The ability to create the right home decor, for the right family, lies somewhere between art and inborn talent. The art is obvious: choosing harmonious colors, buying the perfect furniture, and so on come together to create a tableau that is undeniably artistic. But to those of us who lack the eye for home decor, it seems more like a talent with which people are born.
But, as with any enterprise, getting your voice heard can be difficult, especially in a field like Interior Design, where the competition is stiff. However, the age of the internet provides unique tools to help grow brands and businesses, to become a Digital Influencer. Even better, promoting your brand online can be done with minimal tech support.
Now, for the rest of this blog, we will cover what it takes to make a killer website or app that truly grows Home Decor and Interior Design businesses. The usefulness of tech in promoting offline businesses is well documented and recommended for anyone looking to promote their image. If you would like to learn more, feel free to peruse our earlier post on becoming a fitness expert.
An App for Designers
As already mentioned, Interior Design is an exceptionally visual medium. This makes it perfect for apps and websites. Good Interior Design can be conveyed through images much more effectively than say, a perfectly made cheesecake. With food, a viewer knows that food looks good. There may be some nostalgic drooling over past cheesecakes.
But really, the cake could taste like cardboard. Home Decor, however, is always visual. Whether you’re seeing the design in person or experiencing over an app or website, the entire experience is visual or spatial and can be processed as such. Arguably, the biggest difference in processing Interior Design over the internet viruses in person is the scale (i.e. a photo only shows part of a home).
Don’t worry: this is a hurdle easily overcome with the right experience and expertise. SDI has designed numerous apps in three different industries that can help rectify problems such as the one discussed above – and bigger ones. The first field is obvious – apps we’ve built for Interior Design. But two other areas are Real Estate and general design.
When it comes to Real Estate, its applicability is again clear. Real Estate is also all about showing off a home, and many agents show a house already furnished. From our work in this industry, we’ve come to realize that the self-guided 360 tour is often more effective than a video tour. This is for a few reasons:
1. Video tours are directed by the recorder. But when examining the design, people generally prefer to control the experience themselves. For the most part, people enjoy the ability to hang out an in a room, look around it, and even go back to another room.
2. When you do a recording, you need some audio. This can be done with elevator music, or a real song, or conversation, or…you get the point. No matter what, a video means some audio, or weird empty silence.
3. Cost-effectiveness is always of paramount concern to most of us, but especially those trying to get their SMB off the ground. The simple truth is that the production costs between a video and a guided tour are significant. Not just that, but the hosting costs are also noticeably higher for a video. Not only does a webmaster need to prevent lag within the video itself, but something as a small 3-second slowdown for page load time results in a significant dropoff in user traffic.
When we reference “general design apps” we are specifically speaking of our projects working for several Floristry businesses, including eCommerce types and schools that specifically on teaching floristry design. Floristry is specifically very useful because it gave our designers and developers experienced in composing tableaus, playing with striking elements (from colors to placement), and the opportunity to play around in another largely visual environment.
But why an app? Well, apps are better. Look, we love websites. They have their place and can truly be an exceptional tour – in the right arena. That arena is not Interior Design. One of the best ways to become a digital influencer is to get people to follow you – which requires offering something.
It’s probably fair to say that many people visiting the digital home of a Designer aren’t looking to hire said Designer (that’s okay, there are many paths to Monetization). What they are looking for is an inspiration or a reminder. Where is this most often done? That’s right – at the store. Moreover, the significant investment in tech has moved away from desktops and laptops and towards mobile devices. It’s always a good strategy to build for the future and not for the present!
Want to learn more? Give us a call at +1.408.805.0495 / +1.408.621.8481 – or click to contact us!
