What Is A Portfolio And Why Your Website Needs One

Of course this will apply to you if you have a website in the first place. If you don’t have a website then you’re reading the wrong article, you should actually be reading ‘What Is A Website And Why You Need One”. (That’s a joke by the way).

Portfolios are mainly connected to service-oriented businesses and are collections of your works/projects that you can showcase to potential clients. If you’re boasting ‘I can do this and that’ then you can point to your portfolio to back it up. Do you build kitchen cupboards? Then your portfolio whould show the variety of cupboards you made. Do you bake and decorate terrific children-themed birthday cakes or perhaps wedding cakes? Then take pictures and add them to your portfolio. Do you take pictures for a living? Then you’re always one step ahead aren’t you? Ha!

PORTFOLIO BY CATEGORY

If your skills cover a wide range then you have different market segments to speak to. A construction company may build entire homes, build additions and even build fences. A fence builder may build concrete walls, stainless steel fences, gates or even awnings. You get the drift?

PORTFOLIO BY PROJECT/CLIENT

Unless you have a funeral home another useful angle would be to sort and showcase your handiwork by client. A printery would probably design a logo, print business cards, stationery, calendars etc for a single client. An interior decorator may decorate all rooms in a home or one or two.

Such a project-based portfolio has distinct advantages especially when you include a detailed description of the work done: client name, location, duration, materials used, skills employed:

• It shows you’re capable using your entire skill-set all in one place
• It shows real examples of your work that can be verified
• It shows all stages of the projects life from raw stage to finished job
• It provides creative inspiration to potential clients for their own project

IDEAL WEBSITE PORTFOLIO

The best way to display a portfolio is to use your website’s portfolio feature- providing it has such a feature built in. I normally check that potential templates have robust portfolios, ideally:

• Nice layout of the ‘portfolio page’ in multiple columns with excerpts of the project description
• Sortable portfolio page with category ‘shuffle’ feature that doesn’t require the page being refreshed. A good example of this is my portfolio page, clicking any category rearranges the columns right there and then.
• Nice layout of the ‘portfolio post’ page, i.e. the individual project. I like a two column layout: description on one side and picture on the other.
• A built in image ‘slider’- I don’t like listing all images on the page or open in what’s called a ‘lightbox’ (where the screen darkens and the image stands out front and center), instead I prefer have the images cycle (fade in and out) in what’s called a ‘slider’. A good example of this and the above point would be from the portfolio of one of my clients: South M Group.

WHAT NOW

A portfolio is only as good as the pictures you take and the details you take the time to write down. The majority of my clients fail miserably in this area so their website portfolios don’t usually do justice to their real potential.

• Take tons of pictures at every step of the way
• Use a good digital camera for heaven’s sake
• Organize your images into proper folders in your computer- by category and by project
• Make project notes for the description as it happens and when it’s vivid so you won’t have to rack your brains after the fact
• Obtain testimonials, preferable written or via email. Testimonials WORK FOR YOU
• Get permission from clients if you can for site visits or at least references

You’ll be a step ahead of your competition if you do the things that they’re ignoring or are too lazy to do. Do the work now and then sit back and have your website do the work for you 24/7/365, after all, that’s the purpose of a website.