A portfolio will become a large portion of your site’s trust building.
Your portfolio is where you prove you know what you’re talking about.
That said, I’ve seen some mistakes when freelancers create a portfolio, and I’ve made quite a few myself in the past.
But let’s back up for a second and look at what a portfolio is.
Basically a portfolio is proof of your past work. What you did, who you did it for, and why you did it.
Most portfolios are good at describing what happened. This is where the project’s technical details are listed. "Used Ruby on Rails 4 to build a modern e-commerce store with an integrated shopping cart and wishlist".
This is easy to write. It’s what you did when you were hired.
But it’s not the most important part to put in your portfolio piece.
Depending on your contracts, the ‘who you did the work for’ might be used. This is where you want to namedrop your more well known clients. If you worked for Intel, Apple, or Google, then by all means mention that.
If Apple trusted you to do good work, then your ideal client can too.
Unless they can’t… You see, if your ideal clients are commercial real estate investors then your experience with the darlings of the tech world aren’t as important. If you worked with a local real estate broker, that would carry more weight than Intel for them.
So in the end there are two parts to your past clients. You’ll want to include any big brands that everyone knows and has heard of. Then you’ll want to include others clients who are similar to your ideal client. They probably won’t be famous brands or even known by your ideal client. But if they are similar or "just like them", you’ll make a more convincing case.
But even a great "who" isn’t the most important part of your portfolio.
The project "why" is.
The ‘what you did’ and the ‘who you did it for’ are just the details and lead-ins. They grab your client’s attention. The "why" is what will cause them to take action.
Why is the "why" so important? Let’s illustrate this with an example.
John Little, the CTO of Treeland Brokers, needed help for his agents. Their marketing efforts were working great and attracting plenty of listings. But his agents weren’t able to keep up, and many homeowners ended up going to his competitor because Treeland was taking too long to respond. Even hiring four full-time office staff to help process the homeowners didn’t help.
We designed and created a lead management system for Treeland and their agents. Combining a custom software application, automated follow-up processes and 1-on-1 training for his staff, we were able to reduce the average time from lead creation to contact from 13 days down to 4 hours. This let Treeland repurpose 6 full-time office staff. Over the first six months the system processed 213% more leads than Treeland’s old manual process, resulting in a significant growth in revenue.
In those two paragraphs, you’ve just told a potential client a ton.
There is the who – John Little, Treeland Brokers, a real estate company. The what – a lead management system. But most importantly there is the why – staff overloaded with leads which is causing lost business.
There is also a fourth element, which is optional: the final results. Treeland was losing money due to their lost leads and had to increase expenses by hiring more staff to try and help. After your work, the project revenues went up and expenses went back down.
Now, if your ideal client is a CTO of a real estate company and they are looking for someone to help design software for them, don’t you think this portfolio item would get them interested?
(In fact, I’d bet a strong portfolio item like this would shift that client from "I don’t know if I trust this person" to "shut up and take my money". This only happens by knowing what your ideal client needs, wants and desires, and then actively communicating that to them).
I’m going to leave you to think about this. There is one other part to portfolios that you need to consider. It’s an important part and one that I’ve made a mistake with myself.
Eric Davis