Why are most Architecture Practices’ websites COMPLETELY USELESS!

Why are most Architecture Practices’ websites COMPLETELY USELESS!
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Hi everyone,

welcome, it's the evening. Grab your wine wherever you are, or if you're in the US, probably don't drink yet, I don't want to get you in trouble. We're going international, and sorry, no, this isn't the football, but all will be revealed in 20 seconds. I hear Wales did terrible today. I'm sorry my brothers.

Anyways, 12 seconds, and we will be ready.

Hello everyone and thank you for tuning in on this special moment. If I've managed to pull you away from the screens from the World Cup. I appreciate you being here, [00:01:00] and if you're watching the replay, then that's okay too. I'm joined by a fantastic guest, who is international as well, and no, we are not we're not avoiding speaking to each other, because this isn't the World Cup, we're all friends here.

I'm joined by an awesome person, unfortunately not related to Paul McCartney, one of my personal heroes, but, it's the next best thing in the architecture world. Brian McCartney, how are you, sir? You okay? I'm doing wonderful. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for having me. I'm really pleased to be here.

Brilliant. And I was so impressed by your thumbnail that today we've got some fighting talk. So I've got my fighting, we're going to kick ass and take names. And talk about a subject which is close to my heart. Now, before we go into it, and a little hint, it's about, partly about some awesome websites, but also some websites where you're like, how is this made this to go live?

But before we go [00:02:00] into that and talk about my pet peeves, Brian, you do a lot more than websites as well. Can you tell us a bit about yourself, please?

Bryon McCartney: Yeah. My background actually, I was trained as a graphic designer way back in the day when we did everything in print. I I I graduated when websites started coming around and graduated to designing websites.

That was back in the late nineties for crying out loud. That was a long time. It seems like ages ago. I I've worked I've had clients like General Motors, Lipton Foods really big brands that you're familiar with on a day to day basis. But then my wife and I when we lived in we lived in Switzerland for a while.

We both got recruited to run firms in Switzerland. And. During that experience living overseas, we started our first agency together. And so when we came back to the US [00:03:00] um, 2012 or so we, at first we were just like a generalist agency. We worked with a lot of small local businesses and then we we worked with our first.

Architect. And it was such a great experience that we shifted our business to focus on architecture. We've done that ever since. So we run an architecture marketing and branding agency now. We help architects, basically there's three things we help with recognition. So helping them get found online, helping them.

Yeah, there it is. There's our website. We help them get found online, help them make a good first impression with their website, but also their web presence, social, Google business profile, that kind of thing. We help with reputation, so we help, we actually help clients, our clients, Create content for their websites, for their social media, for email campaigns.

The first so that's the reputation part of what we do. [00:04:00] And then there's the reach part of what we do, helping them to build relationships with potential partners, clients, other people who can bring them the ideal clients and projects that they want to work on.

Stephen Drew: That's, I love him.

That's the sum up. I love it. It's an important part. Now, Brian, I've got a little flashy thing in the corner saying that my web might be unstable. So can you still hear me? I'm going to do it. I can. You

Bryon McCartney: did your video froze up for there for a second, but then you came back. So

Stephen Drew: it couldn't keep up with the entertainment.

I know,

Bryon McCartney: I'm just overflowing you with value here.

Stephen Drew: If we freeze up, it's okay. Do you know what I learned actually is that when it comes to video stuff, it's the audio, which matters most more than anything, especially if you've got a well shrugged mug, maybe it's a benefit unfrozen sometimes, but it's very interesting what you've done. And I always think that while, of course, I love architecture, I studied it myself, but some of the best recruiters that [00:05:00] I've worked with and stuff, you don't necessarily have to be in the industry. And I do think, especially with marketing the stuff, sometimes you can get a fresh set pair of eyes.

So one of the examples we talked about a bit just before we went live was in terms of the contents of the website, you accurately talked about recruitment as well. And I always find that Sometimes when designing a website, especially an architecture, you naturally gravitate towards the projects must look good.

And you, maybe you talk about the about page, but I sometimes feel it's a missed opportunity to talk about culture of a company and also to talk about the job vacancies there. Whereas actually a lot of people, maybe that aren't just the clients as well. Could gain that information, could gain a lot of value from a website.

So before we jump into the nitty gritty of what doesn't work on a website, I'd love to get your thoughts on that as well. Have you had some clients which successfully [00:06:00] talk about their jobs and recruitment and the culture of working there, as well as the projects?

Bryon McCartney: So I think this gets to something that you alluded to, right?

Architects tend to focus on themselves and their business and their industry. And, we have there's we've came up I think it was during COVID, came up this this social media post the seven deadly sins of architecture marketing, and one of them was the sin of isolation, and a lot of times, architects don't look outside of their realm and what we see a lot is that there's repeated patterns, and one of the key repeated patterns is that There's We're focusing everything about the projects.

Just like you said there's oh, the project, it's the portfolio. That's why people are coming to us. But that's not necessarily true. A lot of clients are coming to your website. If we look in the residential space, a [00:07:00] lot of clients don't know that they need an architect. Then, and a lot of architects haven't figured this out, so they're presenting all these projects, but they're not really talking about the. Problems that those clients might encounter the pain points that they might have, the reasons they might need an architect. The same goes from like a recruitment aspect, right?

If you're having problems attracting talent to your firm and you look at your website and it's just. All pretty pictures. You got to put yourself in their seat, right? Hey, do I want to work with this firm? All they talk about is, who works there, right? I see so many times on websites where, and I've heard this from owners, from firm owners who say we don't want to put our team on the website because, what if somebody leaves?

Okay, but if I'm right, Brian, yeah, we gotta, first of all, we gotta want them to stay, right? We gotta give them reasons to stay, right? If we're that [00:08:00] worried about them leaving, then maybe there's other problems to solve. But secondly, I think. If you're not, if you're not talking about your team, other people who are coming to your website are going to take notice of that, right?

If I'm looking for a job, I want to look, I want to work at a firm that actually appreciates its staff, that features them, that talks about their skills and their capabilities. This is something that I've seen time and time again, and we really encourage our clients to, yeah, to include your staff, to talk about your team.

Yes, we realize that people might leave at some point, but that's not a reason to make it all about just the principles, right? Yeah. Giving people a sense of who's involved, who's on the team, who are you going to be seeing when you come into our office? What are the skill sets that we have is an important part of communication and communicating the value that you can bring to your clients.

The other thing too, is that often we don't see a lot [00:09:00] of discussion about what the architecture firm is good at, right? So many firms have this mentality if we're just a generalist firm, if we, we can do any kind of project and this is a big mistake, it really does help to define what you want to be known for, because you can't be known for everything.

You have to pick a lane. And a lot of times when we go to websites, what we just, what we see, they may have a blog, let's say, right? A blog is a great way to communicate your expertise, your insights, your experience. What we see is a big focus on oh we won this award or we did this project or I don't know.

We got into a magazine. That as a client, as somebody who's interested in working with you, it really doesn't tell me a lot about what you do or what you specialize in. I want to know what your opinions are, what your positions are. I know in the UK, we have a client in the UK. A [00:10:00] big thing right now is, with the changes in government and so forth, we don't know where we're going to end up with these these, the legislations around the the the incentives or the penalties for sustainable building and so forth.

Where do you stand as an architect on those kinds of issues, right? How are you going to help your clients navigate those things in the future and build a a building or a home that's going to be sustainable? Going to be energy efficient, going to be less expensive to maintain and keep up to date.

So yeah, those are all things that we can be

Stephen Drew: talking about on our websites. I love it. And when you were going, when you were talking there, Brian, I had to get my stress ball out because the thing is I'm going to do a confession online is that while I had on run an architecture website, the architecture social For better and worse, I designed myself, which you could think, hooray!

But let me tell you, I've got a lot of grey hairs, which I'm like, stealthing here. And [00:11:00] websites, I, yeah, I love them to death, but at the same time, It's not as simple as just knocking up a square space and we're not even going into the SEO, what you're talking about with Google shifts, proper information, becoming an authority on the subject.

Those are like long term, targets and you can do it. And I do think for anyone I promised this episode will not be about SEO. It is important though, and you have to do it, right? Okay? That's the bad news. You can't get around it. It's a

Bryon McCartney: fundamental

Stephen Drew: best practice. Let's put it that way. It's a fundamental best practice.

That's like the behind the scenes stuff, right? Which is important and people will probably consult with you on this stuff. However, I will say where SEO does tie into what you said, Brian, you touched upon really well is news, blogging, sharing opinions. And I can understand why sometimes people feel tempted to not do it because There is an [00:12:00] element of upkeep, right?

No one likes a news section where something is from 11 months ago is the most recent. You do have to stay on top of it a bit, but I think though, it is a massive opportunity because you can get all your staff involved with it. You can have an opinion piece. It can get picked up in the news potentially, but also if you're smart, you can feed it into Google News.

You can feed it into SEO and It keeps the website alive. Now, do you, what is your opinion on blogging? I suspect that you're a fan of it, right? As in terms of web.

Bryon McCartney: Yeah, it's absolutely, it's a key part of what we do with our clients is, and yeah, there is a process that you need to establish to do it consistently.

A lot of people will ask me, okay, Brian, you say we need to blog. How often do we need to blog? It's up to you. And there's some things that you can look at to determine that, which get very [00:13:00] technical and looking at like your competitors and so forth. But here's the thing.

Quality over quantity. Basically, right? If you, so if you're a residential architect, it's better to have either one big article that talks about the ins and outs of residential architecture, helps clients really understand that process, or having a series of articles that are related to that topic.

Like I said, you got to pick a lane, and the more specific, the more narrow you can pick a lane the more. The content becomes obvious, right? I, one of the fears that a lot of clients come to us when they, when we talk about blogging is like I don't know what I'm going to write about.

Actually it's pretty easy, right? What do you do best? What are the things you enjoy? What opinions do you have? It's not that hard to come up with the ideas. The production side, yeah, it takes a little bit of effort. But it's, it, once you have a [00:14:00] process and once you defined it, that one article can be turned into so many things.

Yeah. It can be turned into social media posts. It can be mentioned in your email your email campaigns. It can be repurposed into video clips where it's talking about that topic. There are so many things you can do with that content to repurpose it. That's the marketing term that we use, repurposing, but you want to make the most of the content that you're

Stephen Drew: creating for sure.

Yeah, said, and I try my best as well, because that even transcends, like if, like for instance, this interview, if you were smart with it, you can cut it up into little soundbites, put it on your website, make an article around it, embed it. I completely agree. I'm going to do a quick into. Interlude, Brian, because a lovely member of our audience, Devin says so apparently this is pre recorded.

Is there going to be any discussion here? Devin, yeah, it's not pre recorded. This is [00:15:00] live. So you can say what you want. You did put your website here. However, me and Brian are not going to critique it today because I don't want to get in trouble. I, and I'm sure Brian thinks the same, but Devin, I really appreciate you sharing it.

And we will, I will think about critiques in the future, but I like things to be complimentary. This is not Hey, if we have

Bryon McCartney: time, we're going to look at Devin's website. How's that?

Stephen Drew: All right, Devin, if you're here at the end, we'll look at your website. Okay. And if there's nothing nice to say, we'll find something, I promise.

Devin, stick around here. Oz says a quick comment that I will read out before we move on, saying, Architects miss a lot of opportunities. I thought this is because architects are silent in their craft. I think it's really important for architects to learn tech skills and enter the contemporary online economy.

Yeah I agree, Oz. I think that, any business, I know the problem, I think, Brian, isn't it? When you run in the business, you've got loads of stuff. You've got to get your, in [00:16:00] the tax reports, you've got to win the work. You've got to do the architecture. You've got to hire people and do a website.

And I can see the temptation is not to get involved and pay someone to do it. But my view, Brian, is that it's good to have some understanding of the website, because like you say, Doing blog posts and stuff. If you're confident enough to do it, you want to be able to do it easily and it's typically not complicated.

Would you also advise architects to get involved a little bit, even if it's not their comfort zone in stuff like websites?

Bryon McCartney: Absolutely. I think you have to be involved. You have to know what's going on, right? At what level? is going to depend on you, the size of the firm, how, how comfortable you are with that.

We have clients that are very hands on and they're very much involved. We do try to minimize their involvement Not so they're not, involved, but because we know that the demands on their time are pretty high. And so we want to [00:17:00] make our interactions with them as beneficial and as valuable as possible.

So we, we structure those in a way that we can get the information that we need from them. We can answer their questions and we can, Do that without having to be on the phone every other day and distracting them from the things that they're really focused on. So that's a key element of our services is trying to figure out, okay, what's going to work best for you.

How involved are you going to be, or are you going to delegate some of that to somebody you trust in the firm? And we're going to, we have that situation with some clients where we don't work. Always with the firm owner or leader, we might sometimes work with a an associate that is really responsible for that part of the firm's operation, the marketing and branding

Stephen Drew: side.

Bryon McCartney: Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Do you know what we're talking about is if there's any like architectural professionals in the audience, right? I still think the same stuff we're talking about, Brian, applies, [00:18:00] can be applied to them on a personal business. Yeah. On a personal basis, right? So for example, me, I used to have my old little website when I was a student and I put my work up and stuff, and it probably got five viewers a month, right?

But I did it for me and it was like sharpening the sheath. And I think that, especially in 2022, as important as it is for a business to have a website, I think. That there's an awful lot of personal brand that is really powerful. And it's I think it's like an extension of a business card.

And as you, as a marketeer right now, would you also, for anyone listening, go, guys, this is not just for. Businesses who practice in architecture, which you recommend people look at websites, Brian.

Bryon McCartney: Absolutely. So here's the thing. A lot of people focus attention on social media and I don't want to, I don't want to slag on social media or anything like that, but social media has its place and there's a reason we call it social media.

It's a great networking tool. It's [00:19:00] a great way to get your, you get your stuff out to a lot of people. Yeah. But the thing is that with social media. They are in control of that real estate. Yeah, they make the rules. The social media platform determines who sees your stuff how much of it, how much of your stuff that people see.

They they set those rules and they could change those rules at any time. And, for those of us who know with Facebook, They went from, hey, you could have a business page and everybody on your contact list was going to see all that stuff to suddenly like only 1 percent are going to actually see that.

And that was pretty much, it was almost overnight that they did that just in internet years. But your website is the one thing that you can control it's the one place where you can design the message, you can present that in a way that is unique to you and that [00:20:00] showcases the things that you want to present and from a personal brand perspective, yes.

It's a very powerful tool. Now you mentioned Squarespace earlier, and I do want to say this. So we had our professional agency website on Squarespace for many years. It's a great platform. And if you're looking to just get a start, a platform, wix, or Squarespace, or I don't know, there's so many out there now these days, that can be a great way to start because it can allow you to just focus on getting stuff on the web, rather than worrying about having to learn a new skill, right?

Because they're drag and drop, they're easy to use. And I highly recommend that if you're just starting out, like if you're, if you're just a couple of years into your career and you want to have a personal space on the internet where you can showcase the things that are important to you, where you can share your opinions outside of the work sphere, I highly recommend having a website of your own and Squarespace [00:21:00] is a great place to get started

Stephen Drew: any kind of tool like that.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I think you're right. Nothing wrong with, especially starting up, especially on a personal basis. I think what better way to get that online, CV and portfolio going now I've, I, so I do not get accused of clickbait, Brian. I, part of this was saying like, why a lot of architecture websites are so useless, right?

Yeah. And I know it's a bit of a ballsy title, but I think that there's a lot of fences that architectural practices make. And maybe if you run an architectural practice, have a think about do these or do these not apply to your website? I'll tell you, the number, less so now, but is the worst offender of them all, used to be the JavaScript flash loading websites with the bars that would take a million years to load.

Yes. And then when they load, they're all old and cranky, right? So that's my number one offender [00:22:00] from before. Now, the equivalent is unoptimized, huge images. Which you can't load on your mobile phone on the go, because not everyone looks on their desktop, believe it or not, a lot of people, sometimes more than 50 percent are on mobile.

So that's one of my pet peeves. When we're talking about this subject, Brian, are there any that stick out in your mind of top offenders? Not the names, the kind of the offenses, if that makes sense.

Bryon McCartney: Yeah just give everybody a little bit of background on this. So our team anytime we have a new potential new client come in or back in the day when we were first starting out we got a list of architecture firm websites.

And so far, I think we've done over 650 evaluations of architecture from websites. These are things that we look at all the time. And your JavaScript Flash example. I think that [00:23:00] accounts for about 10 percent of the sites that we've looked at so far over, over the past several years.

And that's way too high. Essentially those sites do not work. Flash does not, is not, no longer supported on the web. So if you have a, if you're sitting there thinking, ah, I haven't looked at my website in a while. It don't work anymore, right? Exactly. Some of the other things that are big pet peeves hidden contact information.

Believe it or not, a lot of people see, seem to think it's a good idea to hide all their contact information and just have a form. Let me ask you, when was the last time You have filled out a contact us form. I hate the

Stephen Drew: contact forms, Brian. I have no idea if they've got there or not.

I can't customize it that much. Do not use the forms. It's

Bryon McCartney: it's there because we all, we're supposed to have it there, but really where you're, where you wanted on your website I prefer to [00:24:00] have a phone number or a click to call button up in the top right, because that is where we all look for information in the top it's just how we're programmed.

I do not recommend, this is another pet peeve, I do not recommend putting your social links up there. And here's why. It's just an invitation to allow people to leave your website, go get distracted on social media, and never think about you again. Correct. So put those

Stephen Drew: in your footer. Said, because I always view, and it might sound as a shock, I love LinkedIn, I think it's a great platform, I'm glad we're here.

However, the dot com is, as you said earlier, and I'm going to reiterate your point, the dot com is what I can control, okay? Maybe a Google algorithm will come on, but generally, I can control that dot com. It's much better than, as you said, and Instagram is a great example, because it's a very visual tool.

Wow. Platform, Architects love it, and suddenly Tech Tops [00:25:00] come, so Instagram now is like, pictures don't really get much of a weighting, it's all about videos. So it's suddenly very hard for people to grow on Instagram, they get worried about why, and you're right, it's because you're at mercy of the algorithm, whereas I think with a website you have much more control, you can add content there, and if you work on the SEO, you can Then, fantastic.

To your point, why, if people are on the website, do you then send them away to another platform where an ad can pop up and they go, oh, look at the so and so architects, click that, and then they're gone?

Bryon McCartney: Yeah, that's, it's just a huge mistake. And it's great to have your social links on your website, but you don't need to display them so prominently that somebody's just gonna, Disappear.

The other thing about, I want to, because you reminded me of something when you were talking there about social media. So one of the things about social media, and this is a little bit different with LinkedIn, and I [00:26:00] think it's why we talk about why we recommend LinkedIn to so many of our clients.

Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you really have to build a following. So you invest all this time building a following, all of a sudden, they decide to change their rules, and you're Oh, wait a minute. I don't have those, I didn't capture those emails. I don't have any way to really connect with those people anymore.

This is basically what Facebook did to us years ago. And they happen to own Instagram, so who knows what they're going to do next? LinkedIn is a little bit different where it allows you to connect with people that you don't know. You can send out connection requests. You gotta be careful about that.

And you can't do too many in one go because they'll. I've

Stephen Drew: been put in the LinkedIn jail and I had to beg to be taken out, luckily.

Bryon McCartney: Yeah, you were overclocking the connection requests. Yeah. And, yeah, so you have to follow their rules, but it does allow you to reach [00:27:00] out to people and connect with people that, You've never met before and so you can do that, so that, LinkedIn's okay, but where you really should focus your effort is collecting emails, collecting contact information on your website, and the best way to do that is to offer something of value to people on your website.

Visiting whether it's a download, whether it's a webinar or a video or whatever it might be, give people something so they, they can experience your expertise, your experience, your knowledge, your know how. But give them something of value so that they're willing to give over, give something of value to you, which is their contact information, so you can continue to engage with them over time.

That's a really, that's something I think people overlook about social media. It's not like you

Stephen Drew: own those contacts at all. Yeah, I agree. And especially when you talk about email campaigns and stuff like that, there's got to be a reason to give away that information. [00:28:00] Just before we build upon that point, Brian, Yogesh says, hi, and he says that he agrees that most people and company websites already want to be there.

Now, Yogesh is an old friend of mine and actually has the misfortune, I should say, of living with, for me when we studied in architecture. So Yogesh, I'm going to, I'm just going to do a call out and thank you for sharing your points. He is a fantastic, talented architect. Yogesh, love you to death. Building upon that point now, Brian, I agree.

So when I think about websites in particular as well, there's talk about User interface briefly for a little bit, just before we go. To me, it's very important. And you said that you programmed to look in the top right for where to go. And so I found on my website that people go to the top right, and the first thing they click on is jobs.

Yeah. And the second thing they click on typically is salary guides, because the Architecture Social is a bit different. That's something of value that you're offering to your audience. [00:29:00] Exactly right. And what I learned is, so I've got as well on my salary guide to go to your point about emails is that, so people can enter the salary guide anyways, but if they want to be kept up to date constantly of current salaries as they change in the market.

Put in your email or make a job alert. And from that, Brian, then people type in the emails. If I put like contact form and like you said, a little, please sign up to my email. No one's interested. You have to reach out to them. And I'm not talking about me. I'm saying, do you want to be up to date of London salaries?

As they pop up monthly, yes, no, enter, and then people enter. Where I've seen it in architectural terms work quite well is, for example, an architectural practice gives away a very quick feasibility study. Can we do something in there? And people sign up for an email or they get in contact and it's 10 minutes for the architect to work, they get an [00:30:00] introduction.

I'm not too fat, a big fan of giving away stuff for free anymore because I run a business and my my, my bills come. Whether or not I've given lots away for free or not, we as architects, I think, need to learn that we have to retain our value and not give stuff away for free and reduce fees.

That aside though building upon your point, Brian, I do agree. You have to have a valuable what's the marketing term? You've got to have something. A lead magnet. A lead magnet. That sounds all right. Cool and stuff. A lead magnet. Yeah. What may be a good examples, Brian?

Quick obviously it's case by case in business. So can you give an example of a lead magnet?

Bryon McCartney: Yeah, so for example Lead Magnet could be just a PDF download that maybe is a checklist of the key things you need to gather before you go and talk to an architect. It could be like a, what we call a project preparation package, right?

Helping you understand, [00:31:00] hey, these are the things that, an architect's typically going to want to ask you. These, it'd be helpful to know this kind of information before you come in, right? Yeah, another thing would be for example could be a guide on how to choose an architect. What is the process that you need to go through?

What kind of architect do you need? Helping you, just asking you questions, giving you a checklist to run through to really determine, you Who's going to be the best architect for you? What are the questions that I need to ask an architect to know that they're a good fit for me?

So things like that can be really simple easy to put together lead magnet. Like you said having a consultation call now. I do recommend these because typically people want to talk to somebody and it's a good option, but it doesn't have to be you the lead architect, right?

You could have an associate in the, you could have an admin, you could have a office manager who has a script and [00:32:00] who knows Hey, these are the questions I need to ask, and oh, if they say things like this, that, and the other I need to ask them a few more questions, and then they can get scheduled with the architect, right?

So it doesn't always have to go, not everything has to be going through your for, taking up your

Stephen Drew: time, right? Yeah, said. And I think we've covered one or two of the bugbears of websites. I was on this point of offering constructive ideas because they used to really use for Brian.

Maybe what I was going to say is if it's cool, I'll tell one thing that I think a lot of architectural practices miss, which I think is a missed opportunity. And then if you fancy sharing one, we'll give away that juicy nugget. And then any more juicy nuggets, people can tap you up on your website, which I'll put in the end.

All right, but so the one I think is the biggest one which gets missed. If we touched upon it a bit earlier, is company culture, right? And I think that seeing pictures in the office or people working remotely, getting those [00:33:00] updates, people seeing what it's like to work in an environment, any giving back to the community, what the staff are up to, if there's an office dog.

Insights into the company. They're not only beneficial in terms of recruitment because people will apply. I also, though, I think companies like to work with companies which treat their employers good. And I agree with what you said earlier of not having people on the website doesn't make sense. And let me give you some recruitment news, right?

If someone's thinking of leaving, Whether they're on the website or not, Brian, they're gonna look, okay, so you're right. By focusing on company culture and building it up, then the more and more better, the more and more proud you can be as a company. And I think there's no negatives. It's a great way to build content.

It's a great way to advertise your ethos and you can probably save a lot of money on recruitment. Before you talk about your point, is [00:34:00] there anything you want to add to that, if you agree

Bryon McCartney: on it? Absolutely. And it doesn't have to it doesn't matter if you have a team or not. Even if it's just you.

A picture of you interacting with the client. A picture of you out at the job site, making sure that everything's being built to spec. A picture of you working in the office on some design ideas, a picture, a video, whatever it may be. People want, people do business with people.

They do not do business with black boxes, right? Which your website, if it's not going to talk about anything other than your projects, it's basically a black box and we don't know what we're getting on the other side. Yeah that's definitely I think it's definitely important to be human on the web more and more.

It used to be all you needed was a brochure on the web, basically you just needed a a kind of a glorified brochure, but that's not how we're doing business anymore. The more that we use the web, the more comfortable we are with it, [00:35:00] the more we expect that websites are going to give us and help us understand that.

That, that firm. From my standpoint, in terms of things that I think are really important for your website and this is really even before you start thinking about the website, you have to be very clear about what your goals are for your website, because that's going to help determine what your website is.

should be saying what kind of information you're going to want to present to people. You have to have a concept of if you just go at it like, oh, we just need to put up our portfolio. Yeah, you can just, you, Just get a, probably get a Google Photos page and just put that up, but that's not going to, that's not going to help people understand your business.

You need to figure out who it is you're talking to. Are you talking to residential clients? Are you talking to Retail companies, that are looking to wow their customers and create [00:36:00] a great experience. Are you looking at people who I know because my client in London, I know that the, a lot of people they want to expand their homes, right?

But they have, they can't. They don't have the land to expand. So there is some type, some people are going down into the basement level. Some people are building on top. Some people are putting up structures in their backyard. So help people, help, pick your lane. Figure out what the key questions are that people are going to want to know or are going to want to search for online that are going to bring them to you.

Start with that as a concept for your website. How are we going to attract, educate, inform, engage, entertain people who we want to work with? How are we going to give them that great first impression so that when they think about an architect, they think about us first? Microsoft Mechanics

Stephen Drew: Well said I'll give you, if you give actually I was going to give you, [00:37:00] we'll do the, those are some kick ass points there, so there we go, but I'll give you a little round of applause for that, I appreciate it Brian, it's well said, and I think that it's quite interesting, because I start freestyling in this as well, because once you've built a website up and you've been involved in the web design a lot, the gains from it are exponential, it just takes a bit of time to get going.

It's anything else.

Bryon McCartney: It's an investment, right? Yeah. You invest, you mentioned earlier, and I want to come back to this because I think it was a point that I didn't get to make. You talked about like architects, they, one of the things that works against you, like I talked about isolation, right?

Looking outside of your industry. And one of the things that works against architects is the fact that you have to keep. Getting these educational hours, right? And for a lot of people, that makes it really difficult to say, Oh, I'm going to go learn about marketing or I'm going to go learn about finance or [00:38:00] whatever it may be.

But I tell you what, you have to find a way to figure out what is important for your business. And, and get the skills, get the information you need or find somebody to help you. Because that's the only way you're going to have a successful business. You are not going to learn about, you might learn about some of those skills at a at a, I don't know what you hear in the U S we call them CEUs.

The the credits you might get some of that information from those courses, but generally that's not what they're talking about. And you got to look for that outside of

Stephen Drew: architecture. Yeah, Brian, I've got mixed, mixed feelings about them because I've been to one, but back in my, when I was an architectural assistant I was broke.

So I used to love signing up to them because they used to get free sandwiches and they used to know certain providers used to really splash out. And one or two, they'd be the opposite. And I was like, I'm not going to go see them because the sandwiches ain't good. Do you know what I'm saying? But there was one or two [00:39:00] really good things there.

And actually, maybe there's an opportunity there for content on the website. Who knows? But I think if you can turn something, which like you say, is a requirement into something where you could talk about it. And maybe do an innovation series and that could be the content of a blog. Then you're on to a winner because that requirement then becomes an infinite, a source of SEO keywords authority in the space and so on.

Do you know what I was going to say to you actually? Because at this point I like to flip the table and the guest can be the interviewer. Because it shouldn't be so much one ways, but maybe there's loads of different ways you could go, because I've created the Architecture Social, I run the social media, and I run a website, which the views are growing.

Which is great. So you could, if you want, interrogate me on a few points on that, Brian, or you can talk about anything you want. I wouldn't know much about the World Cup, but feel free to ask me any questions.

Bryon McCartney: I [00:40:00] don't either. I just I just read the headlines yeah, what do you find is the most challenging part of, Let's say updating or

Stephen Drew: maintaining your website.

Do you know one of the most time consuming bits indirectly was recording, not live podcasts. Because so for example, we've done the dangerous, but also exciting thing of we're going live. So the downside of going live is in theory, Oh my goodness, things can go wrong. Like my internet went a little bit jittery earlier, maybe, whatever, right?

But you have to just roll with it. The downside, in my opinion, of recording podcasts offline is that then you've got to really got to edit to them. It takes time. You've got to polish them up and you've got to get someone involved. And I found that really difficult. So I gravitate towards this. I also try to be very economical with my podcast in a way.

So for example, after recording this. I will rip the sound and I will put it on Spotify and I try to edit it a bit. I always try when we hear, for example, like earlier, I talked about [00:41:00] my old my old friend, my old colleague and the stuff he's brought up. So Yogesh right now is saying I'm not that old.

Don't worry, Yogi, we know you're not that old. But I always try to annotate stuff to include the audio speaker because to me, I've got a limited amount of time and I always try to get things on the website, but then if we produce one piece of content, I then try to get that medium as far as possible, Brian.

So by putting that on Spotify, it's also more inclusive, but it gets more people aware of things. Hey, maybe someone doesn't want to go into this area. If you're interested in more videos like this, be on LinkedIn right now at 7 o'clock, but they can listen to the replay the next day. I then put it on YouTube normally.

I will do it on YouTube. I'll put it in three days after because LinkedIn and thank you. LinkedIn have asked me to do exclusive content for LinkedIn for a while, so here we go. We're here for three days, but then I always try to put stuff on the website and I view it as a I view social media, there's a falsity that people say sometimes [00:42:00] that it's a community and I don't agree.

I view them as channels and I think if you're going to build a community, it's your website. And so I try to have as much unique content there as possible, but I always try then to get it out to as much channels as possible. So does that make sense? So the home of this would be in the Architecture Social.

But use as much channels and also then goes to your point, Brian, that if suddenly Instagram decides that they hate long videos, then Spotify is still happy to have a podcast. So that's the main thing I try to do. I do keep an eye on SEO. My general rule, though, is Build relevant content and keep adding it.

I try not to go back to articles I've done. There's sometimes a temptation to update stuff, but I think having new stuff is fine. And like a good example and the last bit on the point before opening [00:43:00] up again is, Like some of the thumbnails I've done on some of my old YouTube things, Brian, I'm like, Oh, I'm not sure if I like it anymore.

And I think architects are guilty of this as I am of you look at your old work and you judge yourself on that. But I always think now do you know what, that's where I was in 2020 and I'm here. and what I am now. And it's more about meeting new people like yourself, getting new angles, new perspectives.

And if me and you want to do something again, we'll do another episode, but I don't like to re record the old episode. I don't even listen to them once I'm done. So I told that to someone, it blew their mind, but I'm like, it's always looking forward. And sometimes as designers, It's tempting to go back and what you've done and perfect it.

But the gains, Brian, in my opinion, are not as comparable. Yeah,

Bryon McCartney: that's exactly, you touched on a few things that I think are [00:44:00] really important. Number one, consistency, right? Google, our friends at Google, they really love it when we're consistent and we're coming out with new content and so forth.

Now, does that mean you need to do something every day? No. Does it mean you need to do something every week? No. My advice on that is if you've, if you want to have a good judge of like, how much content should I be creating? Like I said before, you could have one article that's like a total winner and is getting all the traffic for your website, but also look at your top competitors on Google.

Try to find your firm in a Google search. What would your clients look for in a Google search? If you're not coming up on that first page then there's something wrong with your website and you might want to start looking at the websites that are on that first page and making some comparisons to see what you need to do to fix things.

Yeah, I think from the recruiting standpoint What are there any are there [00:45:00] so here's something that I, another pet peeve I have is when I go to a architecture website and there's, you go to the about page and it's basically a CV of the principal. Yeah.

What's your thoughts on that is, to me, that just seems that's not why what an about page should be about, right? It should be something related to what me as the client would need from you and how you're going to help me.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. I think generally it's a missed opportunity.

I think the bit that you pointed on earlier, which is hilarious, say now there's 50 people in the company. It will just be a bounce section of the two principles and it's okay actually You know, when someone's designing your house, you want to know about who's designing your house. I think it should be inclusive.

A good example of a website which I've seen is actually pokes a bit of fun on it. I think there's a company called Matt Architecture and when you hover over the images, I think if you click in them or something so they've got the normal hey it's me in an architectural practice image and then when you go into it they've gone another [00:46:00] level so they're not just showing their hobbies of hey this is me and the guitar and i've seen that kind of stuff and it can work really well but they're all bizarrely like dressed in victorian clothes in their existing office and there's one guy on cad wearing like henry the eighth Clothes and stuff.

So you have to

Bryon McCartney: send me that. You have to send me that link.

Stephen Drew: I will. And I'd be tempted to bring it up here, but I will put the link in for all you people listening. So I think it's MattArchitecture. co. uk and Brian, I'll show it to you at the end. But it made me laugh. It made me really laugh and they also, again, are very good from a marketing point of view because there was one project that they had, which I can't, it was a witty title, but anyways, in the description, rather than this being like, this is a residential project, X square meters, okay, which is really important, but saying all this stuff, they were like, this project was a slog.

Okay. No one wanted to work in it. Okay. The project manager didn't want to work on it. The planning consultant was pulling out their hair. We had four planning consultants, but in the end [00:47:00] we got it through and I was good. And I read it and I was like, wow, this is not just the cliche stuff. So in recruitment the, what people do when they haven't got any imagination, Brian, is that they write the same old random I think I can swear, but they write the same old rubbish, right?

And I, and they usually sounds like, and hear me now. An exciting opportunity. What does that mean? Okay. A tight-knit team is another offender,

Bryon McCartney: design centered approach.

Stephen Drew: Oh yeah, exactly. . You should, we one with hope, right? You, yes. So overstanding the obvious. Yes. Correct. And I think the way job descriptions and projects can be written the same.

So I think actually trying. To have something menial, meaningful and poignant is important. It's hard though. I've done it myself. It's much easy for me to go an exciting opportunity in central London in a re gentrified area, up and coming. It's really easy for me to [00:48:00] do that because they're all quick things, but it's easy

Bryon McCartney: for everybody else too.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. You don't get the same meaning from it, so I think it does pay. To go that extra length and write meaningful content. And so when you said about the about page, I think it's just so much about that. And I think maybe, and also I think it's a really good team building exercise to get people in when they join to say, Hey, here's your picture or you get one professionally made, what would you like to put in your bio and add something personal in there?

Are you a DJ on the weekend or something? This is not unprofessional. It's actually character building. So on the about page, I think that's the missed opportunity typically is the people,

Bryon McCartney: yeah, absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. That's one of the things that we do when we when we were developing content for our website that's one of the key things we do is we help them with the bios and we always ask questions.

Personal questions and we try to bring [00:49:00] out like, okay what do you do as a human being outside of this job? Because, you're not a robot, you're not strapped to your desk. Yeah. And,

Stephen Drew: We want to know who you are, yeah, exactly. And I promise you, I am listening, but I've got a little treat here for you.

So the MAT Architecture website is still alive and let's click on randomly the directors. There we go. So we, MAT Architecture is still living it up. I think that was my favorite one. Yeah, that is hilarious. So shout out to MAT Architecture. I've always admired.

Bryon McCartney: That's creative, fun stuff. Why not? I think it, I bet it's

Stephen Drew: a good conversation starter, right? Exactly. I'd fancy having a chat with them and they do. Beautiful projects as well. So for Mass Architecture, if you're tuning in, while I know this is a raunchy title, your website is not useless and it's the [00:50:00] opposite.

So we've got

Bryon McCartney: good stuff. I

Stephen Drew: love it. We've actually, we cut, we give one good example, didn't we, Brian, as well as a lot of offenders. So I'm going to quickly. Bring up your website, but Brian, we're winding down now. So if anyone's got re inspired by what we talked about, they want to reach out to you or any of that stuff.

Can you tell us where they find you?

Bryon McCartney: Yeah, just go to arcmark. co not. com. co. It's right there. I'm under my under my face next to my name there. This is our website. Yeah, reach out to us. You can reach out to us by email at info at arcmark. co, or you can go through our website. We do have a start here button that'll take you to our our our scheduling page.

What do you mean?

Stephen Drew: No JavaScript or big contact forms? No,

Bryon McCartney: there's, there might be some JavaScript, but there's no, no funky flash.

Stephen Drew: Oh, that's good. It loads up faster than my computer. So especially with my dodgy [00:51:00] network. So we halfway there. Brian, you've been an awesome guest. I'm sure we'll talk in the future about more stuff.

So thank you for joining. I really appreciate it.

Bryon McCartney: Thank you so much for having me, man. I really, I, I reached out to you because I saw one of your interviews and I was just like, this guy has so much energy. I'd love, I'd just love to be on a show. And I really appreciate you having me.

Stephen Drew: Says you're the awesome picture.

I love it. You have the best mugshots I've seen. Brian, you're an absolute legend. I'm going to end the podcast in one minute, but stay on the stage, Brian, and thank you for tuning in now on LinkedIn, or if you're watching the recap, hey. That's what it's all about. And who knows, we're going to, as we were talking about, keep building content there because why not?

Google's going to love it. And we'll see, can the Architecture Social get to the top of Google? Or more importantly, perhaps you've got your personal website. Come on, take a few of the lessons that we talked about. I've killed myself for hours. So skip all those hard lessons and [00:52:00] steal a few of the tips that me and Brian were talking about.

Or if you run your own architecture practice, the way I look at it is, You can always keep building up and don't be embarrassed if your website isn't quite where you want. The best thing, I think, is just to take a fresh what's it called in architecture is maybe it's not quite going back to the drawing board, but version two or version three, four, five.

So on that note, I'm going to end the live stream. Brian stay on the stage and everyone in the audience, enjoy the rest of the football and I will see you soon. Take care. Bye bye.