5 Tips for Creating an Awesome Online Portfolio
An awesome online portfolio can win you more work, promote your services perfectly and set you apart from the competition. Whether you are a graphic designer, a copywriter or even a social media expert, you can showcase past achievements in one simple website.
Here are 5 tips on what makes an awesome portfolio website – from presenting your work in the right way to ensuring it leads to inquiries.
1. Keep it simple
When starting out, it can be tempting to include every single job you’ve done on your portfolio, since you want to show off your versatility and experience. However, no matter how engaging the content is, this can actually bore the viewer. It also gives more opportunity for the potential client to discover work of yours they don’t like.
It is best to stick to 5-10 examples, making sure these are the ones you really are proud to promote. Your portfolio doesn’t need to showcase all of you. It just needs to lead the visitor to contact you for work. If a client is interested and they would like to see more, they will certainly contact you.
2. Ease of access
You may find one platform displays your work perfectly, but is it accessible to the average user? Choosing how to display your work is crucial, and can make the difference between your work being viewed or ignored.
A simple WordPress website is best and once that’s perfected, you can add the frills.
3. User friendly
As a freelancer working on the internet, you are probably adept at finding your way around any website. Your audience, however, may not be au fait with the internet or fancy websites and they just want to view your work before making a decision. Keep it simple and keep it well labelled.
4. Show AND tell
Of course the visuals are important, and your portfolio will show your work whether it’s design, coding or copy. However, you also need to tell the visitor what you’d like them to do next. Would you like them to contact you via phone or email? Visit another website, view your testimonials or buy a service?
Unless you include instructions and clear call-to-actions in your portfolio website, your visitors aren’t going to know what they need to do next.
Your contact details should be easily available on every single page of your website, so as soon as a client sees something they like, they don’t have to search to find how to contact you.
5. Resist rubbish
When you have your own website, it can be tempting to see it as an extra source of revenue on its own. Advertisements and affiliate schemes can bring in money, but they may dilute the message you’re trying to get across. You may also find that others want to partner with you or exchange links, which can be mutually beneficial but again it takes the spotlight away from your work.
There are a lot of freelancers out there and a lot of competition. In order to make sure your portfolio website stands out, make sure it relays quality, not quantity. You have just 5 seconds to make that all important first impression and this may become impossible if visitors are faced with ads or links to an irrelevant partner site.
