If you don’t have a portfolio website yet, you are officially out of excuses. Even if you’re not coding-savvy, you can count on platforms like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and many others that are almost, if not completely code-free. That said, you need to make sure you have a killer portfolio website so you can stand out from the crowd.
We’ll be talking specifically about tips that are less talked about, so less design inspirations and more presentation musts. No matter what design choices you make, remember that this is a reflection of who you are and what it’s like to work with you. The content needs to be optimized for your potential clients and how your set of skills can help them.
Make it easy to reach you with a contact form
The main reason that you need a portfolio website is to make it easy for people to find your work and decide to hire you. If they can’t easily find a way to reach you, very rarely they will try harder to find out. You can increase your number of clients just by having a contact form in an intuitive spot on your website.
Create a custom contact form with a powerful online form creator, like MightyForms that is completely code-free. The last thing you need after working hard on a website full of personality is a bland contact form that doesn’t even have automated functions. MightyForms makes it easy to create e-mail notifications and confirmation messages so you can offer the best user experience.
Quality over Quantity every time
Another great tip that will help you stand out is to prioritize every content by its quality, instead of listing every single job you’ve ever done in a long, unfiltered list. This means showing off jobs and projects that you know will resonate the most with your potential new clients.
A great way to make sure you’ve picked the best projects to highlight is to check if they helped you make great connections and if the client gave you a recommendation. Those are the best endorsements in the eyes of your potential new clients since it further proves that you are a valuable asset for them and the results they need.
Share your process and your results
Which brings us to our last tip that will make your portfolio website stand out: share your work process and your results. You can encourage more people to want to work with you simply by sharing stories and step-by-steps of what it was like to work with other clients.
Sharing results may seem like the most obvious thing, but in this case, try to go beyond showing just what you worked on. What benefits did your work bring to your client? How much did they save on resources like time and money by working with you? If your work was part of a larger project, how well did that project do? Answer these questions with respect to your clients’ confidentiality, of course, but it’s a sure-fire way to convince your potential clients that you care about their success as much as your own.
Learn more about lead generation and workflow automation to scale your solo or small business and you are on your way to success.
About Author: Laura Pompeu is a journalist and avid bookworm. She writes about SEO, business, and digital marketing for a living, and about travel, food, and fiction just for fun. She’s never afraid to ask questions and loves researching the best sources to complement her writing.
Image Credit: Portfolio Website via Georgejmclittle/shutterstock