Finished building your portfolio website? 18 things you need to do now

Now that you've built your portfolio, added your bio and uploaded your work samples, it's time to refine your site so that your portfolio is professional and well-functioning.

Here's our checklist of you should do next to ensure a robust portfolio website:

✅ Proofread your content

No matter how careful we are when we input text, we can still make mistakes. This is especially true of a project like designing a portfolio website where we are working with multiple pages and lots of content. And nothing can undermine the appearance of professionalism than multiple spelling and grammar errors.

Before you publish your portfolio, make sure you go through every section and double check for errors. It can be especially helpful to have someone else go through and check as well. Sometimes, we've been looking at something so long, our eyes skip over mistakes. Having another pair of eyes looking over our work can prevent simple errors.

✅ Ensure you have clear call to actions

A portfolio is a great way to showcase your work and define your services. It can also be an excellent marketing tool for your business.

In order to transform your portfolio into an effective marketing tool, you need to include call to actions or CTAs.

CTAs are a marketing technique that leads potential customers and clients to take clear and actionable steps, like purchasing an item, signing up for a course, or scheduling a consultation. By including appropriate CTAs on your portfolio site, you transform portfolio visitors into clients and followers.

To learn more about CTAs and how to create them for your site, check out our complete CTA guide.

✅ Set up automatic imports

If you regularly write for certain outlets, it may be beneficial to set up an automatic "Article Feed" import.

If you go to "Settings" -> "Imports" and add the RSS feed URL or your profile page URL, Journo Portfolio will automatically check the page for new article uploads once a day and add them to the block of your choice.

This will keep your portfolio up to date without you having to manually add every article each time.

✅ Check your article backups

Anything that's been published online can disappear in an instant if an outlet shuts down or chooses to remove certain content. Making sure that you have a pdf backup of every article is essential to protecting your work.

An easy way to create a pdf from an online article is from your browser. Navigate to the page you want to convert, and click on the three dots next to the search bar. Choose "Print". When the print window opens, you'll change the destination from your printer to "Microsoft Print to PDF". If you have a Mac, you'll choose "Save as PDF" in the PDF drop down menu.

Once you have pdf backups of each of your articles, you can upload these if your original article disappears.

Keep in mind that the above system isn't perfect and may result in formatting errors or information being cut off or lost. To be extra careful, consider subscribing to Journo Portfolio's Pro Plan where articles are automatically backed up for you.

✅ Add your social media links

Expand your audience by converting visitors to your portfolio site into social media followers. By linking your social media accounts and creating a CTA to follow you, you can keep future clients engaged and add to your following.

It's easy to link your social media accounts to your Journo Portfolio website. Each Journo Portfolio theme automatically includes social media buttons. All you have to do is add your social media account URLs in your profile, and the buttons will automatically redirect to your account.

In addition, you can add social buttons to just about anywhere in your portfolio by adding a social media block to any of your sections.

Find out how to link your social and add social media buttons to your page here.

✅ Add your URL to your social media profiles

Make the most out of your portfolio by adding your portfolio URL to your social media profiles across all social media platforms. This ensures that anyone who finds you via social media will be able to view your work, explore your services, sign up for your newsletter, and contact you via email or contact form.

In addition, once you've added your URL to your social accounts, make sure to post about it and encourage people to check out your portfolio.

✅ Add a contact form and/or subscriber form

Adding a contact form to your portfolio gives site visitors a way to reach out if they are interested in working with you or they'd like to find out more information. Fortunately, Journo Portfolio's themes include a contact page that you can connect to your email.

In addition, you can add a Contact Me section to any page of your portfolio or a Contact Me block to any pre-existing section. Head over to this information page to find out how.

A subscriber form allows site visitors to keep up with your latest portfolio additions and is an excellent way to keep future clients engaged until they are ready to commit to purchasing your goods or services. When visitors subscribe, they receive an automatic weekly email telling them about any new portfolio items you've added.

You can add a subscriber form to any section of your portfolio. Follow the instructions you find here.

✅ Test your contact form

Make sure to actually test your contact form and any additional Contact Me sections or blocks you've added once you've published your site.

Fortunately, this is super easy. Just go to your site as if you were a visitor (in some cases, this works better if you open an Incognito tab) and fill out the contact form using a real email. You should receive your test email in the email account associated with your Journo Portfolio website.

If you have any issues receiving your test email, be sure to contact our support team. 

✅ Test all of your links

Nothing can make a professional portfolio look less professional than broken or incorrect links.

It's easy to assume that the links you've added are working, but it only takes a moment to go through them all and make sure they are redirecting to where they are supposed to.

Whether a link leads to another page or section of your portfolio or connects to an outside site, we recommend going page by page and checking every link, button, and menu item to be sure they're working before your portfolio site goes live.

✅ Setup redirects for old pages

When you move your domain from another platform, you want to make sure you don't lose any traffic. By setting up a redirect, visitors will automatically be sent to your new site.

You can set up redirects from your old URLs to your new pages by going to "Settings" -> "Redirects" in your portfolio account.

✅ Add your portfolio URL to your resume

If you are using your portfolio as part of a job or internship search, or if you simply want a way to describe your professional experience in more detail, uploading your resume to your site can be a good option.

First, you'll want to add your portfolio URL to your resume so that anyone you share your resume with will be able to view and explore your portfolio. Sharing work samples is one of the most convincing ways to get hired, and your professional portfolio is the best way to present these.

Once your resume is ready to go, you can upload it following these 3 steps.

Additionally, you can choose to upload your resume as a pdf link that opens to a new tab for viewing. You can also embed the pdf in a pdf block within a section which allows it to be viewed directly on a page. Find instructions for both of these options here.

✅ Connect or setup a custom domain

If you are going to use your portfolio site for your business, it can be a great marketing technique to have a custom domain name connected to your portfolio site that reflects you and your work.

If you haven't already, you'll need to purchase a custom domain name from a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com or Domain.com. You'll want to choose a domain name that reflects your brand and is memorable.

Domain names vary in price depending on how in-demand a domain name is believed to be by the registrar or if it is already owned by someone else. If your first choice is expensive, see if you can find something similar that's more affordable.

Once you have a domain name, you can connect it to your Journo Portfolio website by following these step-by-step instructions.

✅ Add a favicon

Favicons are the little icons that appear next to a web address or in a page tab and are what is used when you bookmark or star a favorite site. Not only do they help with brand identity by acting as a kind of logo, but having a favicon can actually increase your search engine optimization.

You can find a favicon on sites like Favicon. You can also create your own by creating a 32px x 32px PNG file of the image you want to use.

Remember, favicons are very small, so a simple graphic design is best.

Once you've created your favicon, follow these instructions to upload it to your site.

✅ Ensure your site is SEO ready

Journo Portfolio automatically optimizes your site by generating clean URLs, issuing an SSL security certificate, and optimizing your site for mobile devices, among other SEO-friendly practices.

You can add an additional SEO punch by following the advice in The Complete Guide to SEO for Your Journo Portfolio Website. This will tell you everything you need to know to give your site the best chance of ranking high on results pages and increasing traffic to your site.

✅ Add your URL to Google Search Console and submit a sitemap

Journo Portfolio increases your portfolio site's SEO by automatically publishing a sitemap at /sitemap.xml with all of your URLs for search engines to find. A sitemap is a content map of your portfolio that helps search engines find relevant content on your pages and know when pages have been updated.

You can increase your SEO even further by uploading a site map and adding your URL to Google Search Console. Google Search Console will also help you to track traffic and backlinks and to make sure Google's crawlers can crawl your site effectively.

You can find your automatically created sitemap at "/sitemap.xml" on your Journo Portfolio site (e.g. https://yourname.journoportfolio.com/sitemap.xml).

Learn more by reading our complete Google Search Console guide.

✅ Install analytics

If you want to maximize your portfolio as a marketing tool, it helps to keep track of how well it's doing.

While Journo Portfolio includes a basic analytics dashboard, you may want to add a more robust analytics system to gain a detailed perspective on how your site is performing. Fortunately, it's easy to add Google Analytics to your site (note: this does require a Google account).

To install Google Analytics, follow these simple instructions.

✅ Check all pages are published

Once you've published your portfolio website, you'll want to double check that all of your pages are published.

Paste your URL into a search bar in any browser and view your site. Click through to all pages to make sure they are working correctly. If you find that one or more of your pages isn't appearing, log back into your Journo Portfolio account to edit your site.

In Edit mode, navigate to Pages, and select the unpublished page. Check to see that the "Publish" toggle is selected.

Remember to refresh your browser before you check again to ensure your page has been published.

If you are still encountering difficulties, please reach out to Support.

✅ Setup your User Directory profile

Have your portfolio featured in Journo Portfolio's Portfolio Directory so more potential clients can find you.

In Edit mode, navigate to  "Settings" -> "Directory". Choose the tags you'd like to be listed under, and make sure the toggle is set to have your portfolio listed in the directory.

Find out what else your portfolio needs to have to be featured in the directory.

Still have questions?

Look up helpful articles or contact support any time from our Support page. We're here to make sure your portfolio reflects your work and functions the way you need it to, so don't hesitate to get in touch.