How to choose a web designer for an interior design studio

Choose a web designer who has built sites for studios like yours that you can open on your phone, who tells you who designs and who builds, and who gives one fixed price before any work starts. Then check two things in writing: the site is yours, on your own web address, and someone looks after it after launch.

Most interior designers choose a web designer once, maybe twice in a career. These are the questions we would ask, if we were in your seat.

What should they have built before?

Ask for live websites of studios, not screenshots or a template gallery. Open them on your own phone, because that is where many clients will meet you first.

Look at three things. First, how a project is told: is it a page that walks through a house room by room, with the place, the year and what the studio did, or a grid of photographs? Second, how fast the first photograph appears. Third, whether the site still looks cared for months after it went live, with new projects added.

A designer who works mostly for restaurants, shops or tech companies can still be good. But your work lives in photographs of rooms, and the way a house is shown online is a craft of its own.

Who designs it, and who builds it?

Ask by name. Some studios design the site and pass it to someone else to build, or to a template. That is not wrong, but it means the person you speak to is not the person who decides how your site works.

We design every site and build it ourselves, so there is one conversation from the first call to the years after launch.

One fixed price, or hours?

Ask for one fixed price for an agreed scope, given before any work starts. Billing by the hour puts the risk of every change, every extra round and every slow week on you.

A fixed price only works if the scope is clear. Ask what is included: how many project pages, one language or two, who writes the words, and what happens if you want one more page later.

Who owns the site?

The site should run on your own web address, and you should be able to leave with it. Ask what happens to the site if you stop paying for the monthly plan, and who holds the login to your domain.

If you already have a site, ask what happens to the old pages. Every old page address should send visitors on to its new page, so links in press articles, emails and Google results keep working.

What happens after launch?

A site is never finished. You will finish projects, get published, change your services. Ask who adds a new project, how quickly, and to what standard. Ask whether the speed of the site is checked, and how often.

Every site we build comes with a monthly plan. Care covers hosting, updates, adding your new projects, the basics of being found on Google and a speed check every month.

Will clients find the site?

Clients now look a studio up in two places. They search Google for your name or for a designer in your city. More and more, they also ask ChatGPT or Perplexity which designer to hire.

Ask how the site is built to be found in both. The answer should be specific: a page for every project with its place, year and what you did, written in plain words; your studio named the same way everywhere; answers on your own site to the questions clients ask. If the answer is "we install an SEO plugin", keep looking.

If you want to see where your studio stands today, run the free AI check: it asks ChatGPT and Perplexity what your clients ask, live, and shows you whether you come up.

The questions for the first call

1. Can I see three studio sites you built, live, on my phone?
2. Who designs it, and who builds it?
3. What is the one fixed price, and what does it include?
4. Is the site mine, on my own web address?
5. Who adds new projects after launch, and how fast?
6. How will clients find us on Google and when they ask AI for a designer?

If the designer is in another city or country, add a few more questions.

A good web designer answers all six without hesitation. If you would like to ask them to us, book 15 minutes.