How to build an architecture firm website that wins commissions

This guide is for you if you own a small or mid-size practice and want your website to bring in commissions. A job seeker's portfolio shows one person's skills to an employer. A firm website has to convince someone with a project and a budget to get in touch. Sources are listed at the end.

What people who hire an architect check first

People who might hire you look for five answers before they get in touch. Each one maps to a section below. We found no reliable survey on what they check first, so we won't quote a percentage.

• Have you built something like mine? They look for the same building type and scale, ideally nearby. Write each project's type, size and town in plain text.
• Is it real? Say whether each project was built, and whether each image is a photo or a rendering.
• Who will I work with? Show names, faces and roles. Nielsen Norman Group found in 2019 that users want to know who is behind a company, and that they liked photos of real employees.
• Do you work where I am? The town on each project and a clear service area answer it.
• How do I reach you? Keep a phone number and an email in plain sight.

The pages an architecture firm website needs

Your site needs seven kinds of page:

• Home. What you design and where, in one sentence. Your strongest project shown large, and a way to call or write on the first screen.
• Projects. An index with a short data line under each image, filterable by status and building type.
• Project pages. One per project, each at its own URL so people and magazines can link to it. The next section takes one apart.
• Studio. The people, with real photos, roles and registration. Sean Godsell gives awards and a bibliography their own pages, and Herzog & de Meuron has a page for its monographs.
• Services and process. What you do at each stage, and what the person hiring you has to decide.
• News. Projects take years, so Monograph's guide for firms recommends regular updates to keep the site current.
• Contact. Phone, email and address, with a short form beside them.

A PDF portfolio can't replace these pages. Nielsen Norman Group reported in 2020 that PDFs are hard to read on phones. Instagram can't replace them either: it doesn't give you project URLs you control, and ArchDaily's submission form asks for a website.

estudio-juncos-web.lovable.app

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Anatomy of a project page

A project page is a data sheet plus a story, the pattern ArchDaily and Herzog & de Meuron both follow. The sheet answers "is this like my project?" and the story shows how you think.

The data sheet

Put it in text beside the first image, with the same fields on every project.

Fields drawn from the project pages of Herzog & de Meuron, Adamo-Faiden and ArchDaily, checked on October 12, 2026.

The story and the drawings

ArchDaily asks contributors to explain what makes a project unique and what drawings and photos can't show. Write about the brief and what made it hard, then the decisions that answered it.

Add plans and sections, and write the main areas as text on the page. The W3C's accessibility guidance says that when an image is a graph or another complex piece of information, that information belongs elsewhere on the page. We treat a floor plan the same way.

caladesarrollos.com/#proyectos

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Photos, renderings and credit

Hold your photos to ArchDaily's bar. For built projects, it asks for at least 15 images, each at least 2,880 px wide, taken by architecture photographers, with correct perspective, white balance and exposure.

Label every rendering

Renderings are fine for unbuilt work if nobody can mistake them for photos. Awards can be stricter: the Dezeen Awards 2026 entry rules tell entrants not to upload renderings or digital visualizations. We found no professional rule for labeling them on a firm website, so this is the practice we recommend:

• A "Rendering" label on the image itself, readable on a phone.
• Rendering credits apart from photo credits, as Adamo-Faiden does with "Digital Images" and "Photography".
• Any AI use disclosed. Google says that disclosure is useful to readers, and the IPTC Digital Source Type field can mark AI-generated images.

caladesarrollos.com/#galeria

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Credit the work and the photos

The AIA's guidance on attribution of credit applies only to its members, but we think it makes a good standard for any firm. Describe your scope accurately (Rule 4.201), name the architect of record, make credits no less prominent than the project description and never overstate your part. The AIA calls missing credit one of the most frequent ethics violations.

Get each photographer's written license for every use, and agree on the credit line. If you add creator, credit and license fields to the ImageObject markup, Google Images can show them, and the license field is required for the "Licensable" badge.

Heavy photography on a fast site

A photo-heavy site can still load fast if the first image loads right away and every image comes at the size the screen needs. Google's loading metric, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), times the largest element on screen. In the 2025 Web Almanac, that element was an image on 76% of mobile pages, and 62% of mobile sites had a good LCP.

Core Web Vitals thresholds from web.dev, checked on October 12, 2026. They are measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately for mobile and desktop.

1. Never lazy-load the hero. web.dev says the LCP image should load right away, with fetchpriority="high". The Web Almanac found that about 16 to 17% of pages lazy-load it anyway. Lazy-load only what sits below the first screen.
2. Serve the right size. Use srcset and sizes, or a picture element, with a normal src as the fallback, as Google recommends. A phone then gets a file sized for a phone.
3. Use WebP or AVIF. Both generally compress better than older formats, and Google Images indexes both. Keep a JPEG fallback.
4. Reserve the space. A width and height, or a CSS aspect-ratio, on every image keeps the layout from jumping.
5. Use real image elements. Google doesn't index CSS background images.
6. Give galleries stable URLs. Each part of a paginated gallery needs its own URL, and nothing should need a scroll or a click to load.

Snøhetta's site offers Simplified, Low-res and Dark mode switches to cut data use. In June 2024 it won "The Green" at Visuelt, whose jury praised it for avoiding heavy video and image files.

Keep speed in proportion. Google says it still shows the most relevant content when page experience is poor. Speed is for the person opening your projects on a phone, and Google indexes that mobile version, so it needs the same images and alt text as the desktop one.

Using the title "architect" online

Use "architect" only for people who are registered where you practice. Check the rules there before the word goes into your firm name, page titles, ads or Google Business Profile.

United Kingdom

The title is protected by law under the Architects Act 1997. ARB (the Architects Registration Board) says a conviction for misusing it can bring a fine, currently up to £2,500 for each offence. ARB asks registered architects to link their Register entry from online materials such as websites and email signatures, and suggests the line "I am registered and regulated by ARB." Put it on your studio page, linked to each architect's entry.

United States

NCARB (the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards) says the title is protected by law in all 55 U.S. jurisdictions. Check the rules of each jurisdiction where you practice, and state on the site where each architect is licensed.

Elsewhere

Canada, Australia, Ireland and other countries have their own regulators and rules, which this guide doesn't cover. Wherever you practice, describe each person's role exactly.

Getting found where you build

You control two parts of local search: your Google Business Profile and your project pages. Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence, and prominence includes links to your business, reviews and ratings.

Google Business Profile

• Your real business name, with no added keywords or taglines.
• As few categories as possible, each as specific as possible.
• If you work from home and meet people on site, hide the address and add up to 20 service areas: cities or areas, no radius, within about two hours of driving. Virtual offices aren't eligible.
• Photos of finished work, as JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB. Google recommends 720 by 720 px.

Project pages as local pages

Give each project page a unique title with the building type and the real town, like "Courtyard house in [town] | [Firm]", and text only that project could have. Google asks whether content shows first-hand expertise, and a write-up by the architect who designed the building does.

Don't clone a near-identical "architect in [town]" page for every nearby town. Google's spam policies call that doorway abuse: pages aimed at specific cities that funnel visitors to one place.

Structured data

Use LocalBusiness markup with your name, address, phone and URL on the home and contact pages. Google asks for the most specific subtype, but schema.org has none for architects: its Architect address returns a 404, and ProfessionalService carries a deprecation note. Add Organization markup with your logo (at least 112 by 112 px) to the home page.

Turning visits into inquiries

Put your contact details on every page and invite an inquiry on every project. On October 12, 2026, the homepages of Snøhetta, Adamo-Faiden and Sean Godsell showed no phone or email, and contact sat behind a link. Famous practices can afford that. A firm that needs its next commission can't.

• Contact on every page. A link in the menu and the footer. Nielsen Norman Group's 2019 guidelines ask for at least a phone number and an email, plus an address that opens a map app. A form can sit beside the phone number but shouldn't replace it.
• An invitation on every project page. "Planning a house like this in [area]? Call or write."
• A short form. Name, phone or email, project type, location, rough size and timing.
• WhatsApp or text, if your prospects use them. CALA's form opens WhatsApp with the message already written, and CALA counted 8 new inquiries in its first week online.
• A test. Send an inquiry from your phone before launch and check that it arrives.

A pre-launch checklist

Check these ten points before you launch.

1. Every project has its own URL, a data sheet in text and a status.
2. Renderings are labeled on the image, and any AI use is disclosed.
3. Every photo is credited, and its license is in writing.
4. Credits match your real role and name the architect of record.
5. The hero isn't lazy-loaded, and every image has a width and height.
6. On mobile, LCP is within 2.5 seconds, INP 200 milliseconds or less and CLS 0.1 or less.
7. Alt text describes each image, and plan areas are also written as text.
8. "Architect" appears only where registration backs it, with the ARB Register link in the UK.
9. Your Business Profile has your real name, a few specific categories and the right address or service areas.
10. Phone, email and a tested form are one tap away, and the domain is in the firm's name.

The list is the same with a template builder, a freelancer or a studio. For prices and yearly costs, read how much an architecture firm website costs.

If you'd rather have someone build it, that's what we do at Patroclo, a web studio in Córdoba, Argentina. We build websites in English and Spanish for any country, priced in US dollars. Our "Founder Website · live in 72 hours" includes custom design with your brand and photos, WhatsApp and a contact form, basic SEO and the domain in your name. See pricing or how we build websites for architecture firms.

The finished product turned out excellent. Great back-and-forth with the team and a very fast turnaround. Highly recommended, and their service is very efficient. The site turned out extraordinary and very functional, truly what we were looking for.

Diego Juncos · Juncos & Asoc. Architecture

Sources

1. ARB: regulating the title "architect" and link to your Register entry. Protected title, the £2,500 fine, the Register link and its wording. Undated, accessed October 12, 2026.
2. NCARB: Why do architects need a license? Protection in all 55 U.S. jurisdictions. May 21, 2025, accessed October 12, 2026.
3. AIA: Attribution of credit. Rule 4.201, architect of record, prominence of credits, frequent violations. Accessed October 12, 2026.
4. ArchDaily: guide to publication and submit a project, accessed October 12, 2026, and the PB House project page (March 24, 2024). Image requirements, project texts, the website field, project data fields.
5. Dezeen Awards: entry information. The 2026 rule against renderings. Accessed October 12, 2026.
6. Herzog & de Meuron: The Tate Modern project and home page. Project data, team, drawings, process, photo credits, the Monographs page. Accessed October 12, 2026.
7. Adamo-Faiden, Sean Godsell Architects and Snøhetta. Views, filters, credits, project status lists, awards and bibliography pages, low-data switches, contact behind a link. Accessed October 12, 2026.
8. Snøhetta: Visuelt award news. The award and the jury's comment. June 7, 2024, accessed October 12, 2026.
9. web.dev: Web Vitals (October 31, 2024), Optimize LCP (March 31, 2025), Optimize CLS (February 7, 2025) and image formats (August 13, 2024). Thresholds, hero loading, layout space, WebP and AVIF. Accessed October 12, 2026.
10. HTTP Archive: Web Almanac 2025, Performance. Image LCP, good LCP and lazy-loaded LCP shares. January 15, 2026, updated May 5, 2026, accessed October 12, 2026.
11. Google Search Central: image SEO, lazy-loaded content, mobile-first indexing, page experience and image license metadata. Formats, responsive images, CSS backgrounds, gallery URLs, mobile indexing, relevance, credit fields, the Licensable badge, IPTC Digital Source Type. Updated December 2025 to September 2026, accessed October 12, 2026.
12. Google Search Central: helpful content, spam policies, local business and organization structured data. AI disclosure, first-hand expertise, doorway abuse, subtypes, logo size. Updated August to October 2026, accessed October 12, 2026.
13. Schema.org: Architect (returns 404), ProfessionalService (deprecation note) and HomeAndConstructionBusiness (no subtype for architects). Accessed October 12, 2026.
14. Google Business Profile Help: guidelines, service areas, local ranking and photos. Name, categories, address, service areas, ranking, photo sizes. Undated, accessed October 12, 2026.
15. Nielsen Norman Group: About Us (2019), Contact Us pages (2019) and PDFs (2020). Team photos, contact details, PDFs on phones. Accessed October 12, 2026.
16. Monograph: how top firms use their websites. Regular news. May 12, 2025, accessed October 12, 2026.
17. W3C WAI: alt decision tree. Graphs and other complex images. May 13, 2024, accessed October 12, 2026.