What is a portfolio website and what is its purpose? Most importantly,
what are the most important components of a portfolio website? Let’s find out!
Look, it doesn’t matter if you’re a web designer, freelance web developer,
artist or a creative agency, having a solid and unique portfolio is a must if you wanna be visible
to potential clients and stand out from the competition, cuz boy… the competition is crazy!
So first up, what is a portfolio website? It's essentially an extension of a freelancer’s (or
company’s) résumé. It provides a convenient way for potential clients to view your work
and learn about your personality and style.
And the ultimate purpose of a portfolio website is to provide a way for you to get a steady
stream of new clients, offers, and gigs. Yes, you should view your portfolio website
as your sales page. Because ultimately a customer comes to you with their business
issue or goal, and you're selling your talent and problem-solving skills to help them excel.
​With that in mind, here are the key components of any successful portfolio.
Number 1: Create a client-centered portfolio This is where you need to
showcase how you solve issues. This is the most important part for any client.
Make sure you include examples of your work with a clear and concise description of a client's
goal or problem and demonstrate how you used your skills and knowledge to
solve that problem. This way a potential client will have a point of reference,
and a clearer picture of your professional competence.
Number 2 - Keep the structure simple for easier navigation
As a designer or a developer you might have dozens of projects to showcase in your portfolio, but
before dumping them all into the internet, take a brief pause. This is a mistake that many amateur
designers and developers make: They just upload all the work they have regardless of quality.
This clutters the website, detracts from the portfolio's focus, and turns the portfolio
into a colorful mess. So kill your darlings: Pick only the best of your work and come up with a way
for visitors to see more with minimal clicking and page hopping. A PRO tip for developers,
if you’re a novice, you should avoid showcasing any project that took you
fewer than 2-3 days to complete. Generic website clones are just not gonna cut it.
Also, as I said before, your portfolio is your sales page,
and it's very important for you to be easy to reach. You never know, a site visitor may have
questions about your work or want to book a quick call. Make sure you include a clean
and professional contact page or a contact form that pops up when someone visits the home page.
And don't forget to provide links to your social media for more contact opportunities.
Here’s an example of a great portfolio site I really like. And if you’d like to
build a portfolio that has a structure like this, there’s an easy way to do it. You can
use 10Web’s AI website builder. Just copy the URL of a preferred portfolio website,
place it in the AI website builder, and just in a couple of minutes it’ll create its
visual and structural copy, which you can then easily customize using tons of handy widgets.
I left a few examples of great portfolio sites in the description,
so definitely check them out and try to recreate them with 10Web’s AI builder.
Number 3 - Bake Your Personality Into Design:
People relate to other people better than they do to anything else, so don't be afraid of adding a
personal touch, showcasing your personality in the portfolio. You can use unique color
solutions, show pictures of yourself, your favorite quotes, hobbies,
and personal anecdotes. Share visual elements that they can’t find in any other portfolio.
Try to avoid using too many trendy solutions, because that’s how you become one of the many.
Number 4 - Pick your niche This one’s also about standing out
from the crowd. See, these days a potential customer has an enormous amount of choices,
and can easily get confused. To come to the customer's rescue, you need to be smart and
focus on a narrow segment of the market. This way you'll attract customers with that very specific
need. So do SEO research and tailor everything in your portfolio to a specific term like “book
cover design”, “package design” or “front-end Java developer”. This will also help your
portfolio website rank better on Search Engines and bring more qualified leads and conversions.
Number 5 - Provide testimonials
Social proof is an excellent way to build trust on any site, but it’s especially true
for portfolios. It’s easy to collect testimonials if you have good relationships with your clients.
How do you know the person or company behind a website can be trusted?
Many visitors feel that genuine endorsements from real people can help to build that trust.
That’s it, folks! These are the main components of a successful portfolio website. Let me know
in the comments what other components you’d include here. And I’ll see you in our next video!