<p>This study explores various structural strategies to mitigate stiffness irregularities and enhance seismic performance in buildings. This paper presents an investigation into optimizing stilt floor designs with a focus on stiffness and column contribution with three options carried out in ETABS software. Option 1 involves neglecting the effect of infill walls and designing columns and beams of the soft story with an enhanced base shear of 2.5 times the design base shear. Option 2 improves story stiffness by introducing shear walls around the staircase on the ground floor. This method effectively mitigates stiffness irregularities without significantly altering the architectural layout, providing a cost-effective solution that enhances the seismic resilience of the building. Option 3 further enhances story stiffness by distributing shear walls throughout the ground floor. This strategy not only avoids stiffness irregularities but also reduces floor stress concentrations due to lateral forces, optimizing the overall seismic performance of the structure. Eccentricity in ground floor columns introduces additional moments that must be addressed in structural analysis. Implementing shear walls on the ground floor emerges as a cost-effective alternative to traditional soft story designs, reducing overall construction costs by approximately 30%. Distributing shear walls across the structure, as opposed to concentrating them, improves column shear contribution, lowers overall seismic forces on the ground floor, and reduces floor stress concentrations due to lateral forces. To avoid uplift in footings, shear walls should be strategically placed away from the edges. This study highlights the critical role of optimized structural strategies in enhancing the seismic resilience and cost efficiency of stilt floor designs.</p>