Identify work samples to share

When you are choosing which items, you should share in your portfolio, remember to think of quality rather than quantity. Your portfolio should not have every single project you have done included in it. Instead, you should choose your best work to showcase your talents. Try to include a range of projects to demonstrate the breadth of your experience.

Tell the story of each sample

When you create your online portfolio, it is vital to tell your story by showing the hiring manager or recruiter what your designs have achieved and how. Alongside each portfolio image, you should explain the client’s goals and how your design achieved them.

Make sure each story includes:

Your role: Did you manage the whole project, or were you part of a larger team? Let the hiring manager know where your efforts made the difference.

Your process: Tell viewers how you arrived at the design they see on the page. This would be a good section to talk about the client’s goals and how you worked with them to achieve their vision.

Success metrics: How did you measure the designs success? This can be simple by saying that the client was happy with your work, a testimonial to verify this would be brilliant. You can also use key metrics such as customer acquisition rates between the old and new designs.

Choose a web platform

Choosing the right web platform for your design portfolio will depend on your technical skills. Some offer formatting that requires HTML and CSS knowledge, while others are less customisable and, therefore, more comfortable to use.

Here are some options to consider:

Hosted portfolio websites, such as Portfoliobox or Dunked. These are the most comfortable options as these sites don’t require any coding. All you need to do is choose a template and upload your files to a ready-made layout.

Hosted business website, such as Squarespace or Weebly. Here you can choose a template for your portfolio, but you have more control over it as it is customisable.

Self-hosted websites, where you create a custom web design portfolio from scratch. Here you can demonstrate all the skills you have and come up with a personal website to show off your design skills.

Optimise your website

Once you have gathered all the information you would like to include in your portfolio, you should take the time to design and organise it to make sure it is user-friendly.

You should do this by making sure your portfolio is easy to read online. You can do this by breaking text into short paragraphs, use headings, subheadings, and bullet points.

Make sure your portfolio is easy to navigate, add core pages such as Home, About Me, My Work, and Contact Details.

Also, don’t forget to resize and compress every image!