Chances are you’ve been to one of those massive directories of “inspiration websites” (Awwwards, One Page Love, Land Book, etc.) looking for ideas for your next design.
But have you stopped to consider how those sites were chosen for the showcase?
I can’t believe I missed the giant “submit your site” button on all of them — but when one of our TABLE members, Tommy Callaghan, shared that he was getting one of his recent client projects featured, it was one of those lightbulb moments…
“Why the hell haven’t I been submitting my designs to those sites?!”
Impostor syndrome aside, there are a lot of benefits to having your work featured on these sites — and Tommy’s had several of them selected and shared that he always sees a bump in website traffic and attention on social media.
He’s made it a habit to submit his best work to these platforms (with success), and I think it’s time we take his lead.
Let’s break down why this works so well, talk about the free and paid sites you can submit your work to, and outline how to make this part of your post-launch process.
The Benefits of Submitting Your Work to Website Inspiration Galleries
If even just one of these are true, it’s probably worth it on its own, but based on what Tommy shared, I came up with 5 this strategy could boost your marketing efforts:
- Increased Visibility and Traffic. These showcase sites get a lot of visitors — many of whom you’d never reach otherwise. Plus, a lot of them share their latest additions on social and tag the designers. How many of those people will end up on your website?
- Quality Backlinks & SEO. These showcases not only link back to the site you built, but to your agency as well. Due to their size and traffic, they have a decent authority, which could mean valuable backlinks for your ranking profile.
- Happy Clients. Imagine telling your clients the website you just built for them is being featured by industry publications. Not only will your client be even more proud of their website, they’ll value your work even more. Plus, they’ll want to share it with their friends (online and in real life).
- More Credibility. When prospects are browsing your site and see your work has been featured in various places, it gives you a huge boost in credibility. Most clients don’t really know what makes a website good, but they’ll assume your work is if it’s being featured.
- It’s Simple (and Repeatable). Creating valuable content is hard, but collecting a few screenshots and submitting forms is a piece of cake. Submitting your work to these sites as part of your process is an easy and repeatable marketing strategy.
Building It Into Your Process
Like with most marketing strategies, this one won’t work if you’re not both consistent and persistent. A great way to build that consistency is to make submitting your sites part of your post-launch process.
- Gather Your Assets. Grab the best screenshots you can, write a compelling project description and collect all the relevant links.
- Choose the Right Sites. Before submitting, browse through the gallery’s work and make sure your project aligns with the aesthetic and quality to give yourself the best shot.
- Submit to Multiple Platforms. Collecting all the screenshots was the hard part, so you might as well submit your project to as many sites as possible.
- Notify Your Client. If your work does get featured, make sure you have a process for notifying clients. You’ll want to help them realize the significance of being featured and make it easy for them to share the news (with copy/paste text, graphics, and links).
- Share It EVERYWHERE. Being featured makes for a great, congratulatory social posts, but don’t forget to add an “as seen on” or “featured on” section to your portfolio for all that credibility!
Where to Submit Your Work
There are a bunch of different places you can submit your work — some free, some with a fee. But even the most expensive ($65 at Awwwards) is well worth the fee for the exposure you could gain (and still cheaper than ads!).
Here are a few that Tommy recommended checking out:
High Profile, Competitive Sites
- Awwwards ($65 per submission)
- CSS Design Awards ($50 per submission)
- One Page Love (Free submission, $29 if selected)
- Land Book (Free)
Moderate Competition, Affordable or Free
- CSS Winner ($9 per submission)
- Best CSS (Free)
- Design Nominees ($15 per submission)
- Websurl ($10 per submission)
Easier to Get Featured, Still Valuable
- BeautifulPress (Free)
- Seesaw (Free)
- Designmunk (Free)
- Dark.Design (Free)
What Do You Have to Lose?
Submitting your work to these galleries is a relatively easy and inexpensive channel for marketing that most of us haven’t even tried. If your site is featured, it’s a home run in terms of visibility, credibility, and client satisfaction.
Tommy mentioned seeing a noticeable boost in traffic and followers on social anytime he’s been featured — who doesn’t want that?
And, what do you have to lose? Worst-case scenario, you’ve done half of the work for a great portfolio piece or case study for your own website (which you said you’ve been wanting to do, right?).
A huge shoutout to Tommy for sharing this (and agreeing to let me share his little secret with the 11,000+ of you). It’s one of those simple yet brilliant ideas that I wish I would have been doing all along!
I’d love to know if you’ve ever tried this before and what kind of results you’ve seen — so make sure to share your thoughts in the group.
Kyle Van Deusen
After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
