1. What do you actually do?
Most homepages open with a full-bleed hero image or an autoplaying carousel. They look like magazine covers. They communicate almost nothing. Carousels are worse than static images because they take control away from the visitor. The content moves before anyone finishes reading it, and whatever isn't on the first slide might as well not exist.
This matters more for landscape architecture than for other design professions. A photo of a building tells you what the building is. A photo of a landscape doesn't. An aerial of a courtyard garden and an aerial of a regional park can look almost identical. Without text, a visitor can't tell what you do, where you work, or at what scale.
The highest-scoring firm in the review was an Australian practice whose homepage opens with one image and a plain-language sentence explaining who they are and what they specialise in. No carousel. No ambiguity. Nothing flashy.
The fix: pick one strong image. Drop the carousel. Add a plain-language descriptor above the fold, not a tagline, something like: "We design parks, campuses, and public spaces across Australia." Without it, visitors who can't figure out what you do in five seconds move to the next firm.
2. Can I see work like mine?
Once a visitor knows what you do, they want to see projects that resemble theirs. A homeowner looking at gardens doesn't care about your highway interchange. A council preparing an RFQ wants civic projects with measurable outcomes, not aerial photography.
What they find instead are flat grids of thumbnails, all given equal weight, sometimes sorted alphabetically, sometimes by date. A visitor scanning a portfolio of 40 equally-sized images has to inspect each one to find something relevant. Most won't. Filters by project type (residential, public, commercial) and one featured project at the top would let visitors self-select in seconds. Almost no firm in the review did this.
One US firm did something different. On a project page, they included thermal imaging showing measurable cooling effects from their planting design. That's not a pretty picture. That's proof of performance. The most valuable outcomes of landscape architecture are often the ones you can't photograph: stormwater capacity, microclimate improvement, biodiversity gains. If your project pages are photos only, you're leaving your strongest evidence off the table.
The fix: treat each project page as a short case study. The brief, the constraints, the approach, what was delivered. The firm whose projects read as stories, not slideshows, is the one that gets the call.
3. What happens if I hire you?
Most prospective clients have never hired a landscape architect before. When someone can't picture what happens after they reach out, the easiest option is not reaching out. The status quo wins. This was the lowest-scoring category in the entire review, and probably the most expensive gap on any firm's website.
When the process is invisible, the enquiry feels like a commitment. When it's visible, it feels like a next step. Three firms scored full marks here: two in New Zealand and one in the US. None had fancy websites. What they had was a page walking through each phase (initial meeting, concept design, developed design, construction) with a sentence on what happens and what the client receives. That was enough.
The fix: a simple process page that answers "what happens next?" You're not locking in a scope. You're showing someone that you've done this before, that there's a clear path through it, and that the first step is just a conversation.
4. Should I trust these people?
Most About pages in the review read like this: "We are passionate about creating inspiring outdoor spaces that enrich communities." That's the landscape architecture version of "your call is important to us." Visitors don't trust it because there's nothing to trust. Vague language isn't neutral; it reads as evasion. One firm in Singapore has won multiple international awards. They have no team page.
"Award-winning" is meaningless. "2024 AILA National Award for the Riverside Precinct masterplan" is meaningful. A single testimonial from a past client is more persuasive than anything you write about yourself, because it's someone else's experience, not your marketing. Awards and testimonials are some of the most persuasive content on your site, but most firms bury them on a single page or leave them out entirely. When a prospective client is comparing two firms with similar portfolios, the one that feels like real people wins.
The fix: name specific awards with project names. Add client testimonials in their own words. Put both on the homepage, project pages, and contact page. Keep team bios to a photo and a couple of sentences.
5. How do I get in touch?
Even if most of your work comes through referrals, the referred prospect's first move is almost always to check your website. If they can't figure out how to contact you quickly, the referral loses its momentum. By the time someone is looking for the contact page, the hard work is done. They've decided you're worth talking to. This is where I found the most expensive mistakes.
At one firm, the only contact option was an email link in the footer. At another, the contact form was broken entirely. A third of the firms in the review made it harder than it should be to do the one thing the site exists to produce: an enquiry.
The fix: a visible contact button in the navigation on every page, a form that works, and a line that sets expectations ("We'll get back to you within two business days").
The gap
Landscape architecture has a harder version of this problem than most design professions. The work photographs beautifully but communicates poorly. Scale is invisible, contributions are shared, and the most valuable outcomes can't be captured in an image. Every firm in this review was doing good work. Their websites just hadn't caught up yet. The firms that close this gap first will be the ones prospective clients remember when it's time to pick up the phone.
