How to Create an Online Portfolio

It’s crucial for every graphic designer, visual artist, and photographer to have a professional portfolio website to ensure that potential employers and clients can easily find your best work. With an online portfolio, you can showcase your visual work and build your personal brand as an artist. Plus, a design portfolio is a great way to share what you’ve created with the world. Follow the steps below to create a high-quality, user-friendly digital portfolio, and how Squarespace’s website templates can make the process easier.

1. Choose a template or start from scratch

Whether you start by browsing portfolio templates or choose another template that catches your eye, you can use your pick to set up an online portfolio. Choose whichever template works best for your personal aesthetic or professional brand. Once you see one that inspires you, link your custom domain name and start adding images and text. You can always customize a template, so you can change its fonts, colors, and layouts to curate a website design to fit your brand.

Alternatively, if you already have a strong idea of the web design you want for your online portfolio website, then you can start with a blank page and use the website builder to create a portfolio from scratch.

2. Showcase your work

After you’ve chosen a website template, it’s time to decide how you want to showcase your work. Start by uploading high-resolution digital files of your original photos, illustrations, artwork, or designs. Check out other portfolio examples online to get inspiration for design features you’d like to bring to your own portfolio. 

For example, ask yourself: 

• Do other artists have an eye-catching way of displaying their work? 

• How do other portfolio websites look on different mobile devices?

• How is the user experience of navigating their portfolio site?

• Do they have site pages you hadn’t considered, like an online store or a blog? 

With a Squarespace website, you can add a Portfolio Page and display content in a variety of unique layouts. For example, you can highlight multiple projects as a grid of thumbnail images right on your homepage. This will allow your website visitors to see more of what you’ve created all at once and help you organize your portfolio based on themes, dates, or content types. You can even use animations and other design options to highlight specific projects or calls to action (CTAs). 

Within the projects themselves, you can also organize your images so they appear as a slideshow or a grid with gallery sections. If you don’t have enough content to fill up an entire gallery section, you can start by adding Image Blocks to display the images you have ready. 

3. Add your About page

If you’re planning on using your online portfolio to promote your professional work, it’s important to also have a bio or “About Me” page on your website. To add an About page to a Squarespace website, just click on “Pages” in the Home menu. Then select “About” as your Page Layout option. 

Use your About page to share who you are, what you do, and what kind of work you’d like to do. If you have awards or accomplishments, this is a great place to share those as well. 

Other things you can consider adding to this page are:

• Examples of work you’ve done for past clients

• Client testimonials

• Social media links

• Your resume or CV

If you need to resize your portfolio images for social media, you can quickly download crops with the free Image Resizer.

4. Add a Contact page

Make sure you give potential clients, employers, and collaborators an opportunity to get in touch with you after they review your online portfolio. You can simply add your email address to your About page or you can add a Contact page.  

Squarespace websites have a form block that lets you customize a contact form so that visitors can get in touch with you. With the form, you can decide exactly what type of information you’d like to get from the person before they can message you. This functionality can be helpful if you’re a freelancer who wants to separate client opportunities from customer support emails or general messages.

To make scheduling time with clients even easier, you can add a scheduling block to your site so that potential clients can book time with you to discuss potential projects and pricing.

5. Optimize for search

Finally, make sure your new portfolio website is optimized for search. Search engine optimization (SEO) for a portfolio website has multiple layers. First, you’ll want to optimize the text on your website so that it can be found when people search for the type of work you’re doing or for your name specifically.  

Then, for your images to appear in search results, you’ll need to add written descriptions so that search engines know what’s in the images. This is called alt text, and in addition to making your portfolio images more searchable, it will also help to make your website more universally accessible. 

You can also verify your site with Google Search Console to help manage your site’s presence in Google results. This service is free and can also be useful as a tool when combined with your website Analytics to see what keywords people are searching to land on your site. Be sure to check out these best practices to make sure your site is fully optimized.

Once you’ve completed these steps, your online portfolio is ready to be shared with the world. But remember: You can always continue to expand on and edit your site as you complete more projects.

Need more pointers on getting started? Check out our webinars.

This post was updated on December 19, 2022.