Daniel

01. Design

The design you choose can mean the difference between driving most customers away and inspiring most of them to bite. This is especially true if you’re a web designer as your website is an example of your work. Minimalism is definitely the way to go when it comes to portfolio sites. You’re trying to attract new customers with your work, therefore, you should choose a design that draws attention toward your portfolio and any information you list about your business, not away from them.

You don’t need to choose a white or bright color scheme, but you should use whitespace and stick to a maximum of three fonts. Your color scheme should contrast well, and your typography should have a dramatic flare that draws your eye to it. Also, try not to use animations that don’t serve a purpose.

02. Logo with Tagline

This doesn’t need to be complicated, and you can use a simple text-based logo that that displays your name. What’s important is your tagline as it can describe yourself and the services you provide with a quick, short phrase. This provides a quick way for visitors to decide if your services are right for them before they contact you.

Try to be short yet descriptive with your tagline. “Developer” is descriptive, but it’s not as descriptive as “WordPress developer.” In the same sense, “New York-based graphic designer” is more descriptive than “graphic designer.”

03. Call to Action

Refer back to the decision you made when you determined the purpose of your portfolio site. It’ll help you come up with calls to action for your site, particularly on the homepage. Are you trying to land more clients for your graphic design business? Using “Request a Quote” as your call to action would be appropriate.

Determine the purpose your portfolio site serves, and make sure the action you want customers to take on landing pages makes sense.

04. High-Quality Images

This ties into the first point we made about design. Always make sure you’re using the highest quality of images to represent your work. This isn’t only true for photographers, artists and graphic designers. Even if you don’t create visual works, you should still be using images for presentation purposes, and those images should be high in quality.

The images should also complement the rest of your site’s design. Take the Minimal Photography demo in our Weston theme, for example. It uses a dark color scheme, which complements the black-and-white photography in the demo’s portfolio beautifully.

05. Services

Sure, you may be a photographer or a web designer, but those likely aren’t the only services you provide to your customers. Designate a spot on your homepage that briefly lists the services you offer.

06. Contact Information

One surefire way to make sure customers don’t contact you for quotes is to make it impossible for them to actually go about doing that. Make things easy for them by inserting a contact form on your homepage or a link to your Contact page, at the very least.

Even if you do place a contact form on the homepage, make sure you actually create a real contact page. It’s best to name it “Hire Me” on a portfolio site, and it should be filled with the various ways clients can contact you. Be sure to include your business email address even if you use a contact form as some clients prefer it over forms.