Tips for Building your Online Portfolio

You’re in the business of web design so you know that your own website should be among your best designs. But you can’t stop there; adding an online portfolio to your site is so critical. This portfolio gives you the opportunity to showcase real examples, giving potential clients confidence in your skills. Compared to other methods (such as an About page listing your accolades or a skills bar), your online portfolio is the most effective way to answer the question potential clients are asking: can you design an attractive and effective website for me?

This portfolio will essentially become your resume, allowing you to show off your work and even establish yourself as an expert. We’ve rounded up a few of the most notable tips for creating a portfolio!

Choose Wisely

It may be tempting to add any and every project you’ve worked on but resist that urge and select only your strongest projects. It’s hard to cut projects that you worked hard on and showing off your early designs allows you to show your evolution as a designer, however, potential clients want to see your current style and your more recent achievements.

As well, provide a variety and showcase your more unique sites; this will show your range and give you more wide appeal.

Develop a Policy of Minimalism

The name of the game is simplicity. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with a library of images to sort through for each project or a huge block of text to provide context; people often have a short attention span and you want to make sure they will walk away with a sense of your skills, not just the fact that you’ve designed a lot of sites.

Keep the total portfolio trim and tidy, aiming for 10-20 projects total. Any more than this and you risk burying some of the stronger projects, while simultaneously overwhelming your potential client.

If 10 projects sounds daunting – maybe you’re just beginning your web design career or don’t have permission to post some of your projects – don’t fret. Focus on showcasing the projects you have in a beautiful way and as an alternative, you can choose to feature personal projects that weren’t designed for a client. Be up-front about that fact that these are not real-world examples but highlight the fact that these show your skills and could inspire a future project regardless of their original purpose.

Make Images your Focus

This is one of the most important tips! It doesn’t matter how beautiful your design is, if your images don’t look good, visitors are going to struggle to trust you with their website design. Ensure you are using high resolution images and are providing the best view for your potential client.

The nature of an online portfolio vs. a physical one mean you need to make it easy for visitors to get a sense of your project; consider providing an overall project image, as well as close up detail screenshots (but remember to keep it simple and avoid cluttering the page).

Write a Story

This is a balancing act. You want your project images to tell the story and speak for themselves but including pertinent text information can help boost your credibility and paint the context for potential customers. 

Consider including a few components if applicable:

• The clients and how you helped them
• The process you used to reach the final design
• Client testimonials
• Results or measured success (e.g. if the new web design was intended to increase traffic, showcase the analytics to show this was successful)

Review and Update

Once you finalize your portfolio – images, text, and all – it’s time to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Ensure your sentences are concise and well-structured, while making sure the entire portfolio appears cohesive as a single page. Consider getting a second set of eyes to get an outside opinion of how the portfolio looks.

Lastly, come back to your portfolio every few months to see if it could use any tweaking. Perhaps you’ve completed new projects that you would like to feature, or perhaps you would like to rotate in some other features that you’re also proud of.

There is no one right way to present your portfolio, but these tips can help you stay on track no matter what format you choose. The beauty of the online portfolio is that it can always be updated quickly so don’t be afraid to play around as you find the right style for you!