How to Present Your Work Online: 6 Tips

In my previous post “Should Students Have a Portfolio Website?” you can read why it can be a good idea to present yourself and your work online, and what tools you could use if you’re not a web designer yourself.

So someone heard about you and searches for you on the internet. Your own website will hopefully one of the first things to be found. Your name is on it, they read the ‘about’ page and browse trough your work. Now what do they actually find out and remember about you? There are a few things to take in account:

1. Make a Great First Impression
   The next time visitors of your website hear your name they will remember what they read about you, and also the impression it gave them, how (un)professional it looked and how they liked or didn’t like your work. Because this website it the first thing people see from you, make sure you make a good first impression, so make it look like something you’d like to be associated with.
2. Show Us Your Style
   Make your website represent your own identity. Do you have your own style? Still developing your own style? Show it here! This doesn’t mean you’ll want to overdo your website with crazy colors if you’re a happy person, you can also make it personal by the way you write, the way you address your visitors. Your work provides the content, now find a design that fits this content.
3. Keep It Simple
   You want people to see or read about your work, so you don’t want to me your site very difficult to navigate. Of course it’s fun to make it look like a game where visitors have to guess where the links are and where they lead to, but don’t expect a lot of people will take the effort and spend ten minutes figuring out how to navigate your site and find some information about you. If you want to make a game, you can always present it in your portfolio section.
4. Use a Plain Background
   Using a picture in the background is not a good idea. OK, maybe a very subtle pattern is still acceptable, but as soon as you can recognize what is shows, it takes the readers attention away from the content. Next to that it also looks messy and reduces the contrast which can decrease the readability of the text.
5. Keep It Readable
   Don’t be too hard on your dear visitors. Another aspect of keeping your website accessible is using a font that is easy to read. Next to that, make sure you don’t write very long lines. If you want a lot of text on your website you could use columns. And try to keep the font size large enough to be read without extra effort.
6. Avoid Social Media
   Myspace, Facebook and Twitter may be good tools to keep in contact with your friends, to broaden your network and meet new people, but this doesn’t mean you should make your website look like a social media hub. Who wants to know more about you and your work probably doesn’t care about your friends and the conversations you have with them.
   You can always have a ‘contact’ page with your information and add links to your various social media profiles there.

These are just a few suggestions, and there are always exceptions to the rules. There are also a lot of details to keep in mind, some are obvious, like using a spelling checker on your text. So this list is far from complete but covers a few important items.

Make sure you also read my previous post on this subject: Should Students Have a Portfolio Website?

Do you have a good point to add to this list? Please let me know by leaving a comment!

Photo by ToastyKen