Website Essentials For Design and Remodeling Professionals In 2026

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Welcome to Designer Discussions with Jason and Miriam.
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Today, Jason is going to talk about the top 10 things design and modeling businesses need to know about their website.
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Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast with Jason and Miriam.
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Tune in each week where we talk about marketing PR and business advice for design professionals.
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Thanks, Miriam.
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Today I'm going to talk about website tips for 2026 that will impact the remodeling industry.
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If you listen to the previous podcast where I talked about the top 10 tips, it was on social media.
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I'll have a link to that in the show notes.
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And just like with that episode, I'm going to go over five.
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And then if you want to get the other five, you have to go to the website and look at what the other five are.
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All of them you need to know, but I'm only talking about what I feel will help impact you now.
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So where I'm going to start, number one is photography.
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So you want to ensure that you have good photography, high quality photography on your website.
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Now, most design and remodeling professionals do do this, but there are some remodeling professionals out there that don't actually get high quality images.
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And that impacts how the end user views your business.
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Because if they don't see the type the high quality that they would want for their own house or their own building, then they may not select these.
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So having high quality imagery is important.
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And that heads back to hopefully you're hiring a professional photographer to take these images.
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If not, I would say that you need to either use a program to, if you take them on your own, you use a program to enhance the images so you can have it as high quality as possible.
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But I would suggest highly that you hire a photographer because that's what they're trained to do.
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They have the eye for what will be appealing to the end user.
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So making sure you have that strong photography on your site is important.
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Okay.
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Next, I'll talk about ensuring that you have a strong call to action, that you have to tell people what you want them to do.
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When they're on your site, they're going to see images, they're going to see content.
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They may see remodeling and design that they like.
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But if you don't then tell them that you want them to reach out for a consultation, you want to enter in your information here so you can submit for the project, whatever it is, having a call of action where you tell them exactly what you want them to do is important.
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Because oftentimes they'll head to a site.
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Or it didn't say fill out the form, download XYZ.
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It didn't have anything on it.
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So there was lost opportunities in that website because you didn't actually tell your end user what you want them to do.
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So having that call action is vital to having a successful website.
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Okay.
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Next, I would say what would be to showcase your social proof everywhere.
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On the majority of sites, you're going to see a lot of people say how great their design is, what they do, what they're differentiating pack three of some of the other designers, and you're going to talk about what you do.
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Having that third-party proof is vital because you want to have other homeowners or other businesses that have worked with you talk about the work that you did.
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So that's that social proof that you need to have.
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And a lot of our clients, we actually have a live link to the either the Google reviews, the house reviews, whatever it is, wherever you get your reviews at.
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Having that live link shows the end user that you care about authenticity and about what other people say.
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Like I said, you can say whatever you want on your own site, but having that third-party social proof is vital because it shows from other people how they feel about what you did and not just you hyping up your own business.
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Okay?
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Next, number four, I'm going to talk about location specific pages and project pages.
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One of the things that I see on a lot of websites in the Wamaling industry is they'll have, they'll have their projects on there, but they won't actually have a page that just explains what the project is.
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Because when you work on a project, there's a lot of areas, there's a lot of stages and phases of the project, whether it be the initial conversation, air down, demolition, heading to the showroom to get all the FFE, the Ramali project.
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That whole remote has a process.
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And on the project page, you can explain that.
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And that helps you in a number of ways.
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A, it helps you on the SEO side because you're explaining that project in detail.
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And a lot of the words you're going to use to explain it are go actually trigger a search.
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So it could be like the material you use, the appliances you use, those names, where there'd be like a Kenmore, where there'd be a Kohler, those could trigger a search.
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Also, by having a project page, you're going to have detailed information on the project, which can also trigger an AI search because how you answer the question could trigger AI to find that page and ultimately on your website.
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So having project ages on your site is important.
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Normally on a designer remodeling sites, they'll have a portfolio page where they have all these images.
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But if you click on it, it just blows up the image, but there's no detail on that actual project.
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That's where the project age helps you out.
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So having that is important.
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Okay.
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And then lastly, what I'm talking about here, because like I said, there are 10, but I'm only head over five right now.
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So what I'm going to head over now is integrating video into your website.
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Oftentimes out here, like, I don't want to be on video.
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That's not what you want to do, and that's okay.
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But there are other ways to create video.
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If you have Canva, you can easily do a slideshow, add music to it, and you have a video.
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You can video the process of what's happening in the project because that helps differentiate you from another designer down the street.
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And video is the best way for you to add in on social media, which we talked about last time.
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So having that video someplace on your site, it also draws a lot of attention from a search because all of the imagery, the video, music, that content on there, that's a lot what others may be looking for to search for you.
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And what also happens, it actually causes people when they're looking on your website to stop because now they're going to look at the video, play it.
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And one of the factors in SEO, which we'll talk about when I go over the SEO tactics, is time on page.
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And the longer they're on the page, the better.
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So video is a great way to have them stop, look, watch, learn more about what you do, what the services you offer, and all.
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So that's another great tip that is that you should now integrate into your website.
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So that's five that I want to talk about.
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Like I said, there are five more, but you have to head to the website to see what they are, okay?
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If you have any questions on any of this, let us know.
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And also, we talk about this a lot on the academy.
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We talk about website information, SEO, social media, and all we talk about, and we go over all this to train you to show you how to do this.
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There is a link in the show notes if you want to learn more information about the academy.
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And if you have any questions at all, just let us know.
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And I look forward to hearing and seeing you here in two weeks on Designer Discussions.
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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Designer Discussions and all of the helpful information.
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