A web portfolio is all about marketing yourself. It is an ultimate channel to flaunt your work. Your name is your brand identity but nobody would ever notice it until and unless, you promote it on a noticeable platform. No matter if you have nifty references or brilliant work history, no one is going to believe you, without any evidence. Thus a portfolio website is a simplest and coolest way to present your creative efforts. A personal portfolio website is indeed vital for an array of purposes but one of the strongest purposes is to showcase your finest projects and strong skills to your clients. Designers are well aware of its significance but often fail to design a portfolio website that fits their purpose. The prime objective of a personal portfolio website is to reveal your designing talent, innovative skills and exhibit the superlative projects rather than overfilling the site with worthless stuff.
If you think your portfolio website is not getting the response which you aimed for then you are going somewhere on the wrong track. Let’s see where are you making mistake and how can you fix it.
Jam-packed with content:
Would an aspiring model flaunt all the pictures clicked or only the best ones in the portfolio? Certainly, the best ones. Portfolio is basically showcasing your fine pieces of work. The more you fill up, the more it is difficult to impress your clients. Too much content is a Big No for portfolio website.
Solution: Instead of showing everything, just focus on few examples. Put the kind of projects which you would love to do in future. It is okay to have more than one portfolios rather than jamming the single one. You can categorize and design different portfolios.
You are not promoting yourself:
Your work is going to speak for you and if you are not able to make use of the channel in an efficient way then it is worthless. Like you there will be multitude of designers who will be trying to catch attention of the clients, so there is cut-throat competition in this field. You have to make some exceptional noise to stand out of the crowd. Advertising your services and products without much exposure is not going to work.
Solution: Get out of the closed environment and expose your work to get noticed. Promote your website on social networks, create you work video and put it on YouTube. You can also create an impressive slideshow and share it on Slideshare. The more you spread your work, the more you will come under spotlight.
Too much of concentration on web design:
You are not designing portfolio to show your designing skills but to bring your work under public eye, so do not concentrate much on the web design. Most of the designers lay their focus on the designing of website and fail to pay attention on the important contents to be incorporated. Clients would go through the website to see your work; if your design is flashy and loud then it would certainly distract them and make it difficult to notice the content.
Solution: Prefer minimalistic approach and keep the designs simple. Let the navigation also be easy, so that the clients can effortlessly explore the site. Remember content is your focal point and not the design.
Stale content:
Just creating a killer portfolio is not enough; you need to update it from time to time. Static portfolios have no value. Just putting up the content once and never looking back to the site is a bad way of promotion.
Solution: Keep your portfolio fresh. As soon as you design some interesting project, immediately flaunt it on your portfolio. You work will be getting improved with each project, thus you can replace the old ones with the new one and keep the website updated. Don’t just keep on adding projects and clutter the site.
As a web-designer, your talent and efficiency will be judged by your past work, hence shout about your winning services through personal portfolio website and get some more interesting projects under your brand name.
