Building Your FREE Portfolio Website Using Notion
I might be late on the Notion game since I only started using it for “real” in 2020. I’ve been really impressed on how customizable and straightforward it is, although it’s very easy to overcomplicate your flow and tracking if you’re using Notion for that purpose.
I’ve talked a lot about the importance of Product and Program Managers developing their own portfolio to showcase their experience and how their products are shipped in a way that a professional resume would never properly highlight. You can also check the post I wrote about this topic.
What’s Notion?
Notion is an application that provides components such as databases, kanban boards, wikis, calendars and reminders that was founded in 2018. They’re definitely a game changer in regards to connecting components to create your own systems that can be any type of tracking, project management, repository for ux process, note taking, and other things that will also include creating landing pages.
Why Notion
I very much like this idea of creating customizable and simple landing pages which doesn’t require you to have technical knowledge, so no coding needed. The good news is that you can create your portfolio on a free platform like Notion since you won’t need to invest time, money and effort coding your own page. Notion is a free platform for personal use that will include unlimited pages & blocks, sync across devices and you can also share with up to 5 people.
I understand not everyone has the abilities to code a landing page or they might not want to pay for the monthly subscription of a tool like Squarespace, so I thought this would be a good way to showcase your work in a portfolio style like Notion does.
Below you’re going to find a tutorial that will help you set up your brand new landing page.
The Set Up
Not many people know about that yet but the interesting thing is that you can export your Notion page as an HTML so it can be easily turned into a website. You can also embed interactive prototypes, case studies, links without writing any line of code.
This guide will help you to make sure you have everything needed to transform your Notion pages into a website portfolio format so you can create the structure and the sessions you think will serve your purpose.
My suggestion is to start with an intro about yourself, a work session part that you can include more information about the products you worked on and case studies, contact information, an about me page and a footer with some additional links you’d like to include.
First Step
Create your Notion account if you don’t already have one yet. It can be the free personal account or the paid version if you’d like, keeping in mind the paid version is not a requirement to create your portfolio page via Notion.
By default they include a bunch of existing templates to help their users to onboard which is great but not what you need right now. So delete all preexisting templates and rename your workspace to your name or the name of your portfolio.
Notion has great templates so take a look and choose one you like and keep in mind everything is customizable so don’t get caught in the design of things too much because you can change everything. After you choose your template, you’ll also mark your page as full-width.
Page Sessions
As I mentioned, my suggestion is to create an Intro, a work session showcasing the products you worked and your experience, and you can also show case studies, contact information and a footer session with additional links you’d like to highlight.
Notion is a magical thing that you can create pages easily and transform those into a shareable format. Notion offers some cover art that can help you to create those session pages and dividers where you can find some instructions on how to use them in this link.
Don’t be Afraid to Use Emojis
I’m a big fan of emojis, I think they’re great and they’re getting better and we have many more options nowadays. Notion has some instructions about the use of the icons and offers a HUGE amount of them that can help you personalize your page.
Setting Your Custom Domain
It’s important to mention that the name of your Notion page will become the title of your landing page. You essentially have two options in case you want to use your personal domain using Notion Pages, which is do it yourself or you can pay for someone setting it up for you.
Doing it by yourself:
Taras Frank and Glasp created a great tutorial to help you set up a custom domain for your homepage in Notion:
Paying a Service to Transform Your Notion Page Into a Website:
Host Notion will do this job for you and their price is $5/site/mo to host your Notion.
Some Pros of Using Notion
- It’s free for the personal use
- Easy to edit and make adjustments
- They offer great templates
- You can customize the templates if needed
- No coding skills are needed
- Their pages are responsible by default
Some Cons of Using Notion
- The pages might look similar since Notion framework doesn’t give you a lot of design options. It’s easy to recognize a Notion page
- Notion has some design limitations, as I mentioned, it’ll be challenging to differentiate your page since you have limited font choices and design elements
Notion Tutorials
It can be complicated to navigate Notion, so if you’re new to this platform, I recommend watching their tutorial first so you can feel more comfortable navigating through it and customizing their templates.
Great Portfolio Examples
I think people started to use Notion to develop their portfolios a short time ago, and below you can find some interesting examples. If you created your website using Notion, message me, I’d love to feature more portfolio examples here.
Additional Reading
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