A creative agency website that wins the next client, and how to build it

A small agency's website has one reader who matters: the prospect who has a budget, a problem and three tabs open. In the minute they give you, the site has to say what you do in words they use, show that you have done it before for someone like them, put faces to the name, and make the next step a form away. This is the FolioPage guide for agencies and studios of a few people - branding, web design, digital marketing, social media, video production, photography studios, PR, advertising, UX and product, creative collectives, animation, events, SEO and content, app development, illustration studios and architecture practices - on what such a site has to do, the pages and the case studies, the sections that sell, lead capture, analytics and embeds, the templates built for it, the plan that fits, and how to have it live this afternoon.

What an agency website has to do

The prospect's questions come in a fixed order: what do you do, for whom, have you done this before, who are you, and what happens if I get in touch. Every one of them is a page or a section, and the site's job is to answer them in that order with no detours:

• Say what you do in the client's words. "Brand identity for food and drink companies" beats "integrated creative solutions" with every buyer who has ever hired an agency.
• Prove it with case studies. The client, the problem, what you did, what happened, with the work in pictures.
• Show the team. A prospect is hiring people. Faces, names, roles, and a sentence about how you work together.
• Make the next step easy. A form that lands in the inbox the same minute, a line about how you start a project, and what a first conversation costs (usually nothing).

A site that does these four things in that order converts. A site that leads with a manifesto and a looping video asks the prospect to work for the answers, and they will not.

The pages that earn their place

An agency site is the clearest case for several pages, because each service and each case study deserves its own address that a prospect can be sent to. The map:

A studio of two can run all of this on one page with the case studies behind it; the templates for this category come in both shapes, seven one-page sites and one with several pages.

Case studies: the Portfolio app doing agency work

On FolioPage a case study is an item in the Portfolio app: a cover, a gallery of the work, a description with room for the whole story, custom fields for the facts (client, industry, year, services, results), and a category. From the items the app publishes an index that filters by category without leaving the page, and a page per case study with the gallery, the story, the facts and links to the next and previous one.

Two decisions make the difference:

• Categorize by what the prospect is buying. By service (Branding, Web, Campaigns) when your clients come for a discipline, by industry (Food and drink, SaaS, Hospitality) when they come for sector experience. You can have both sets of categories; the filter shows them all.
• Write the result, not the deliverable. "A new identity and packaging system" is a deliverable. "Listed by two national retailers within the year" is a result. Every case study should end on the second kind of sentence, with a number when the client allows one.

Thirty index layouts and twenty-four case-study layouts are available, picked in the app's settings. The Free plan holds ten case studies and three categories, Pro a hundred and fifty, Max as many as you have shipped.

The sections that sell

Everything on an agency site that is not a case study is a section from the library, edited on the page in the template's style:

• A services grid, with an icon, a name and two lines each, linking to the service page or section.
• A process section: the four or five stages of a project, so a prospect knows what working with you looks like.
• A client logo wall and a testimonial section: the two things a buyer forwards to their boss.
• A team section with portraits, names and roles.
• Statistics: years, projects, clients, retention, whichever numbers are real.
• Pricing or packages for agencies that productize, and a FAQ for the questions every prospect asks before the call.
• A contact form and a CTA band at the end of every page, so the next step is never more than a scroll away.

Leads: the form, the inbox, and what happens next

On the Pro and Max plans, contact and inquiry forms land in your inbox with spam protection built in, 1,000 submissions a month on Pro and 5,000 on Max. Ask for the three things you need to reply with a real answer - what they need, roughly when, and a budget range - and nothing else; every extra field costs you a lead. On the Free plan the contact page carries an email address and the form waits for the upgrade.

The rest of the lead path runs on tools you already have, and that is what custom code is for.

Analytics, pixels, chat and booking: custom code

Agencies live in their tools, and a site that cannot carry them is a site you will not use. On Pro and Max, FolioPage gives you three custom-code slots for the whole site - the head, the start of the body and the end of the body - and puts whatever you paste there on every page, as is: analytics, ad pixels, a chat widget, a booking embed, a CRM form, tag managers. There is no allowlist and no filtering; the site is yours to instrument.

Custom CSS lives on the same page for the studio that wants to adjust a template beyond the design editor. The design editor itself sets the fonts, the colors, the header and the footer for the whole site, so the brand is applied once and every page follows.

Proposals, insights and the practicalities

• Proposals and client pages. On Pro and Max, any page can be password-protected and hidden from search engines: a proposal, a pitch deck as a page, a staging area for a client's review, sent with one link and one password.
• Insights. The Blog app on Max publishes articles with categories, a search box, featured posts and a sidebar, so an agency that writes gets the page that wins the long-tail searches in its field.
• Your domain, your brand. Pro and Max connect a domain you own and remove the FolioPage branding from the page.
• One editor. A FolioPage site is edited from one account. Studios name the person who keeps the site, and the rest send them the work.

What changes with what you sell

Each of these deserves its own guide, and they will follow in the Guides section, one at a time.

Templates made for agencies

Eight FolioPage templates were built for this category, all with the Portfolio app switched on and sample case studies in place. Three of them show the range:

Preview any of them live on desktop and on a phone. The structure and the tone are what you are choosing; the case studies and the faces will be yours within the day.

The full set is on the Agency templates page.

The plan that fits

• Free builds the site and shows it to the team: five pages, ten case studies, fifty files, a folio.page address. No card, no time limit.
• Pro, $12 a month or $108 a year, is the agency plan: a domain you own, no branding, the inquiry form with 1,000 submissions a month, custom code for analytics and embeds, password-protected proposal pages, fifty pages, a hundred case studies, 2 GB of media.
• Max, $24 a month or $216 a year, adds the Blog app for insights, video uploads (MP4 and WebM), 5,000 form submissions, 8,000-pixel images, 10 GB and unlimited pages and case studies.

An agency that writes or ships film is a Max agency; everyone else runs on Pro from the day the domain connects. The pricing page has the full comparison.

Build it this afternoon

The order that works, assuming the case-study images and the team portraits are ready.

The longer version, with the schedule by the hour, is the guide on how to build a portfolio website in a day.

Keep it current

• A case study a quarter. The newest one goes on the homepage; the weakest one retires.
• Update the logos and the numbers when a client ships or a number moves. Prospects notice a wall of logos from three years ago.
• Re-read the services page twice a year. What you sell changes faster than the page does.

Can several people edit the site?

Not yet. One account owns and edits a site. Most studios give the site to one person and send them the work.

Can we add analytics, a chat widget or a booking tool?

Yes, on Pro and Max. Custom code slots in the head and body carry any script or embed, on every page, as pasted.

Can we run a blog for insights?

Yes, on the Max plan. The Blog app publishes articles with categories, search, featured posts and a sidebar, each on its own page.

Can we show a proposal to one client only?

Yes, on Pro and Max. A page can be password-protected and hidden from search engines, and sent with one link and one password.

Do case studies have their own pages and can they be filtered?

Yes. Every case study is a page with its gallery, story and facts, and the index filters by category without reloading.

Other fields have their own page in the Made for section, and every general how-to lives in Guides.