So, you just graduated college with a degree in Digital Marketing and you’re out there looking for jobs, but you don’t know how to create a portfolio website about yourself to show companies who you really are. Well, you’ve come to the right place! I’m going to tell you about what a portfolio websites are and how you can make one that’s got the right information that you should let employers know and how to make it eye-catching!
What is a Portfolio Website?
As this article from (Wix) says, a portfolio website is “an opportunity to make something that shows off your skills and conveys your unique voice, while looking just as crisp and professional as any of your other work.”
The first thing to do is consider “What do you want your portfolio to look like?” This would be things ranging from color, typography, which is a fancy way of saying the style and appearance of text for example, and how you want your website laid out. This is the first thing that will show off who you are by showing what colors and things you use to bring a website together.
Second, choose how you want people to move around your website. That could be scrolling continuously on one page or by having a navigation bar on your website and having your information spread out onto multiple pages. This one is a relatively simple decision, but I think it would be best to decide which one you’ll use before you start laying the ground work for the rest of your website.
Third, Make sure to show off your projects you have made in the past that you are proud of. This really gets employers attention! They get to see what you have done in the past and what you are capable of doing in the future if they were to hire you to work for their company. An example of this could be a program you made for elementary kids that help them learn geometry.
Fourth, anytime you have images on your website, make sure that you upload the highest quality of the images you can find because it looks better than just trying to figure out what this blurry picture is supposed to be of. Lol.
Fifth, there’s content that you can’t forget to add to the website, and this is the most important. You need a homepage, a place where people that check out your website can start from and choose where to go from there, an about page, tell the people who you are and give them a short little biography about yourself. Make sure you give it your own personality, whether that is puns or illustrations that make you feel like you.
Sixth, this kind of correlates to the second step, but make sure that the user experience on your website flows smoothly. You don’t want to build a website that is so confusing, that even you don’t know where to go to get to a specific page. That wouldn’t be good at all! Start off with things like a wireframe. A wireframe is basically where you just sketch out on paper what you want your website to look like and as you start creating your website, you can slowly start adding in the elements you wanted one at a time.
Seventh, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short. After you’ve made your website, now you’ve got to consider “How are people going to find my website?” Start with things like writing alternative text for your images. This is usually only seen on your website if someone’s browser is blocking images or if the browser can’t load images, but it’s a good thing to do anyways because it helps search engines learn more about your website’s accessibility.
Eighth, with the ongoing development of smart phones, most people that search the internet are using their phones more often than their laptops or desktops, so it’s a good idea to take the elements on your website and optimize them for mobile view. Depending on how you’re developing your website, whether that’s by using Notepad++ or using a program like Adobe Dreamweaver to help you in that process, usually a mobile view of a website means that there are less buttons and everything will be in a more condensed layout.
Ninth, after you’ve gotten this far in making your portfolio website, it’s a good idea to ask family or friends in what they think about your website before you publish it for the public to see. This is a great way to get honest feedback on something that you created and to also find out if they believe you left out anything that you should add or take out anything that they believe shouldn’t belong on there.
Lastly, it’s time to publish your website online and promote it on your social media channels, if you have any. Not only will this help more people to find you online, but it will also improve the SEO ranking for your website and you’ll get to hear some honest feedback from others. I hope this was as helpful for you as it was for me and now, head on out there and create the best website anyone has ever seen!
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