Portfolio has become one of the prime requirements of web professionals across the globe. It’s considered as a key tool for attracting new clients and projects. Whether you’re an amateur in web designing or have already worked on a number of projects, owning a perfect portfolio website can aid you in gathering clients from different corners of the world. In this blog, I’ll walk you through the different elements that are a must-have for every ideal portfolio website.
What is a Portfolio Website?
In simple terms, a Portfolio website serves as a platform wherein people/companies can showcase their professional information along with few samples of best work delivered in the past. Irrespective of your business level, a good portfolio website will allow you to promote your brand in a commendable manner. If you’re a creative person looking for projects then building an organized portfolio website is what’s going to work in your goodwill.
Elements for creating your Perfect Portfolio Website
Element No.1 – An eye-catchy logo
Logo is the very first thing your visitors are going to see after landing on your portfolio website. Since the Western world population reads from left to right, it makes complete sense to place your brand’s logo towards the top left corner in the website header. Your logo must be eye-catchy and linked to your site’s home page.
Element No.2- An appealing tagline
Taglines are the short sentences that leave a deep impression on the minds of readers. It’s not uncommon to find people going through an entire portfolio website after being impressed by the site’s tagline. I recommend you to keep your tagline short and snappy. Try making it as compelling as possible to keep the visitors engaged on your website.
Element No.3- An informative Portfolio Section
Well, this section is believed to be the most important element in your Portfolio website because it’s the particular place in your site where you highlight samples of your previous work. Clients always want to get an idea about a service provider’s work quality and what else than checking the portfolio can serve this cause. In order to make your portfolio website stand out from the crowd, make sure to include high-resolution images along with brief descriptions for different projects delivered in the past. Also, don’t forget to hyperlink the project name to its live version available over the web. Doing this will increase your chances of getting shortlisted as the clients would be able to get a complete idea of your work quality.
Element No.4- A compelling “About Me” Section
A portfolio website allows you to gather clients via a virtual environment. Considering this fact, its utmost essential for you to write context that describes your personality and work in an influential style. In other words, the content for your site’s “About Us” section must urge your visitors to choose working with you, on an instant basis. The more details you include in this section, the better would be the chances for forming a bond with your visitors. You can always choose to show a picture of yourself to add that element of legitimacy in your portfolio.
Element No.5- A well-organized Services Section
This section of your portfolio site will allow your customers know that they’ve landed on the correct website. Apart from jotting down the services you offer, make sure to include important details for each one of them. Breaking down the services using bullets/lists is yet another means of making things clear to your visitors.
Element No.6- A well-defined Contact Section
This element is usually neglected by a majority of portfolio site owners. Even if you’ve succeeded in impressing your visitors, placing an unorganized contact form will definitely make you lose a potential client. Hence, it’s necessary to include complete contact information that’s accurate and easy to access. Try keeping the form fields minimal to sustain the interest of people who aren’t into the habit of filling long forms. Your Contact form must include the following fields:
v Name of visitor
v Email address of visitor
v Website URL of visitor
v Details of inquiry
Add-on features that’ll hone your Portfolio website’s performance
In addition to the above-mentioned six elements, some add-ons aid your website in gaining an instant recognition over the web. I’ve explained few of them below:
Feature#1- Call to Action button
It’s been found that portfolio websites with a “Call to Action” button on each page fare well as compared to the ones that have this button on specific pages. You can choose to link the “Call to Action” button to your latest blog post, portfolio page or contact page to increase your site’s conversion rate.
Feature#2- Include social media
As a result-driven approach, you can choose to include social media in your portfolio site. You can do this by encouraging your visitors to follow you on social networking websites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Greater the count of people following your site, greater would be your chances of getting popular over the internet.
Feature#3- Incorporate a Blog section
Blogs have always been considered effective tools for promoting an idea. By incorporating a blog section within your site, you can gather customers from different domains. You may allow people to subscribe to your RSS feeds, which will help them to stay abreast with all the latest innovations brought into your website. Don’t forget to enable comments for your blogs as this would assist you in analyzing your clients’ response for your services.
Conclusion
Building a perfect portfolio website is undoubtedly a daunting task. I hope through this post, you’d have definitely gained insights on creating a portfolio site that’s in synchronization with your purpose as well as your clients’ expectations.
Please don’t forget to drop in your opinions and/or suggestions via the comments section below.
