Today I am going to show you the portfolio mistakes of a lot of freelancers and how to avoid them and how to improve your online presence and portfolio. Also, I'm going to show you some of the example websites where you can create your portfolio free for developers and designers alike. Now the first question is what to include in your portfolio. Now, first thing is that you are going to only include the best and the best of your work. Okay? If you have done like 100 projects, don't include all hundred projects in your portfolio, okay?

Just maybe the best 10 or 20 or 15 will do much more impression on your client rather than showing them hundreds of portfolio items and what if, by mistake, he opens your very ugly project or very funny project, okay, so what impression will it leave on your client, so don't show every project in your portfolio. Second thing is That always give proper title and description of each portfolio item. Okay, I'm also going to show you some of the best portfolio item portfolios and their images which I have taken from some of the best portfolios. So always include title and description of each portfolio item also, it's best if you can show the whole process of your coding or solving that problem. Okay. So people are our clients are mostly inclined to learn the process and their results, what are the results what were the results, when you design this, did it increase the conversion rate?

Okay, so these are the things you need to include in your portfolio. Now the takeaways are that clients need to see how you solve their problem okay. So your methodology really is really important even applying for a job they are going to see the your design process or your development process. Now the second thing is clients are looking for results. their projects return on investment increment or bounce rate changes or conversion changes okay so they are not interested in your very creative design okay. They are most interested in their results now the relevancy freshness and authority we are going to talk about all these factors regarding your portfolio.

Now first thing is always and only show relevant portfolio items to your clients so if you have declared your title as a developer always include only development related portfolio items in your portfolio okay? So also never give your client the link to other portfolio items if he wants to get a project done with you for web development or WordPress on the provide him with the WordPress links. Second thing is always try to include your latest projects first in your portfolio came because they will reflect your current state of your development or coding or design skills. Another thing is that you can also include the books you have read at the end of your portfolio to improve your authority. So, they know that you are expert in that subject matters also to improve your authority on the subject matter if you are a designer or developer you should show your stack overflow profile if you can, let me show you what is the Stack Overflow profile at the end of this lecture.

Now, the takeaways our clients need to know that you are expert in the skill they are looking for Okay, this should reflect in your portfolio relevance is the key if you have like multiple skills, try to filter them and try to give some way of filtering them. If the client is looking for just the branding design there should be a filter button or drop down that he can select branding and every branding project will be shown only okay there are a lot of portfolios I have seen online that have filtering options, like designs wireframes, mock ups, markups, okay. you explore or something like that. So they have separate Separated every skill into different tabs or something like that. So make sure that you use that in your portfolio. Now one of the biggest mistake I see on freelancing websites that a lot of newbie freelancers, they try to list every skill they have.

I'm expert at MS Office, and I am expert at communication or Command these are really funny things. I think almost 90% of the people who use computers or PCs or Macs on daily basis, they know how to use these software's or communicate well, okay, so the main thing is that only try to focus on three to five skills, okay, so I recommend that you list three to five best skills you have. And the second option is that if you have a specific skill set like branding, you can list all the skills related to branding only, okay. Okay, now here is an example of a portfolio item from a guy. Okay, now you You can see his the title concern worldwide and what one line description and then the brief okay so what was the brief of that project and then image over here and what I did so what he did for the project he has these I reviewed user research conducted by IQ content and undertook a content inventory of the existing website working in an agile way Okay, so he is showing his ideas and workflow what he did okay then the tools he used you can see over here this is very cool effect I really like it that he's his master of these tools.

Okay. So he used exalt PR for prototype, workshops, stakeholder interviews, hated content inventory, competitive analysis, okay. So all these things, then the results Okay, so these are the main thing that are really going to boost your clients trust in you Okay, so they know that you are really expert on this. So this is a great example for from ion Your iron pen UX design portfolio okay. So let me show you some more examples. Okay, here we have Borah Home Show and you can see how he has featured some of his projects date.

And you can see designing for marketplace. This is the title and some of the description at the bottom. So this is how they should be listed over here. This is another example from a UX designer Janice and and Okay, now you can see over here how she has some two lines, project detail over here and you can read more or click over here to get more details about this project. Okay, now you can see one of the example of how it can be done. You can see over here at Green Hunter, she has some very good feedback over here.

This is also a UX portfolio. And you can see demo feedback. She has written some of the key fi points over here. Then she has things about sad things about her problem solver and I do Through user experience design, then she is saying that what I do okay so you can see over here there are only few limited things in her portfolio contract work and Hello. So I think you should not increase more than that maybe you can add your blog over here but this is all that should be on your portfolio website. So these are all the examples of portfolio websites let's move on to the portfolio websites that are present online and you can use them to build your portfolio so there are basically two ways you can use these three websites to build your portfolio or you can your own website with your own name Okay, now the first two websites I'm going to show you Stack Exchange and stack UX user experience they are basically question answers portfolio websites where your portfolio is like this you can see over here activity, this is my reputation, these are the questions I have asked or answered Okay, so this these profiles really matter the provides authority, and surety to your clients that you are really expert in the subject matter.

Okay, even I got two of the jobs from this stack overflow website. And you can see also this user experience I include this link when I'm applying on a user experience related jobs. So I include my link over here profile link portfolio link for these websites. Then for designers, this website is basically to create your profile behance and there are a lot of millions of designers over here as you can see, this is my portfolio. And then we have this crop. These have jobs and it is very good for designers build your portfolio over here.

Then this is dribble as well is like a premium invite only portfolio for designers. And you can share dribble shorts over here. It is invite only so only Best of the designers make their appearance over here. Okay. Now for coders, mostly, I think if they have GitHub repositories or projects on GitHub that can really help in their portfolio. Okay, so this is all about different portfolio websites and how you can improve your authority in your portfolio.

So let's move on to the next lesson.