Month: February 2021

Do you come off poorly when you present your work to potential clients in person? Probably not.

You probably dress up, put on your nice shoes, spend a little extra time on your hair and face and most importantly bring your portfolio with you. And if you’re looking to land a client cold, that portfolio is looking stellar.

Why should it be any different online? I’ve seen a lot of architecture websites and they’re pretty awful.

The biggest design pain point for architecture websites is portfolios that don’t change size depending on the screen width.

The other is a lack of function in the portfolio grid. It’s just an equal height and width grid of boxes. The user clicks on it and a gallery slider pops up and displays some images.

It’s impossible to show your work off in a well-designed way with a standard WordPress setup.

What you need is something called a custom post type (CPT) and a way to display the CPT. A custom post type is a collection of data. For architects that means photos of the space, dates about the build, a description, and other information.

If hiring someone to build out a Custom Post Type that blends in seamlessly into your website is outside of your budget finding flexible plugins to manage your portfolio is the next best thing. Here are my top five plugins for Architects.

Cube Portfolio

So, I used Cube Portfolio as a free piece of code on a project I was working on a few years ago. Then, I thought that it looked great. So when it came time to build out my own site, I was gearing up to integrate the code from scratch, and then I found out they had a plugin for WordPress. It’s light and easy to use.

At $19 for the plugin, it’s totally worth the money. The grids it creates are responsive and look good on all screens. So displaying your latest residential or commercial projects will look great on desktop, tablet, and phone.

Cube Portfolio is dynamic on hover and has some of the coolest pop-up displays. It also gives you the option to open a new page when the user clicks on one of your portfolio tiles. Which is very useful when you’re tracking user data.

It’s a very versatile plugin. You can have it display image galleries, videos, and customized layout with descriptions, key information about your project. Cube Portfolio also comes with a lot of documentation. If you choose to hire out a developer, this is a plugin that is very open to professional customization and integration.

WP Portfolio

WP Portfolio comes with 4 different post types: Image, Website, Video and Single Page. If you’re using page builders like Elementor or WP Bakery, WP Portfolio is the right plugin for you. It integrates with these page builders and since you can copy and paste the page builder shortcode, creating a cohesive look for your latest residential and commercial projects will be easy.

This plugin has also been around for a while and comes from a very well-established development company. The support team is very responsive and updates their product often.

WP Portfolio is $39 for the year for its beginner package.

GO Portfolio

GO Portfolio brings the best of Cube Portfolio and makes it more accessible by providing more starter templates and simple color customizations. It is also responsive for mobile, tablet and desktop layouts and has plenty of interactive hover functions.

Unlike WP Portfolio, GO Portfolio doesn’t integrate with as many page builders, but it does integrate with Visual Composer (one of the most popular page builder plugins).

GO Portfolio is only $26

Essential Grid

Essential Grid is a very design heavy and modern plugin and also integrates with Visual Bakery. It offers a wide range of hover functions.

One of the best and unique features of Essential grid is its demo data because of its design focus.

Much like WP Portfolio, the parent company for this plugin is also an established company, with the widely used (although, often misused in my opinion), Revolution Slider under its belt. That means that there is robust documentation on how to set up Essential Grid. It also means you can depend on responsive support staff in case you come across an issue.

The starter package begins at $34 for the year.

WP Softs: GridKit

WP Softs Grid Kit delivers grids in 3 different styles: masonry (that staggered varying heights style), gallery and puzzle. It is also responsive and offers a lot of hovering styles.

It also has some pretty interesting features that aren’t often highlighted in other plugins like share features and google map embeds.

It only costs $26 for a lifetime purchase of the plugin and has everything you need to show off new home projects.

I’ve been making websites for about 5 years now. For the most part, I create custom landing pages and fix broken websites on WordPress or Shopify. I also create websites from scratch and offer a variety of marketing services.

Websites

When I build something out, I like to figure out how my client’s ideal candidate will use the site. Then I reverse engineer what that client to see to buy.

It’s easier said than done. That’s why I install analytics on all my sites.

For most businesses, I would recommend building websites on top of a “CMS.” CMS is short for “content management system.” It’s a way of saying that there is an area that allows you to edit posts, pages and do some minimal customization. My CMS of preference is WordPress. This website uses WordPress.

If it’s up to me, I’ll build a site with WordPress. It’s free to install. There is a large community of developers that build tools for it. And I’m good at customizing this framework.

WordPress is good for all types of sites, but most clients are a service company or a goods company. WordPress is ideal for either category.

Services

I charge around $3,000 for a simple 5-7 page website built on top of a Content Management System. We’ll have a chat about your ideal audience and previous marketing material. We will also discuss your goals for the year.

We’ll determine the number of pages needed and how to connect them to one another. Linking pages will create a flow for your web visitors. Along this flow, we’ll use imagery, video and words to achieve your goals.

I will also add necessary features to your website to keep it competitive and secure. This includes tracking, analytics, SEO and security software.

Some businesses need booking software or other enhanced features built into the website. Pricing will vary depending on the complexity of the site and its features.

Online Store

Online stores come in a variety of forms. For single item products, I would build out something very simple on WordPress or Shopify. My starting pricing for an online storefront like that would be around $1,500.

Stores with multiple products might need several “landing pages.” Landing Pages are persuasive pages that sell a product. Online stores also need data entry and photography to create a robust website. This will also affect the price.
As always, I add necessary software for the site to stay up to date. I also offer retail-specific analytics and tracking options.

Analytics and Tracking

My standard setup is Google Analytics and a Facebook pixel. If you would like to add other tracking scripts like Hot Jar, let me know and I can get it up and running.

For the uninitiated, tracking and analytics are very powerful marketing tools because they can tell you important numbers about your website. For instance, you can find out how many people visit your site and how long people stay on a page on average. This becomes useful when you start marketing.

My favorite use of analytics is monitoring people interacting with a web page. Let’s say that I create a landing page for my web design services. In the middle of the page, I add a link to an article detailing what goes into my custom websites. I can track how many people click on that link. I can also track how long someone stays on the article page.

In this thought exercise, you’ve scrolled to the middle of the page and expressed interest in learning more. Presumably, you’re interested in a custom website. If my analytics tell me that this happens often, then my marketing activities along with my “landing page” are successful. If this doesn’t happen often, then I have to make some adjustments.
Outside of analytics, websites with a “tracking script” allow businesses to reach out to visitors. For instance, if you don’t reach out yourself, I can add you to a series of advertisings across social media channels.

This can be powerful for businesses looking to compete online.