Who is the best interior designer in London?

Posted: 22 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: contemporary interiors, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment »
London

London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I was wondering just “Who is the best interior designer in London?”. I recently wrote about who was the best interior designer in the world and got some rather unexpected results.

You could, and of course probably did, do that same Google search to find London’s “best interior designer”, just like you’ve probably also googled your own name at some point.

And yet here you are.

Maybe you are one of those top interior designers wondering why your name didn’t appear on Google’s first page like Blanchard, Helen Green, Tollgard and Robin Moore Ede did?

Is it really important? For example I’m writing this in 2013 and Victoria and David Beckham have just, apparently, commissioned Kelly Hoppen to do their London pad. Do you think they did that Google search? Probably not, in fact certainly not, as I am sure they were influenced by many other factors. So even if you target ‘rich people’ then you might argue that your target market will never make that search.

Maybe.

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

I bet some of them do though. I bet some of those responsible for recent influxes of property investment in recent years do as they are based out of London. Perhaps they did have one or two recommendations but perhaps they also wanted a few new faces to present fresh ideas. & you weren’t on that list!

So how do you get on that list? Well this blog page probably did get on or near the top of that list. So you might wonder why? Well if you look at the first paragraph you will see that I use ‘who is the best interior designer in London’ near the start of my article (google likes that) Oooh and look I’ve just included it again in the previous sentence. Google likes that too. But I will stop putting it in as if you do it too many times Google does NOT like that. & now take a look at the title, the name of the page and the excerpt…do you see a pattern emerging? :-)

So the lesson is that you actually have to put the words into your website that people might type (keywords). That’s an art in itself. Covered elsewhere on this blog. Of course now you know the trick you will all do it and I will get bumped further and further down the listing…giving me a reason / excuse for not being on the first page when you finally get around to reading this!

Then of course you actually have to have a good website and I ‘m sure you’ll agree that those companies that come up do have amazing looking websites. We deal with some of them and they certainly ARE at least amongst the very best designers in Europe, let alone London. And yet if you have the time to check their technical google ranking or ‘pagerank’ (I’ve done it for you!) you will find that most are 3 or 4; which is not so great. Certainly no higher than this blog. So you DON’T have to have a really high pageranking to get on that first page. You  have to have the right content (as well as an OK pagerank).

Now here’s how you can cheat. Search instead for a generic “interior designer in London“. Different results. And you will see that maybe your adwords advert for those keywords appears on the right hand side (you don’t use adwords? why not?). You will maybe also see that you need to have a google business/places listing to get put there as well a perhaps a listing in Yell.

So you can cheat by paying for a position on the ads on the right hand side. It might cost you a bit though. And if you get a lot of ad clicks then google will promote you to the ads at the top of the search (because your ad generates more revenue for them). And you will see that those ads at the top don’t always look like ads and they kind of blend into the normal search results. And people kind of think that they are the first results of the search…and click them. Good clicks if you can get them maybe?

Maybe a listing in Yell is a good idea and getting a Google Places/Business listing IS DEFINITELY a good idea.

So who is the Best Interior Designer in London? Well Google’s first page for that search shows designfinder.co.uk and there listing says that www.forsterinc.co.uk are the best designers…so it must be true.

Related articles

How to create a BAD (digital) first Impression? For Interior Designer

Posted: 22 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, modern homes, modern interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »
Editions|Artists’ Book Fair

Editions|Artists’ Book Fair (Photo credit: j-No)

9 Ways for interior designers to create a bad impression – digitally of course!

When you first present to your newest prospect I’m pretty sure that you will be wearing your best ‘business’ clothes. When you first speak to a new client I’m sure you will make a real effort to do your best. When you send out a brochure or some other paper based literature I’m sure you will have it looking good. Hopefully too you take first emails seriously. And yes I’m sure your website looks great as well.

So all is hunky dory right? you can stop reading now and move on :-)

Well firstly, before I get into the meat of the subject matter that drew you here, I suggest that one exercise you can do on a Friday afternoon is to write down EVERY single TYPE of point of contact that you make with clients. I’ve gone through a few of them in the opening to this post. No rocket science there. However what I suggest you do is really think if they all present a coherent view, when taken together, of you and your business. Do they look similar enough and do they say similar things and present similar images?

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Just like that fine evening wear you have to impress on really special occasions and turn heads as you walk in the room all these points of contact between your business and your potential client are the same thing FOR YOUR BUSINESS (business? you know that thing that pays for the evening wear).

Well I’m going to talk a little about how to create a BAD digital first impression focussing on your website. So You need to look at the first page that people most often go to. In techie terms these are ‘landing pages’; they might include your home page or any special page that Google Adwords points to on your site or any page of yours that ranks particularly highly and get a lot of ‘hits’.

So to create  a BAD first impression here’s what your landing pages need to do:

  1. No Graphics: No logo, no head-shot of a smiley-you and certainly NOT clickable.
  2. Poor Content: Be sure to include waffle and irrelevance to the reason that drew the click..
  3. Lots of words and certainly no Bullet Points as bullet points are too easy to read.
  4. No Call to Action – an even better bad impression can be created if you make it as obscure as possible for the visitor to know what to do next. Perhaps presenting a beautiful image but making it as annoying as possible by adding some music and not making it obvious how to proceed to ANYWHERE else – Designers’ websites are OFTEN like this!
  5. White Papers, Videos, Registrations, etc: OK you might have accidentally put some of these on your website to be helpful but you can soon change any good impression that that might make by giving them away without even getting the visitor’s email.
  6. Confirmation/Thank You Pages: How rude! you forgot to add one of these and to make matters worse it didn’t offer the visitor another idea of what they could do on your site.
  7. Testing changes you make might improve a visitor’s experience to your site. So you certainly don’t want to do that..
  8. Google: create a bad impression with google as well. Ideally you will name your pages PAGE01, PAGE02 and so on. Never include keywords in the name of a page as that might help Mr Google do his job.
  9. Speling mstakes. Sme ppl really hate splling mistakes and abbreviations. Include a few to enrich their day.
  10. Always fail to deliver. Like by having 10 reasons rather than the advertised 9 reasons. Laugh! We might but our client’s probably won’t.

Am I perfect? No! Do I make these mistakes? Yes of course. It does provide some food for thought though.

Related articles

Faux Leather Martindale Test – What does it look like

Posted: 11 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contract Fabric, Fabric Design, Production & Details, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, Panelling & Wallcovering | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Ever wondered what a Martindale rub test looks like?

 

We’ve already shown a video of this <here> however of some additional interest might be the following faux leather samples that recently came back to us from the Martindale testing laboratory.

Faux Leather After Martindale Rub Test

Faux Leather After Martindale Rub Test

 

So the link (above) shows you the machine in action and the image above shows you the circular cuttings taken of the fabric that have been rubbed, in this case, 200,000 times. As you can see this excellent performance faux leather of ours lasted WELL above the industry ‘norm’ of 100,000.

 

Related articles

Leatherettes & Fine Faux Leather – More Collections

Posted: 10 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contract Fabric, Panelling & Wallcovering, Upholstery | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »
Leather

Leather (Photo credit: orebokech)

Faux Leathers are otherwise knows as leatherette, fake leather and artificial leather. We have a short article on their many benefits for interior designer <here>.

KOTHEA® are the UK’s leading producer of fine, performance faux leathers for the contract market.

We have some of the very highest performance faux leather fabrics with Martindale Rub Test results in excess of 200,000…some of the highest in Europe. You can specify this quality of product knowing that you can totally trust its abrasion resistance characteristics.

We have a broad range of collections covering the varied environmental needs of hospitality (spas, restaurants, hotels), marine (yachts), office and household (apartment, villa) usage. Our technical innovation gives the best fabrics and our designers the best patterns and extensive colour palettes.

Related articles

Design Revolution 2013: Interior Designers Work Smart

Posted: 10 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Source: Marketo

2013: Finally it’s here. Will it be a lucky year or an unlucky 13-based year?

I suspect that the number of the year will make zero difference to how well you do. You might get a stroke or two of good luck but I would strongly suspect that your actions might put you in better positions where ‘luck’ is more likely to go your way.

Being MORE creative might make you luckier. I also suspect that the creativity you already have is a ‘given’ amount. So what we need to do is work a bit smarter to get that darned creativity out of you.

On the right is a neat infographic from a company called Marketo (click the image to enlarge it). It’s tongue-in-cheek and gives 7 ways for you to waste time. Just in case you are having a sense of humour crisis today…YOU NEED TO DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE DIAGRAM SAYS :-)

Going through some of their points

  1. Set your email to only check for new emails every hour not every 5 minutes. Better still just only manually send and receive emails.
  2. Tidy desk = tidy mind (note to self: work required here!)
  3. Get a comfy chair and work in front of you not at an angle. Sit properly.
  4. Multi-tasking is the art of doing more than one thing BADLY. Men and women both think they are brilliant if they are multi-taskers. Hint: you’re not. Do one thing, do it well and move on.
  5. Turn off electronic alerts that distract you (similar to #1)
  6. Be unsociable and get back to work!
  7. Put ‘rationalise to-do list’ as first thing on ‘to-do’ list

good luck

Related articles

Fine Faux Leather Upholstery – New Contract Fabrics With High Abrasion Martindale

Posted: 8 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contract Fabric, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, Panelling & Wallcovering | Tags: , , | 5 Comments »

Fine Faux Leather Blue Upholstery Contract UsageUpholstery Faux Leathers are one of our many collections being revamped in 2013. We have introduced a new faux leather with a Martindale Rub test score exceeding 200,000. This is one of the highest available in the UK.

It still looks great and also has the added comfort factor of the interior designer knowing that it can be a worry-free product to spec for even demanding contract environments. Providing that it is correctly upholstered and specified it will withstand very significant amounts of abrasion.

Related articles

 

Interior Designers – How Good Is Your Brand’s Colour?

Posted: 18 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments »
Source: Marketo

Source: Marketo

Colour (color) really does matter. As an interior designer you don’t need me to tell you that. I think sometimes though we know what good colours are and what good colour combinations are and we know what feels right to us and to our clients in the spaces we inhabit.

However…

Many of us are not graphic designers and perhaps our own branding may have suffered because of colour choices we would make in our day job.

Apparently if you look more closely at the infographic on the right then you will see that their research shows that more than 90% of the world’s top 100 brands use either red, blue or grey as the primary branding colour and more than 90% of those same companies use at most 2 colours. So there’s very much a ‘keep it simple’ line coming out for brand colours. No big surprise there I suppose.

41% only use text – so that will be the brand name and/or ‘strap line’ ie there will probably be no logo as such.

Colours considered suitable for companies in ‘the home’ are green and yellow. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the colour YOU should have for your branding as an interior designer.

Indeed their research shows that ORANGE & BROWN are questionable colours for companies in the interiors space. With our Pantone 464 I suppose we fall foul of that.

Then again it is interesting to read that people associate ‘vibrant and fun’ with Orange. It is also interesting to read that the colour is the first thing that potential clients perceive about your brand.

Yet the safest choice appears to be shades of grey. If we all had grey houses and grey business and grey clothes I guess the world would necessarily be a greyer place. And I’m not sure it would be a better place for that.

Summary: Conform or stand out. It’s up to you. You can probably make most colours work as a brand but maybe a myriad of colours won’t work. Is this all stating the obvious?

 

 

Related articles

Interior Designers: Must Blog Better – But How?

Posted: 11 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, modern homes, modern interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »
Content Mix: Content Marketing Institute

Content Mix: Content Marketing Institute

The content Marketing Institute created that nice little image up there that  shows what a content mix might be.

This image has been bandied about on various websites as THE correct mix. It isn’t THE correct mix but it’s a good starter to make you think. It might make you think you are entertaining your potential clients too much or it might make you think you are being a bit boring talking about kitchen worksurfaces a little too much.

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

For a start it’s saying that you should blog 6 times a week or at least create content 6 times a week. For small businesses that just ain’t gonna happen in the real world.

However it certainly DOES give you ideas about what to write next.

Provide relevant information: Perhaps contribute to a thread somewhere telling people about some of the great things you learnt with a particular product on your last project.

Teach: Show you really know what you are talking about. Share some knowledge in an authoritative way on how you do your job.

Start a conversation: Perhaps on a LinkedIn group or your Facebook business page.

Inspire: others to do better. This could be on a forum or your could write something.

Entertain: Never hurts to make someone laugh.

Related articles

The Business Bible For Interior Designers

Posted: 7 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, Market Comment, modern homes, modern interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , | 54 Comments »

Interior Design

Interior Design (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are all (most) of our articles on “the business” of interior design. Sales and marketing resources for a modern digital world.

  1. business-tips-for-interior-designers
  2. 9-common-interior-design-mistakes-marketing
  3. 9.5-ways-for-interior-designers-to-make-more-money-profit
  4. interior-designers-get-more-customers-on-your-website
  5. Interior-designers-boosting-your-position-in-google-search-results
  6. the-proactive-interior-designer-1-0-1
  7. 6-things-that-interior-designers-do-wrong-on-their-web-sites
  8. interior-designers-5-and-a-half-ways-to-twitter-badly
  9. pitching-winning-managing-business-for-interior-designers
  10. facebook-interior-designers-10-steps-to-setup
  11. retail-interior-designers-8-ways-to-sell-more
  12. bad-things-they-say-about-interior-designers
  13. interior-designers-facebook-4-ways-to-correctly-use-it
  14. 7-facebook-mistakes-interior-designers-make
  15. designers-twitter-is-rubbish-use-twitter
  16. interior-design-marketing-2010-predictions
  17. designers-what-to-blog-about
  18. spying-on-competitors-staying-ahead
  19. interior-designer-did-your-web-site-just-popp-up-in-my-search
  20. interior-design-marketing-strategies
  21. facebook-adwords-effective-ad-writing-for-interior-designers
  22. interior-designers-facebook-key-elements-for-your-fan-page
  23. designers-interior-design-links-how-to-get-them
  24. target-markets-for-interior-designers-interior-design-marketing-strategy-2012
  25. interior-designers-an-update-on-using-facebook-linkedin-wordpress-blogs-and-twitter
  26. interior-designers-in-2012-how-do-people-find-you-on-the-web
  27. interior-designers-how-to-specify-a-luxury-cashmere-throw-for-your-client-projects
  28. an-interior-designer-gets-lots-of-web-visitors-but-few-leads-enquiries
  29. interior-designers-ipad-essential-apps
  30. interior-designers-to-houzz-or-not-to-houzz
  31. who-is-the-best-interior-designer-in-the-world
  32. interior-designers-and-their-financially-lucrative-bit-on-the-side
  33. interior-design-marketing-strategy-business-strategies-plan-for-designers-2012
  34. interior-designers-what-should-i-write-about-on-my-blog
  35. pinterest-and-customer-interest-interior-designers-pin-their-boards-to-the-wall
  36. interior-designers-why-does-no-one-visit-your-web-site
  37. marketing-strategies-interior-designers-consider-these-areas
  38. interior-designers-how-good-is-your-brands-colour/
  39. how-to-create-a-bad-digital-first-impression-for-interior-designer/
  40. sponsored-blog-post-by-interior-designers-charge-fair-rates-stop-getting-conned/

For more information on luxury cashmere throws or to request cuttings please visit www.kothea.com.  For black faux leather upholstery fabrics try <here> and for mohair velvet and mohair velvet upholstery fabric please follow the links.  Upholstery Linen is also one of our specialities as are luxury  silk velvet  fabrics.

Related articles

How do you explain INTERIOR DESIGN to a 6 year old boy?

Posted: 6 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors | Tags: , , , , | 35 Comments »

“How do you explain Interior Design to a 6 year old boy?”

That is the question.

I’ve posted the same question and a link to this (evolving) article on LinkedIn. You can take the question literally, if you wish. As a reward I will link back to you from this page for any noteworthy (good or bad!) answers that I might paraphrase for the sake of brevity. The more ‘sensibly’ creative your answer the more likely I will include you and your answer. Go create.

Designcouncil.org.uk describes interior design as “Interior design isn’t just about home decoration. It is concerned with creating functional and beautiful to look at interior spaces in all sorts of places including houses, public buildings and commercial properties such as shops, restaurants, leisure venues and offices. Interior design can also be applied to temporary environments, whether that’s pop-up shops that are in existence for just a few months at a time, or show homes and exhibition stands that may simply last days. Anything that has an interior can be designed, redesigned or refurbished.”

Whereas Wikipedia suggests: “… a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an ‘effective setting for the range of human activities’ that are to take place there”

Rebecca at RHA Interiors: “[if all else]…fails I always go for the football analogy,  ‘why choose red over blue?’”

Terry Maurer makes interesting comments noting that kids are increasingly influencers in the interior design purchasing and commissioning process in families.

Mark Randall at 1901 Design would ask the boy to learn what interior design means by “doing”  And the boy would be asked to create his perfect den. Sharon Kaper suggests a similar “show-and-tell” approach.

Mike Major suggests it should be no different to explaining it to a potential client.

Related articles
← Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 719 other followers