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By Tim Miner, founder of Next Drop Design. I build websites for builders, architects, interior designers and landscape architects across the country.
A builder you've worked with for years tells a couple to call you. Before they do, they open your site to answer one question: does this firm design the kind of house we want?
They aren't the only ones looking. The builder who recommended you, the interior designer deciding whether to bring you onto a project, and the editor considering a feature all study your project pages, and they hold them to the standard you set for your own work.
This page explains how both audiences use an architect's website, what each needs to find, and how we build the site and the content that serves them.
Most clients start with a recommendation. The common advice for choosing a residential architect is to network, asking people whose homes you admire who designed them. The research comes next: RIBA's guidance to homeowners is to read architects' profiles, browse their websites, or Google them.
At the luxury end, the website answers a narrower question than "is this firm good?" The client already believes the firm is good, because someone they trust said so. What they need to know is whether you design their house: their style, their scale, their kind of site. A portfolio that can't answer that quickly makes the client hesitate.
The situation. A builder, interior designer or past client gives the client your name. They open your site, often on a phone, looking for homes like the one they want to build.
Where it breaks. Picture a couple planning a contemporary home on a steep desert lot. Your site opens on a traditional estate, the portfolio runs in date order, and each project page is a gallery with a title and no text. Your contemporary work is there, eleven projects down, and nothing explains how any of those houses handled a site like theirs. A second firm's project page walks through exactly that problem, so the couple calls them.
What we build.
The situation. Builders, interior designers, landscape architects and photographers collaborate on your projects, and many of them refer clients to you. Before a builder puts your name forward for a new lot, they look at how your site presents shared work.
Where it breaks. Your project pages name no builder, designer or photographer. The partners who delivered the work have no reason to send a client to a page they don't appear on. The client who arrives from a builder's recommendation finds no sign that you've worked with that builder.
What we build.
The situation. Many luxury residential architects do a significant share of their work inside a handful of private clubs and planned communities. A buyer who has just closed on a homesite there asks their neighbors who designed the houses they admire, then searches those names.
Where it breaks. You've designed nine homes in the community, but your site never mentions it. Projects carry abstract titles, and the community's name appears in no page title, project page or filter. The buyer searches the community name plus "architect" and finds someone else's single project page.
What we build.
Rains Design titles its projects by community, including Mirabel Contemporary, Seven Arrows Contemporary, Tonto Verde Contemporary and Whisper Rock Ranch Estate. A search for one of those communities and its architect can lead straight to the work.
If you design and build under one roof, no outside builder is putting your name forward, and the site has to carry the brand on its own. The design-build section of our builder page covers that path.
The 2026 Benchmark scored 154 luxury residential firms across 15 states on five capabilities. For architects, they matter in this order:
99% of the firms in the benchmark had invested in professional photography, and 2% were on a platform built to make that work perform. Architects almost never lack the imagery. The site underneath it is what falls short.
Most architects know their project pages need words. The people best placed to write them are busy designing. We write three kinds of content for architects.
Content works on your current site, and many firms start there and redesign later. See Content Creation
Rains Design, Scottsdale. Bryan Rains has designed custom homes in the Phoenix area since 1994, much of it in North Scottsdale communities such as Silverleaf, DC Ranch, Desert Mountain, Mirabel, Whisper Rock and Estancia.
"Our website is our primary portfolio for showcasing our company to prospective clients and industry peers, so we had to get it right. Next Drop delivered a first draft that was already beyond what we had hoped to receive. The response we have received on the new site has been overwhelmingly positive. We only wish we would have updated the site sooner!" — Bryan Rains, Owner, Rains Design
We work with you from the first conversation through launch and after. You approve wireframe layouts and a design element library before we build, so the structure is settled before anything is designed in detail.
Most sites take six to eight weeks from discovery to launch. See what every build includes
Five things: project pages that pair photography with a written account of the brief, site, constraints and decisions; a portfolio clients can filter by style, location and project type; full credits naming the builder, interior designer, landscape architect and photographer on every project; awards and publications placed on the projects they recognize; and page titles and structured data set up for a search on your firm's name.
No. Design it for the client, and build it for the peers who refer you. Clients need to find their kind of house and understand how you think. Builders, designers and editors need to see shared work credited properly. A site that serves both meets a design standard your peers respect without making the client work to find what they came for.
Yes. Credits confirm the relationships a referred client is told about, and they give every partner named on the page a reason to share it. Photographer credit is also standard practice and is often a condition of the image license.
Yes, focused on brand-name searches. Luxury residential clients rarely find an architect through a broad search. They get a name and search it. SEO for an architect means your firm, your best work and accurate details come up first for your own name, and for the communities where you work most.
Our builds are $4,000 for Presence, $8,000 for Portfolio, and from $12,000 for Studio. Final pricing for Studio reflects the size of your project portfolio. Every build is fixed-price after the discovery call.
Yes. Content works on your current site. Many firms start with project write-ups and resource articles, and the writing is ready when the redesign comes.
Let's talk about your projects, your partners, and the content that will help your next referral decide to call.
No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what will work best for your business.
Ready to get started? Let's discuss the marketing needs of your business.
+1 (702) 321-0790
A 30 minute Digital Strategy Session is the perfect way to start. No cost. No obligation.
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