How to make an architect website that wins better briefs

TL;DR: How to make an architect website

This guide walks through building an architecture practice website from scratch. You'll register a domain, start from an image-led template in Yola website builder, add the six pages a practice needs, and give each finished project its own page with the brief, the constraint and the planning outcome written up beside the photographs. You'll also list the work you take on, from residential extensions to commercial fit-outs, and say how you charge.

The second half covers photographing completed buildings, a project inquiry form that asks for the site address and planning status, showing your state board registration and indemnity cover, and getting found for "architect in [city]". Work through the ten steps and the next person who asks to see your work gets one link instead of an attachment.

What to include

Top features of an architect website

How to make an architect
website in 10 steps

Your domain goes on drawings, planning submissions, a site board and the bottom of every email you send, so pick one you are happy saying out loud. Use the practice name, add your city if you work mostly in one area, and take .com where it is available. It still reads as the most established choice to somebody checking you out.

Leave out hyphens and numbers. Read "harper-lane-architects-2" down a phone line and listen to what the other person writes down. Whatever you register, use the identical name on your Google Business Profile, your site board and your letterhead.

Yola website builder lets you search for and register a domain in the same flow you build the site in, and any annual plan includes a free domain for the first year.

You don't need to write code or hire a developer to get a practice site online. Yola's AI Website Builder asks a few questions about the practice and the work you do, then puts together a first draft you can edit the way you'd edit a document. The free plan includes basic AI, and the full set of AI tools comes with the paid plans.

Start from a template that already puts photographs first, rather than from a blank page or a text-heavy business layout. Photographs of finished work do most of the persuading here, so the layout has to give them room. Hosting is included, so there's nothing else to set up before you publish.

Start from a template

Architect templates to start from

Six pages carry an architecture practice. Build these first, then add anything else once the essentials are live and your projects are up:

Name the work the way you'd name it to another architect, not in the softened version that ends up in a brochure. "Residential extensions" and "planning applications" are what people type into a search box and what you actually do all week. Only list what you genuinely take on: a feasibility study you have never run is an inquiry you cannot answer.

Where one service brings in enough inquiries on its own, give it a page. An extensions page built around three of your own completed extensions does far more than a line in a list ever will.

Fees are the awkward part, and the honest move is to show the basis rather than a headline number. Put a fixed figure against the things you do price flat, a feasibility study or a measured survey, and for everything else say how you charge, whether that's a percentage of construction cost or a fixed fee agreed stage by stage. Yola's ready-made Services and Pricing blocks hold a service name, a short description and a figure together, and you edit them yourself the day your rates change.

This is the step that wins the work, so give it the time. A building photographs well when it's shot straight on, in daylight, and when somebody has moved the bins and the hoarding out of frame first. Shoot the parts people will actually ask you about: the kitchen extension, the roof light, the stair, the junction you spent three weeks resolving.

On a refurbishment or an extension, put the existing condition next to the finished result in the same gallery. There's no dedicated before and after block on Yola, so order the photos that way yourself and caption them. Plans and sections belong in there too, exported clean and at a size somebody can read on a phone. A short walkthrough earns its place on a larger project; you shoot and host the video yourself and drop the link on the project page, because video isn't something Yola hosts.

Name the files for what they show. A file called harper-lane-rear-extension-kitchen.jpg turns up in an image search and IMG_4471.jpg does not. Put the same description in the alt text while you're in there, and your project photographs start bringing in inquiries on their own.

The ready-made Galleries block will hold a project set as it comes, and on a paid plan the custom code block lets you lay a gallery out exactly the way you want it. Paid plans also include a library of 1M premium icons, which is useful for the supporting pages. The project shots should always be your own buildings.

Plenty of people won't phone a practice they've never met, so give them a form that collects what you need to answer properly. For a project inquiry that means the site address, the type of project, where it stands with planning, a budget range and roughly when they want to start. Five fields, and your first reply can be about their job rather than a request for more information.

You choose which fields appear, because Yola's contact form is customizable rather than fixed, and the Forms block help article walks through setting one up. A submission is an inquiry, not a booking, and Yola sends an automatic confirmation so the sender knows it arrived.

Then reply the next working day. An inquiry that sits for a week gets answered by whoever replied first.

Architect is a protected title in the United States and registration sits with a state board, so this belongs on the home page rather than three clicks down on an About page. Where you're registered, name the state board and show the registration. Where the practice carries professional indemnity cover, say so, since that's the second thing a client's solicitor will ask about.

The rest is whatever you actually hold: AIA membership if you're a member, your degree and the school, and any LEED or specialist accreditation. Pick the two or three that matter most for the work you want, put them near the top of the home page, and repeat one beside the inquiry form. Claim nothing you don't hold. On a regulated title that's the one mistake you can't walk back.

Most practices have little to put here, and an empty page reads worse than no page at all. Skip it unless you have something real. If you run open studio days, give CPD talks, sit in on a community consultation, or have drawings going on show as part of a planning exhibition, one page can hold all of it.

Each entry needs the date, the time, where it is, what it costs if anything, and how to reserve a place, which points back at your inquiry form. Treat it as a page you edit by hand rather than a calendar feature, and it takes a couple of minutes a time. Leave the past dates up: a talk you gave last spring is still evidence somebody asked you to give it.

Somebody looking for an architect usually types a job and a place long before they type a practice name, so local search is where you're found or missed. Yola's SEO Optimized Website capability covers the technical side of your pages. The rest of it happens off the site.

Before you tell anyone the site is live, open it on your own phone and use it the way an inquirer would: standing up, one hand, patchy signal. Tap the phone number, send yourself a project inquiry through the form, and check the confirmation actually arrives.

Then look at how fast the project pages load, since they're the heaviest pages on the site and the ones you most want read to the end. Export photographs at a sensible size instead of straight off the camera. Yola sites are mobile optimized and responsive, so the layout adapts on its own across phone, tablet and laptop, and every site gets an automatic SSL certificate and automatic backups.

After that, the only real maintenance is adding projects. Write each one up while the photographs are fresh and the job is still clear in your head, and take down anything that no longer represents the work you want more of. A site that gains a project every few months holds its ranking better than one finished and forgotten.

Common architect website mistakes to avoid

The same few things go wrong on practice websites, and each one quietly costs you inquiries that were otherwise coming your way.

How much does an architect website cost?

Building it on Yola starts free. You move up when you want more pages, more storage for project photographs or the full AI Website Builder, and that's free plan, then $9.95/mo, with a free domain included on annual plans.

Compare that with commissioning it. A freelancer or a small studio building a comparable practice site often runs from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, before any ongoing maintenance, and a site that needs a new project page every few months keeps costing after launch.

Doing it yourself is really about what happens once you're live. When a project completes and the photographs come back, you write it up and publish it that week, instead of putting it in a queue behind somebody else's schedule.