The Conversation Method for Portfolio Websites.
The age of a basic portfolio website is far behind us. It’s not a contact page anymore nor just a showcase of the past works…it’s a part of the identity of each individual, brand and company. Any creative individual or brand wants to be different from the market, wants to stand out and have that ✨sparkle✨ and yet there is a quick method to make the process easier.
Your Website is ABOUT you not FOR you.
The most common things I’ve got from my clients were “I want a website like Apple has”, “I want something totally different than anyone in the market” or “I want something no one ever saw before”… but the truth is, your website isn’t for you, frankly, your website visitors don’t want to see a mind-blowing website if they can’t actually use it.
So the first thing I do is sit down with them and start from the beginning with basic questions such as:
- What is the reason you want to have a website?
- Who are we designing the website for?
- What are the goals of the website?
- …
While saying out loud the answers for these questions they are getting closer to the actual needs and goals of the website.
Your portfolio website should be a good conversation, demonstration of your skills, and give a straight contact door to you, not an ad.
While working on different types of portfolio websites (personal & company) I saw a common path to create a good website, which is the conversation method.
All the portfolio websites have similar targets.
Personal Portfolios have a target to find a new client or employers.
Company Portfolios want to attract new clients, partners, and potential employees.
To cover all the needs you have to create a satisfying dialogue for each target audience.
The difference between real-life conversation and the website one is that you don’t have the verbal answers from the other person so it’s more self-dialogue at this point, which has to answer all the possible questions your client might have. The conversation with a potential client is pretty much like this.
- Hi, I am X.
- I (or my company) do/does Y.
- Here are some examples we did from the past.
- Here you can see some clients and partners who trusted me.
- Here is the team I work with. (Optional)
- Here is my (our) contact if you liked what you saw.
It’s pretty much the same as meeting a potential client during a conference and having small chat with them.
So instead of “Let’s chat”, “Let’s talk with our chat both” or loud messages try to keep it as simple as possible.
As anyone you just meet, your website visitors don’t want you to listen about how great are you and how amazing your company is from your own mouth. The only way to give them that idea indirectly it’s to show your work. Let them decide after.
The goal of wanting them to contact you does not justify the loud accent of the “Contact Button”. Imagine if you had a dialogue with someone and they start to repeat words like “Hire me”, “Hire me because I’m the best”, “Hire me right now!”. Obviously, you’ll quickly try to escape the conversation as soon as you can. That’s a big red flag right there.
The conversation with people who are interested in your company and want to join it is slightly different and pretty much looks like this:
- Hi, We are X.
- We do Y services.
- Here are some examples we did from the past.
- Here are the current open positions.
- Here is our team and what makes our company a good place to work.
- Here are our contacts.
The greatest brands and companies earned their reputation not because they had the best logo, slogan, or a super good-looking animation on the landing page, but because they were passionate about their products and spent a lot of effort on them.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a mind-blowing website or have some crazy experiments there. Keep in mind that having structure and guidelines does not limit your creative solutions of presenting each section.
So, go ahead, give this method a try!
Thanks for the attention. Feel free to get in touch on Linkedin.
