Hello and welcome to episode 50 of Design Curious Podcast.
I'm your host and mentor Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast I have another great interview with
Robin White of RDW Design Studio.
She is a wonderful website designer who specializes for
interior designers. So you're going to really love
today's episode. Before we get into that though,
I want to remind you if you didn't go back and listen to
last week's episode to do that. Because I have developed a new
quiz just for you, the listener, to find out what type of
interior design you should be doing.
And I kind of go into detail about the four different
possible responses you might end up getting.
And I would love to know your results as you take the quiz.
So go check that out. The link is in the show notes.
And now let me tell you a little bit more about Robin White.
She is the owner and founder of our DW Design Studio, a boutique
website design studio located in Cape Cod.
Robin offers a refined website design experience for clients
who value quality and want a strategic, sophisticated and
simple website design so they can book more premium clients.
Doesn't that sound good? Robin specializes in helping
interior designers, architects, and builders.
Stagers elevate their websites so it reflects the high quality
work they provide, and so their business has the online home it
deserves. Through her impactful and
strategic website design, she positions her clients as the
premium choice by making the right first impression online.
She helps her busy clients go from overwhelmed to overjoyed
with their websites by taking care of all of the techie stuff
without the techie talk. Through her supportive,
streamlined and stress free design process, Robin designs
websites that are not just beautiful, but allow her clients
to show up online with confidence and attract their
ideal clients. That's exactly what interior
designers are looking for, so let's hear from Robin.
You're now listening to Design. Curious.
A place where you, Creative One, are here to learn about what it
really is like to be an interior designer.
And I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
If you're worried about how to succeed in a creative career, if
you're ready to learn your next steps to become an interior
designer, and if you want the satisfaction of doing something
you love every day you are in the right place.
Grab a coffee, a notebook and let's dig into today's episode.
Hi, Robin, welcome to Design Curious Podcast.
Thanks for coming. Hi, Rebecca.
Thank you so much for having me on today.
I'm super excited. So am I, and it's a very
important topic, especially for people starting out, but also
for season designers. So before we get into all the
ins and outs of website design and all the things that you do,
want to give us a little story about how you got into this
career. Oh, sure.
That's a great question. I actually owned a previous
business. It was a dog walking business
and. We needed a website and we
didn't have the funds to hire a professional to do it for us.
So I took a lot of time and learned how to do it and built
our first website and actually found that I enjoyed doing it
and went back to it probably, you know, twice a year and kind
of updated it and redesigned it. Really started enjoying it.
A friend reached out to me and was like, I'm starting this
business, can you do a website for me?
And I was like, sure, why not? And it sort of just evolved from
there and I was looking to wind down the dog walking business
and move into something else that could be done that was not
location specific. I was like, well, why not web
design? And started it and it just took
off. Wow.
Just from starting on doing it on your own, yeah.
Things happen for a reason. So it's yeah, it's really funny.
It just kind of morphed, morphed into a business for me.
Wow. So that is kind of a shift.
Did you have any experience designing graphic design or
anything like that before you just kind of jumped in?
None whatsoever. I am completely self-taught and
I have to say I am a learner at heart.
So I am forever signing up for courses and learning more about
ways that I can do things better.
So yeah, just you know, completely self-taught nowadays.
There's so much out there on YouTube and classes that you can
take. You know, just trying to improve
every day on what I'm doing since, you know, we talk a lot
about career development on this podcast.
How were the steps as you started your career in website
design, because that's very adjacent to interior design,
being a designer And what were the steps that you took to kind
of grow your business? Sure.
So when I was first starting out, and I think this happens to
people in all different industries, you don't know what
you don't know. Because I was coming at this as
a career change, I was fortunate enough to have income from my
previous business. So I hired a coach from the very
beginning because I know how important coaches and mentors
are, and they can just get you to where you want to go so much
faster. Sometimes when you're right out
of school, that's not necessarily a possibility for
you. But because I had an income, I
was running both businesses for you know, side by side for a
while, I was able to to do that. So that really helped me move
forward in terms of all the things that you don't learn when
you're just learning a skill for example.
So how to run a business? You know I had already run a
business, so I understood the legal side of it and forming a
business entity and contracts and everything but.
The marketing and branding part of it was something that this
coach was instrumental in helping me with.
So figuring out niching down was something that was really
important and when I work with my clients now, I always talk
about who is your ideal client so.
You know, my coach actually suggested working with the pet
industry because I had come out of it and she's like, it's low
hanging fruit, you know it. And I really wanted a clean
break and I left it because it wasn't something that brought me
an enormous amount of joy. So I decided I kind of took a
look at things in my life that I really liked doing and.
Your audience is going to cringe.
I love watching HGTV. I now understand that this is a
completely inaccurate representation of what interior
designers do and how their businesses are run.
But since that was something that I really enjoyed doing in
my free time, I was like, well, why don't I niche down into
working with interior designers? And I set about basically
learning everything I could about the industry.
Joined tons of Facebook groups that more into your designers
and actually spent time in there reading the posts and the
answers so I could figure out what your struggles are, you
know where you need help and really learning about the
different services, what the process is, things like that so
that I could be uniquely equipped to.
Work with you, understand what your website needs, and you know
now when my clients come to me and they're like, yeah, Ioffer
full service interior design. I work with builders and I do
designer by your side. I understand exactly what
they're talking about. I know what those are.
It's definitely helped a lot and because it comes from a place of
interest to me, it's been really kind of fun to learn about it
and niching down. Is really, I believe, what has
grown my business because I know where interior designers are, so
I can be there. I've learned what their
struggles are with their website, so I can address that
in my marketing and my messaging.
You know, I don't need to be on certain social media platforms
because they're not there. I know which ones.
Where they are, I know how they would search for what I'm
offering online so that can help with my own SEO.
So that niching down has really helped grow the business
tremendously. So focusing on my brand has been
huge, You know, understanding what it is, that how it is I
want people to feel when they interact with me.
What is it that I stand for? And having that come across
visually and written as well has been instrumental too.
And it's all a process. It's not something that you
know, you wake up one morning and you know it.
It takes time figuring out what makes me unique from all the
other website designers out there.
That was a hard one for me. And then once you finally come
up with it, it's great, you know.
But these are all things that I went through myself to grow my
business and I work with my clients on, because I can't
design A strategic website for you without that.
Foundational work, right. Right.
Yeah. So you had to do that work
yourself, and then also your clients need to be doing that
work. So they need to work like a
brand specialist or someone who's going to have them dig
down deep and really answer what their core values are, What's
their mission and why are they doing design?
What makes them stand out from other people so that you can
convey that through the website? Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. And also knowing who's their
target audience and you know, let's just take an age bracket
for example, which is just sort of one of the things you want to
look at when you're defining that if I'm designing a website
for. 20 somethings. It's going to need to look and
function very differently than if I'm designing for 55 plus.
So let's say it's a interior designer who is working with
older people whose kids are grown and out of the house and
they are moving and downsizing. You know, if we want to drill
down and get that specific. The website's going to need to
look and function differently than if it's for somebody who's
right out of college. That's a really good point.
Yeah, because a lot of maybe designers might come to you and
be like, I want a beautiful website to set off My Portfolio.
But they're not necessarily thinking about their client,
they're thinking about what their peers are going to say
when they come visit for a website, You know, because they
wanted to, to impress their peers.
But really, it needs to be talking to your client, and if
you have older clients, they might not navigate the website
the same fashion that a 20 year old would, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely. And to that point, I would just
say it doesn't matter or what your colleagues think of your
website. Oh yeah, they're not who's
hiring you exactly. What matters is what your ideal
client thinks of your website. I'm of the mind that your
website should be. Beautiful and also a strategic
marketing tool for you. So while we want the design to
be stunning and to highlight the beautiful images of your work,
also want to make sure that it's delivering a fantastic user
experience that we're guiding potential clients on a journey
from curiosity to conversion. So we have a strong call to
action and we want to make sure that the content, the words, the
copy. On the website is going hand in
hand with the design and speaking directly to your target
audience. A beautiful website alone is
great. It's a great starting point, and
often I think that's what happens when you first start out
and then when you're ready to move on to the next iteration of
your website. That's where the strategy can
start to come in Really good. So what are the must haves for
an interior design website then? If someone's starting out and
they're like, OK, putting my shingle out there, I've got very
limited photos, but what? What should I put on my website
that's going to draw my client? So when you're just starting
out, I think there are 5 pages that your website should have.
So a home page and about page, a services page.
A portfolio page and a contact page.
So you want your home page to be clear and concise and share what
you offer, how it's going to make your client's life better.
So how you help them, What problem are you solving for
them, and what do they need to do to buy it?
Like, what's the next step? You want your About page to be
unique to you. What sets you apart?
What makes you unique and special and share a story.
And I would just say everything that you're writing on your
website, you want it to be about your ideal client, so
positioning you and how you help them.
To that end, on your services page, you don't want to sell the
service you want to sell, the transformation that your service
provides, and your portfolio page.
You want to highlight your best work now, when you're first
starting out and you don't have jobs under your belt.
My suggestion is take photos in your home.
You designed your home. Create mood boards, layouts,
renderings, Maybe they're for make believe projects.
Nobody has to know that in the beginning.
If you have a client and you have like a coming soon project,
maybe you can do something around that.
And then as you start to get projects under your belt you can
start adding those into your portfolio and taking out you
know the earlier. And then you want to contact
page that has your contact information, location
information I would say testimonials you want to have
splattered throughout your website.
And if possible, I always recommend professional
photography because it really does make a big difference.
It really does. Yeah, early days I would take
some of my own photos and we had to take photography as part of
our major, but it just wasn't the same.
I mean, a professional isn't. Yeah.
And I always say with everything in your life, business and
personal. You're either going to spend
money or you're going to spend your time.
So you can spend money and hire a professional photographer, or
you can spend your time and learn how to do it yourself.
But even then, they're coming in with that special equipment and
the lighting and like the amazing camera that you're not
going to invest in. And it's always going.
To be a higher quality. So I realize in the beginning
that's not an option, but as time goes on, it's definitely
something to invest in. And the same goes for a website.
You can invest your money and hire a professional, or you can
invest your time and learn how to do one yourself, like you
did. Exactly.
And then you're.
Always. You're always trading one or the
other, yes. Yeah, yeah.
No, I did a DIY website starting out now because I'm, you know,
turning into a dinosaur now. I feel like I've been dating for
a long time. But you know, 15 years ago, I
felt like a lot of the designers who were established in my area.
And then we had some of them had white websites, but not all of
them had great websites and websites was just becoming a
more mandatory thing. So I used a template and had
very basic layout and I had a lot of people say, wow, your
website was great. Like, it really showed me a lot
of information. And I think just because I was
younger, I had the advantage of like really knowing how to
manipulate a website and what I was looking for.
But now it's just like you need to have the next level that
website. I feel like you just can't get a
template and plug and play. I think it's really worth having
the professional do it for you, Yeah.
I think so too, but I think there is a time.
For that, again, when you're just starting out and you don't
have an enormous amount to invest, I think a template or
DIY can be a great way to get something up there in the
beginning because you need something.
I mean a website today is like the Yellow Pages 3035 years ago.
Like you have to have one I think if you don't.
Potential clients question why you don't.
They might think that maybe this is a hobby for you and not an
actual serious business. So I do think it's important to
have something out there. Hiring a professional I think to
do a custom website for you is something to.
I mean, it's great if you want to do it first thing.
But I will generally recommend waiting a little bit because
again, like what I said before, in the beginning, you don't know
what you don't know. And oftentimes, so much about
your business and your brand can change in those first two years
that sometimes it can be smarter to wait, hold off and invest in
a custom design a little bit later on when when you have the
clarity. That's a really good point.
Yeah. Do you offer some advice for
people who are trying to DIY their website?
Like can you do you do any consulting in that area for?
I do, yeah. So there's three different ways
that my clients can work with me.
So one is custom website design, the other is ioffer website
template customization. So I have templates that I've
designed and rather than just selling the template what I do
is I have a resource library in Google Drive that the clients
get access to and it has. Sort of video guides and written
guides and forms to fill out. And then they submit all of
their content to me and I upload and format everything into the
template for them and launch it for them so they don't have to
worry about any of the technical things.
So that makes it a little simpler.
And then ioffer web strategy boosts are what I call them, so
it's a 90 minute zoom call where we can discuss.
Any aspect of website design that they need help with.
So that's really more for either the Diyer or somebody who's got
a website on a platform that I don't work with.
So I specialize in WordPress. But if you have a website on
Squarespace, for example, what your website needs is exactly
the same across all platforms. So we can go over everything,
but you would then implement it yourself.
OK. So yeah, on that 90 minute call,
do you do like a website audit to like if they are had
something already and they want you just kind of cast your eye
over it? I sort of take the lead from my
client so we can do you know if they are stuck on their
homepage, we can spend the whole time on their homepage if they
want, you know, a quick audit of all the pages of their website.
We can do that if they want suggestions on how to improve
their layout on colors or fonts. On copy on, you know anything we
can talk about search engine optimization.
So it's really wherever they're struggling and they need the
most support and they can schedule as many sessions as
they want to. Nice okay.
What would be some of the common mistakes that you're seeing?
Maybe that pop out on these sessions.
Oh yeah. That's such a great question
because I do see the same mistakes over and over again.
So the first one I would say is making your website all about
you and not about your ideal client.
I'm going to say that's the number one mistake I see and
that's really more of a. Content mistake.
Not a design mistake, but it's so important.
There's so many times where it's all I, I, I and it's all about
where you went to school and your why you love interior
design. And that's important to have in
there. But what's more important is to
find something about. Your background, your
experiences, personal or work, whatever it may be that makes
you unique, that will resonate with your ideal client.
What's more important is showing how you solve whatever problem
they're struggling with, selling the transformation of your
services, so making it all about them and not all about you,
right? That's number one.
Not being consistent with your brand.
Let's say you've got a great low and a logo is not a brand.
I'm just talking brand visuals here.
So let's say you've got a lovely logo and it has some colors in
it and some fonts in it. And then you go on your website
and you use all different colors from your logo and all different
fonts. And then you go on social media
and you use all different colors and all different fonts.
And in your print it's all different colors.
That's so inconsistent and what clients are looking for is
consistency that helps build trust.
So using the same color palette across all of your marketing
platforms, using the same fonts across all of your marketing
platforms, being consistent with your brand and your website
design is super important. Another big one I see is not
having a clear call to action. And call to action, it's also
called a CTA if anyone's ever seen it referred to like that.
But I like to explain that as think about what the primary
goal of your website is. What is the number one action
you want visitors to take? There's no right or wrong
answer. It's unique to your business.
For most interior designers, it's going to be to contact you,
schedule that initial discovery call.
So you want to have a clear call to action.
Pretty much on every page and post of your website, gently
guiding visitors to take that action.
Because if we don't politely let them know what we want them to
do, they don't know what to do, right?
So that's something really important to do in a mistake
that I see a lot. I'll just say on that call to
action, it's even outside of the website, it's hard to remember
to do that because like you need to have like I didn't have it in
my lead magnet, just be like send my lead magnet out and then
the end is like just tied up with the bow.
But there's no, like if you want to work with me, you know, now
you can schedule a call or even interacting with my clients too.
Like you kind of have to put those things in there like
asking for a review or asking for a referral and things like
that. You can't just assume the client
is going to automatically, willfully take the next step.
They might not know what it is. So yeah, having that clear and
concise CTA on your website, so. Important.
Yeah. And to add on to that, Rebecca,
you know, having a call to action in all of your social
media posts, which ideally is driving traffic back to your
website. Yeah, that's right, Robin.
Yeah, super. Super important a couple of
technical things is. Some other mistakes not being
mobile responsive, meaning that the design shifts to fit
different screen sizes. So it works on a desktop,
laptop, tablet, cell phone. That is very very important and
a mistake I see. Having your pages load slowly is
another mistake I see, and that's.
Really important to have a quick page load time.
Tucson's Google likes it, so it's good for SEO and your
clients will like it because we're all impatient, we're all
in a rush and nobody's going to sit there for 10 seconds and
wait for your page to load. So that's a really important
technical thing. You want your fonts to be
legible. That's a really big mistake.
I see Script fonts are wonderful.
But some of them are hard to read, so they need to be used
really sparingly. You want to make sure,
especially in your body text, that it's dark enough.
Don't use like a light Gray on a white background so we can't
really read it. Make sure we're big enough, you
know, think about those sorts of things.
Finally, I would say confusing navigation.
And by navigation I mean your main menu at the top of the page
and. How your whole page is laid out
with buttons linking to other pages.
You want to make it as simple and easy for visitors to find
the information they're looking for.
So don't have you know, 10 items at the top.
Of the website in your menu. It's too confusing.
You can have a secondary menu down at the bottom of the page
and the footer for the less important the non money making
pages. You know, if you have a
resources page that can go at the bottom of your website, you
know that's just something nice to have.
But that's not making you money. Services should be up there.
Also, don't be cute in the words that you're using to name your
pages in your menu. If you have a blog, call it a
blog. Don't call it thoughts or
journal. Make Use what's conventionally
known just to make it super easy.
Because again, everyone's in a rush and they're going through
quickly and they just want to find the information they want.
Yeah, that's good to remember because sometimes I think
interior designers might get board of the conventional and
they want to, you know, make it look better or spice up a little
and and really you're doing it. So my suggestion for that,
Rebecca, is let's say you want to call your blog journal, call
it blog in the menu, but on the page you can call it journal.
Oh, OK. Yes.
Right. Same with your About page.
Call it About. In the menu and if you want it
to be meet the team on the page, that's fine, but about is 1
short word and meet the team is 3 words, so it takes up a lot
more space. In the menu.
So just think about that. You can still be creative, but
use conventions in the navigation.
OK, well, that's helpful. Give us a little more liberty to
be creative. OK, well what are some questions
that a designer starting out to maybe ask before hiring a
website designer? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think it's important to realize that to get a really
strategic website, you're going to be investing your time and
your money. It's not going to be a twoweek
turnaround time. So you want to make sure you're
asking potential website designers really good questions.
Because you're going to be spending a couple of months with
them, so you want to make sure that they know what they're
doing, but also that you have a good rapport with them and you
like their personality because you're going to be working
closely together. Because for it to be successful,
it really needs to be a collaborative effort.
Same like with interior design projects.
You know you need the feedback from your clients.
You need information from your clients.
Same thing for web designers, but some of the questions and
things to ask them when you're doing like an initial discovery
call with them is what platform do they specialize in.
Your audience has probably heard of Wix, Squarespace, WordPress,
their Shopify web flow show it. There's lots of different
platforms out there. Some designers will use several
of them, some will specialize in just one.
Some platforms are more DIY friendly, Some platforms are
more difficult because with that difficulty comes more
customization and flexibility. So you really want to ask about
that. You want to know what their
process is, and that's a really telling question because if they
stammer and don't have a process, I think that definitely
says something. The same way most interior
designers have a pretty set process of how they work,
website designers should as well.
You want to find out what the timeline is, you know?
How does this all fall into place?
You know when you contract with them, how far out then are we
launching the website? So asking about the timeline,
obviously you want to find out what the cost is and what's
included with that? Some website designers are going
to include an awful lot of support, A lot of calls, a lot
of emails. They're going to hand hold you
through the process, and some will not be available.
Some are going to include certain aspects of SEO or search
engine optimization, some are not, so that's really something
to think about. Some might include branding and
copywriting, some might not. So you really want to find out
exactly what's included. How many pages does that
include? All those sorts of things.
You want to have a look at their portfolio.
Website designers have portfolios just like interior
designers, and you want to see what's their style like.
And just like interior designers, what website
designers are putting in their portfolio is A their best work
and B the kind of work they want to attract more of.
So take a look carefully at that and see what their design
aesthetic is. Does it fit in with what you
think you want for your website? And also read testimonials.
They should have them on their website.
They should have them on their Google Business profile.
So definitely read through those and you know you'll see certain
words will appear over and over again.
You know, something that my clients say about me all the
time is organized? Process, because those are
really important things to me. Yeah.
Are those things important to you, right?
Like see what's coming up over and over again.
Have they worked with your industry before?
That's a really important one. I think that too.
You know, there's some website designers like me who specialize
in a specific industry, and there's others who will work
with anybody. So then realize you're going to
have a bit of a learning curve with them if they don't have a
really good understanding of your industry.
It doesn't mean they can't do a great job for you, but it's just
something to think about. And another thing to ask is what
are they going to need from you? What do you need to provide to
them? I always tell my clients, like
I'm not a mind reader, so like I don't know what your services
are. You know you need to tell me.
I don't know who your ideal client is.
So I do a lot of strategy and very close work with my clients
in my beginning strategy and prep phase.
Then I'm equipped to actually take.
All that information and design something that they'll love,
that their ideal clients will love, that will be strategic for
them. Okay great.
Well, a lot of parallels to a client hiring a designer, an
interior designer, and a designer hiring a website
designer. Huge number of parallels.
It's funny because. I hear a lot from my clients.
I love your welcome packet or. I love the way you do your
process. Can I take that?
And I'm like, sure, yeah, just modify it for interiors.
Yeah, exactly. That's great.
So much great information. So where can people go to find
you if they want to work with you?
Sure. So you can find me on my
website, which is our DW designstudio.com.
I'm also very active on Instagram and that is our DW
Design Studio. And if you follow me, you'll see
I post at least one tip every week on Tuesdays.
And I often do an awful lot more than that, because I just love
sharing the knowledge. So you have it.
If you decide to hire someone, you kind of know what they
should be doing. And if you decide to do it
yourself, you know what to do. Great.
Well, thank you so much Robin for coming on the show today and
just sharing all of your great insight about websites so
important for new designers and seasoned designers.
I mean, we all, it's something. How often do you think that you
need to update your website? That's a really good question,
so I would say there isn't really in my opinion 1 clear
answer to that. A lot of it's gonna depend on.
How timeless of a design you've used or your designer used.
So it's one of the reasons I stay away from trends, so that
it can be a timeless in classic design that's going to stand
this test of time. So probably every five to six
years you're going to want to do like overhaul, but websites
should be updated on a very regular basis and things that
you should look at. To know whether it's time to
make some updates. Are has your ideal client
changed? Have any of your services
changed? Do you have new projects that
should be added to your portfolio?
Do you have new client testimonials?
That should be added in. Do you have new photos of
projects, Things like that? Is the photo of you on your
website up to date? So you want to take all of those
things into consideration? And Rebecca, I would love to
offer your audience a gift if I Oh yes, and that.
Great. Yes, wonderful.
I have something called an instant website upgrade and
since you mentioned lead magnets before, it's naturally my lead
magnet. If your listeners send me a link
to their website, I will actually do a personalized video
giving them two changes that they can make on their website
that will have the biggest impact to transform their
website. And they can sign up for that on
my website. So if they go to
rdwdesignstudio.com/website Dash Upgrade, they'll see a little
form to fill out, and a couple days later they'll get a video
for me. Fabulous.
That's a really great offering. Wow.
I hope everybody takes advantage of that.
That's very generous, Okay. Well, thank you, Robin.
I'm so glad we thought those last few things to talk about.
Me too. Yeah.
Okay, Thank. You so much, Rebecca.
Yeah. Thanks for coming on and we'll
talk to you soon. Thanks, Robin.
So I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
I actually did get a lot of good information from her, and
following our interview, I did sign up for her website audit,
and she gave me some great feedback information and things
that I could implement immediately and it was really
useful to have. So go check out her offer, which
I think is really generous and you're going to get so much from
that. And then if you're looking for a
great professional website, I would definitely look at Robin
as a source for that. Like I said, all of the
information for contacting her is in our show notes, as well as
all of the links that you need to take the design quiz to see
what type of design you should be doing or download those
freebies that Ioffer of information about the things I
wish I'd known before starting my career and the road map to
interior design. So a lot of great information
for you. So you're going to go to my
website rwardesign.com, check out the podcast section, and
then get all of the links in this episode's show notes.
There's so much valuable information there.
If you've never gone, you should go and check it out because my
podcast manager includes almost every single thing that I talk
about. Anything that I mentioned, a
link or two and it's all there in one place for you very
conveniently. So go check out the show notes
are more design.com/podcast. And also would love for you to
leave a rating and review of the podcast on Apple Podcast and
help me really know that I'm reaching the topics that you
would like me to cover on the podcast.
So do all of that and stay around for another great
interview next week and until then stay creative.
Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please
leave a rating and a review. This helps me reach other
curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simply head over to my website
ourwarddesign.com or e-mail me at podcast at R wardesign com.