Create the Right Impression with Your Portfolio Site
Written by admin on September 3, 2011
The mere mention of the word Portfolio demands the presence of visual attraction and quality for it is meant to represent a person and his/her work among the target audience. Similarly a Portfolio site needs to be equipped with all the desirable features to grab the eye of the prospective customers and earn work for its owner.
It must be able to fulfill all that visitors would to like to know and in the manner as they may prefer. In addition to this, it must be borne in mind that search engine visibility matters a lot in making site reach its target audience. Therefore, in this article, we are going to dwell on certain important considerations that help creating quality Portfolio sites.
Points to Consider While Designing a Portfolio Site
Understand the Target Group
It is not always possible to cater to every type of customer. Every designer has a niche and can serve a particular segment of clients efficiently. It is important to first understand what your target audience is and then analyze their expectations to design the portfolio site so that it appeals to them and your chances of getting work are eased out.
Design a Unique Logo and Develop a Catchy Tagline
A logo is such a powerful tool in creating an identity that it must be utilized to its true potential for a portfolio site. Adding a star to the logo is an effective tagline that best describes your work in a simple way. The logo, even if it consists of the initials of your name, should be designed to catch the visitors’ attention.
Take Care of Navigation
Navigation is one such aspect of web design that is bound to find mention as it allows users to easily move back and forth on a site and helps them to locate the required information. For a portfolio where you wish your clients to know about you, go through your work and then place the order, it is essential to offer them a smooth way to navigate.
Categorization of Work is Important
If you wish to give a clean presentation of your work and prevent users from getting confused, then categorizing your work is important. This will help them know the kind and scope of work you have done. Allow them to view samples category wise and facilitate a better understating of the service you render. Also make sure that you display the best of your work. What else do you require to do for striking a deal.
Updating the Site should be Easy
As you need to showcase more of your work and replace the older samples with new ones, your site should allow carrying out these things in an easy manner. Updating the site from time to time is a healthy practice and it must be designed to include those features which make it quite simple to undertake changes. For this you can use a quality CMS which suits your requirement.
Optimize the Site for Search Engines
To reach the target customers, the site must be visible in search engines for which it is essential to optimize it. Use the necessary keywords wherever applicable in the content, chose appropriate titles for different pages, take care of the site’s speed. These are useful from SEO point of view and will help the site in attracting traffic.
Carefully Choose the Typography
Stylishly written but difficult to read content cannot serve the desired purpose. It is often seen that designer in their effort to be different, try stylish fonts. However, the right practice is to use suitable fonts and sizes to ensure that the content is legible as well as readable. This increases the usability of the site, again an important consideration from SEO’s angle.
Highlight Call to Action
Unless you make prominent the action that you desire your customers to take, they are not going to buy or hire the services. Customers always require a push factor and for this effective Call to Action buttons can be well utilized. These buttons must be clearly visible and designed to grab the users’ eye.
Lastly, Allow Visitors to Easily Contact You
There is no use having an excellent Portfolio site but which doesn’t allow the visitors to establish a contact. Make sure that in addition to a contact/order form, you provide a valid phone number and an email so that visitors can contact you. You can also mention about your profile on social networks to get connected to your clients and earn work.
We hope that you find the above information useful and in case you have some more suggestions for creating an attractive and effective portfolio site, feel free to share them with us.
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