance, and customer experience.

So if you did build your website by relying solely on the services of a web designer, the result may be similar to a new house without a front door, or one that isn’t connected to local services.

It may look nice and attract attention from those who already know your practice, but failing to optimise your content and metadata for search – and setting up the back-end for performance – means there is no way for new visitors to find it organically.

If you’d like to attend this CPD session and learn more about Rachael’s six-channel system for marketing architecture – and you’d like to also nominate your website for the free review – you’ll learn:

• which free tools and metrics to use, to check your website’s functionality and performance;
• which elements to fix to improve your results; and
• how your website performance compares with others.

If you have any questions about this CPD training or what’s involved in the website review, please contact Rachael directly at hello@soundslikedesign.com.au