For graphic designers, photographers and creative freelancers, having an online portfolio is essential to showcase your skills to prospective clients and employers. Because of the nature of these creative industries, having a high-quality portfolio is vital in providing a visual representation of past work that can help inspire a new audience.
A good portfolio helps to build your brand, increase your credibility and control your digital narrative, enhancing your chances of securing new contracts.
It can also involve a lot of pressure, as the focus of this project is you. Here are some tips on how to create the ultimate portfolio experience that will dazzle your prospective clients and employers.1. Choose the right platform
A quality designer is never going to blame their tools, however choosing the right creative suite can certainly make the job a lot easier. This is the time to audit your design programs and web-building platforms to determine whether they are the best options, or whether it might be time for an upgrade.
Look for options that combine powerful visual and code-based design capabilities along with a wide range of helpful tools. You’ll want your portfolio to be as exciting and innovative as your work, so try to avoid a rigid formula. That means mixing up your fonts, layout and image sizes – there are plenty of helpful templates and tools like an online image resizer to build your portfolio with confidence and professionalism.
2. Start with a clear strategy
You are going to need a roadmap for building your digital portfolio website and it begins with identifying your target audience. Write down all of the attributes of the type of employer or client you are trying to impress and what they would be looking for. Next, carry out competitor research.
See what others are doing with successful digital portfolio websites so that you can emulate and improve on. Now comes the time to carefully choose which projects to include. Don’t feel like you have to have an example of everything you have ever done. Instead, consider the projects that have had the most impact – as they will likely have a similar effect on your digital portfolio website. Aim to showcase a variety of skills and expertise, but ultimately you want to focus on displaying your best work.
3. Prioritise usability and navigation
When trying to showcase your best work, it can be easy to go too far. You don’t want your online portfolio website to be too clever for its own good, creating a convoluted experience that has the opposite of your intended impact. For example, if you overload your site with images and it takes more than three seconds to load, 40 percent of visitors are going to leave immediately.
It is crucial to ensure the loading times are fast and the site is simple to navigate with easy to use menus, content that is clearly sorted and easy to access, a highly functional search option and easy ways for visitors to contact you. Make your details easy to see from anywhere on the website, and guide your visitors with clearly labelled categories, so they can search what is most relevant to them.
4. Curate your content
Creating your online portfolio is not a set-and-forget practice, it is a living website that needs to be constantly curated and updated. Begin with your best work, but be mindful of keeping your website fresh by regularly updating with fresh projects and removing the ones that are not performing well or have become dated – or updated with more recent work. This has the added benefit of improving your SEO, website authority, keywords and overall ranking in Google search results, leading to higher volume.
Stay on top of what is currently trending as well, presenting content that fills a need in the market. For example, in the months leading up to Christmas – bump up all your festive work to the top of the page. Be sure to highlight your diversity as well, with work for blogs, corporate websites, educational sites, e-Commerce pages, personal websites and anything else that is currently trending.
5. Be a storyteller
Anybody can plonk a bunch of images on a page and call it a website. The real art is telling your story, exposing your personality and winning the trust of your viewers. It is no secret that almost 70% of all internet users say that brand stories influence their purchasing decisions.
This begins with an effective ‘About Me’ page that shares your personality, your journey and your values. Including a professional photo and insights in your personal insights will also help to engender trust.
6. Let your design skills shine
It’s not just your projects that visitors will be looking at, the design of your portfolio website itself will be scrutinised – so time to break out your best work to reflect your personal brand and professionalism.
Focus on consistency with your colour scheme, typography and layout to ensure your visitors enjoy a cohesive user experience. Get a third party to help proof-read your content to ensure there are no typos or other mistakes that might escape your own editing process.
Choose legible fonts and ensure there is plenty of white space so your website is not cluttered and remains easy to read. Use high quality images, but ensure you resize them so they don’t impact your page loading speed.
And finally, most importantly, test your website on as many browsers and devices as you can, to ensure it looks great and performs well for every user.
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There can be a lot of pressure involved in creating your own portfolio compared to creating content for clients. So create a checklist using the points above and ensure everything is ticked off.
With a lot of attention to detail and your own skills shining through, you’re sure to create a portfolio that cannot be ignored by prospective clients or employers.
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