Not having an accurate portfolio website puts you behind your competitors.
People are looking to hire you for a service, something like photography or graphic design. They are looking to see what you can do before reaching out to talk to you. If your portfolio website is out of date or lacking information potential customers might skip over it and you’ll lose out on business.
In today’s world of freelance work, a portfolio website is a crucial part of landing gigs. You get to show off the amazing work you’ve done for other people and gain more business.
Today, we’re going to look at simple steps you can take to update your portfolio website.
3 steps to update your portfolio website
1. Make Sure Your Listed Services Are Correct
If something isn’t clear to a website visitor they either won’t reach out for clarification or the will send an email asking about what services you offer.
Spending time responding to emails that might not lead to sales is not the best use of time. Instead of building connections with potential customers or working on projects that are bringing in money, you are left to sort through your inbox.
Having unclear services means you will miss out on sales.
Go through your services page and make sure everything is correct and up to date. If you received new certifications or new services include them in the list.
Having the correct services listed on your website saves the customers from being confused about what you offer.
2. Use High-Resolution Images
Low-resolution images come out grainy or blurry and can make it very difficult to accurately judge work. Not only does this make it difficult to assess the quality of your work, but it also can make your website look unprofessional.
The images you post on your website are similar to the first impression you make with someone in person. You want to look your best and make it clear you have put in the time to be professional. If you meet someone in person and they look messy, you probably won’t think of them as a professional.
This is true when posting images on social media.
You want to put your “best foot forward” and to do this you need to invest some time in learning about photography and photo design. This includes learning how to take high-resolution photos and how to best edit them.
If you’re thinking “Well shoot do I need to buy a nice camera to do this?” don’t worry you don’t. With phone cameras being so advanced now, you don’t need to rush out and buy a fancy camera. Check out this article
showing you all the best ways to correct common iPhone photography mistakes.
You’ve spent countless hours perfecting your craft and it deserves to be shown off well. Use the best image quality you can so when it is posted to your website or social media it attracts people and they turn to you.
3. Include Testimonials
Without testimonials, people have no way of knowing how well you work or what to expect working with you. In fact, it can be hard for people to know if they should trust you at all.
People like to know what they are getting into if they hire you for a service. Not being able to verify this could limit the people willing to work with you.
They want to see social proof. Someone else trusted you and it went well for them. Trust is a big step and seeing a human face and name attached to a great story goes a long way to help.
Get in the habit of asking everyone you’ve worked with for reviews. It builds credibility and gives a great base of reviews for people to filter through. If people have loved your services they have no problem writing reviews about how much they love it.
Related: Check out this article on how to get great testimonials.
Having consistent good reviews gives people the ability to verify how well you work and why you should be hired.
In today’s freelance world a portfolio website that shows off your work is an important part of doing business.
If you don’t know where to start updating your portfolio website, there are a few things you can do to make it current.
Make sure all listed services are correct to save everyone time in emailing back and forth. Use the best image quality you can to show off the beautiful work you have done. Include testimonials from previous clients to verify how great the work you have done is.
Don’t let an out of date website keep your business from doing it’s best.
Update your website to reflect all the awesome work you do so more customers can find you.
Morgan Trzcienski
Copywriter