It doesn’t matter what industry you work for, or you are just a student. A personal website can help you a lot to grow your professional career. It can help you to get a job, better publicity of your work & activities and showcase your abilities & achievements. Social media may be able to do the same. But social sites can change over time, and your posts may become lost under thousands of posts. On the contrary, a personal website never lost your information. And, with the ‘must-have portfolio website features,’ you can do it more professionally.
Nowadays, designing a website is very easy. For instance, if you use WordPress to build your website, you do not need to know any coding. But you can design a beautiful site by yourself. But, before you design your website, you need to know what features & elements personal website templates contain.
Before we go further, in this article, we only discussed the must-have features of a personal portfolio website. But, if you want a professional and functional portfolio website, you also need to know the standard website features and functions. We discussed everything you need to know about this in our article “Essential Website Features Every Site Should Have”. It’s worth checking.
Must-Have Personal Portfolio Website Features
A personal website represents your personality, ability, and professionalism to the potential seekers of your work. So, if you do not design your website correctly with must-have features, you may lose your target traffic. So, let’s go through the portfolio website’s features list. And, try to understand what personal website templates or creative portfolio websites may include.
List of Essential Features
of Personal Portfolio Websites
- Interface Design
- Information About Yourself
- A High-Quality Self Image
- Portfolio Page with High-Quality Images
- Live Project Demo (If Applicable)
- Testimonials by Real Clients
- Well Explained Services
- Contact Information
- Call to Action
- Content / Blog Post
- Relevant Social Media Accounts
- An FAQ Section
Interface Design
First impression matters. If your website does not look good, your visitor or potential clients may have the wrong impression. And, not just any good looking website. You need to be specific. For instance, you are a wedding photographer. Your visitor has to understand it the second they arrive on your site. Cassandra Ladru did a beautiful job on her website.
In this website, carefully chosen font, the overall theme color, and selected pictures set up the tone of wedding photography. Your website also reflects your work of expertise. For example, if you are a creative company and your website is not creative enough. There is a possibility; your client may not even check your works.
Uniq theme from ThemeForest shows the creativity with a minimalist design.
One more thing we can note from this theme is the Brand. Even though it is a personal website, but turning yourself into a brand make a supreme impression on your client. Branding is a significant part of the interface design, in terms of brand color, logo, and fonts selection.
Keep it simple …
Finally, always keep it simple. Do not use anything too much. Your website interface should be easy to scan and easy to find what your client is looking for. Do not make it too fancy, which may confuse your customer.
Information About Yourself
For a personal website, this part is a little bit tricky. Your visitor should understand that you are a real person before they start doing business with you. At the same time, they don’t want too much personal information. Your client won’t want to know about your family history.
Keep it short …
Firstly, share about your educational background or your training on your expertise. You can tell a little bit about your working experiences. You can share where you grow up and where you are working right now. In that way, you can share little personal information with your working location.
Make a list of your skills and hobbies. These two lists always connect your client both on a personal and professional level. But never give the wrong information to your client. If you are not expert in some skills, never include it in your skills list. If you get hired for that skill, and unable to deliver work, it can make a bad reputation.
For inspiration, you see the Charli Marie’s about section. It is a balanced content about herself with a little bit of both a personal and professional way.
On the other hand, you can be entirely professional, like Mike Locke. He explains his expertise and experiences in his about section. But, If you are a job seeker or trying to build a student portfolio website, you can also put your CV into the website.
RyanCV, Fortun, and Okab resume website template have very creatively designed ‘about’ sections for a personal website. For ideas and inspiration, you may also check these three beautiful themes.
A High-Quality Self Image
The design has a link with this point. Beautiful pictures are part of good design. If you are creating a personal website, always choose an image that complements your website interface design. So, when you upload a self-photo, keep that in mind. And, do not use a photo that has other people in it. Use your single photograph.
Use a high-quality photo of yourself. But, high-quality does not mean large size. It may cause you slower website loading. High-quality means a clear picture. Do not use blurry images, or that has fancy effects on it. Peter McKinnon’s website is a perfect example of personal photo use. It is only 640 px by 690 px sized, but very sharp and clear.
Portfolio Page
The portfolio section is where you showcase your best work to your potential clients. So, always choose the best work for the portfolio. Do not select any random work for this section. Also, prioritize the works done for big companies.
Choose Wisely …
If you have multiple skills, then try to select the best work from every skill. Categorize your work in a dedicated portfolio page. Also, showcase a few works on your home page. Devon Stank’s website is an excellent example of a portfolio section.
Live Project Demo (If Applicable)
Live projects usually do not apply to all professions. But if you have a chance to showcase your ongoing work demo. You should do that. In this way, your potential clients can interact with your work and get to know about your expertise. For instance, the Github repository is a fantastic platform for developers to showcase their work.
Testimonials by Real Clients
Before doing business, your clients always want to know what other clients of yours think about you. The testimonial section is the best place for showcasing your client’s comments about your work. Try to pick the best one and use real photos of the clients with consent. But never put any fake testimonial.
Keep it real …
For your inspiration, you can see Phlox and Bridge theme from ThemeForest. Both of these themes have tons of beautiful examples for every genre.
Well Explained Services
For a creative portfolio website, you need a well-explained service section. Cover all the services that you can provide professionally. As we mentioned before, do not put any service that you are not expert enough.
We can take a look at Ximena Larkin’s website. She explained her expertise in simple language and with bullet points. The interface is simple and easy to scan. But if you are a creative person, you can present it with more visual graphics. But do not make it too fancy.
Contact Information
Contact information is an essential feature of a personal portfolio website. Generally, contact information positioned at the bottom of a webpage in the footer section. But always make a dedicated Contact Page for your website. It may contain the obvious, such as an address, phone number, and email address.
Using an email address hyperlink does not provide a good user experience. Usually, clicking it opens some default email app (such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail), which may not be used by most of the customers.
Make it Convenient …
Kristi Hines’s website is an excellent example of it. Instead of using an email hyperlink, she used a contact form. A simple contact form is always convenient for your visitor. Also, it is convenient for you, since you can track it easily in your mailbox.
Call to Action
Call to Action (CTA) is the door for your customer to reach you. But before designing a CTA, you have to be sure why you need this. Do you need this for more customers or more visitors to your website or for capturing leads?
Just a short sentence or even a single word is good enough for CTA. Two themes Agenci and Agatha have very beautiful CTA. You may check it out.
Content / Blog Post
If you are passionate about something, write about it. You can write about your work or your hobbies. The point is that blog content is an effective way of spreading your work throughout the internet.
“Content is King”
— Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Your potential customers are constantly searching for solutions. If they can find the answer from your blog, then there is a good chance they will be your paying customer.
Relevant Social Media Accounts
Your website must have your social account button. In this way, your potential clients will get another option to connect with you. But you should keep your social account as professional as possible. Because as I said earlier, your clients do not want to see your personal life.
The best solution is to make a separate business account for this purpose. There are good options to create a business account in almost every social site. Alongside that, you can also add a sharing button so that your client has the opportunity to share your work or blog with others.
An FAQ Section
Before clients seek for a service, they seek quick solutions. Frequently asked questions are the best way of delivering the answers shortly and simply. Faster, you can solve the client’s problem more quickly; they may become a paying customer.
Pinterest’s FAQ is a perfect example. It is easy to understand, and all the problems a well categorize and also have a big search box. That’s why visitors can easily find the solution they are looking for.
Additional Features of Personal Portfolio Websites
- Online Shop
- Counter
- Work Process
Online Shop
Online shop is cool website features for a portfolio website. Lots of professionals sell merchandisers or goods with the brand name on it. It is another way of good market exposure. Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD’s online shop is an excellent example of it.
Counter
The counter is an effective way of showcasing how many clients you have, how many years of experience you have, or how many projects you have done. Therefore, It gives the client a numerical idea of your works. As an inspiration, you can look at the Miion theme’s gorgeous counter.
Work Process
Work Process section gives a brief idea to your client how you are going to deal with their project. If your target is to get more customers by your website, then this element will be beneficial. Doon theme has a standard Work Process element that you can look at.
Conclusion
A personal website boosts up your professional life. But for a professional boost up, you need a thoroughly professional website. We discussed here; all the must-have website features that personal portfolio websites needs.
In the end, we can say, you have to understand your clients and how you want to interact with them. As per that understanding, you have to set up your creative portfolio website. You can also check our article “Best Personal Portfolio WordPress Themes”. Here we compared the best WordPress themes to create a Personal portfolio website.
Finally, Thanks a lot for reading this. Let us know how do you like this article in the comments, and please do not forget to share.
