Hello, it’s Aneta here 👋 This is issue #12 of UX Design Express and today we’re talking about

Crafting home page

As a designer you know that home page is very important. It’s like a door to your designer’s profile. It will either convert and get hiring managers to click on your case studies or not. Home page is the first thing they will see in your portfolio so it needs to make a good first impression. It needs to engage your readers.

How to do increase the engagement using home page? 📈

By optimising for time to value. It means that you aim to give hiring managers information they want to see primarily. These are story elements that showcase some of the key design skills like design craft, product thinking or interaction design. Ultimately, hiring managers are busy people at work and reviewing your portfolio is just another task on their list. Your goal is to provide them with key information quickly.

How to craft the home page? Let me spill the tea! 🍵

Let’s dive in 🐬

Create a portfolio home page that increases engagement and drives curiosity

1. Design a landing page

Your portfolio is a landing page. It’s created specifically to promote your personal brand - your designer’s profile. It’s not an exploration page. Hiring managers are not coming here to see what you’ve been up to. Like you’re rading it now because you want to improve your portfolio. Hiring managers are coming to your portfolio to check if you could be their next hire.

Therefore, in this context, your portfolio has a clear call-to-action (CTA). You want a hiring manager or a potential client to contact you for a chat. To do it better, the best is to think about your portfolio as a landing page and combine it with a mindset of a marketer or a content creator. You need to learn how to use content strategically to catch hiring managers’ attention among many other portfolios that they’re reviewing.

• Be intentional about every word and image

• Show your one-line pitch in the hero section

• Use hooks in your case titles

• Show beautiful mockups

• Focus on presenting your value

• Use clear CTA and CTV

• Use BLUF communication

2. Say more than “Hello. My name is Kate 👋”

I think we've all seen it countless times. It has become more boring than welcoming. It doesn't bring any value. What does “Hello” and “Your name” communicate to hiring managers? Honestly, nothing that would help them decide if they should call you. Therefore, I think it’s a waste of time to use it as an intro message, especially in the hero section of your home page.

What to do instead? 😎

Start with the hook - a one-line pitch about yourself. Add details in a short description. Communciate your value. Show how awesome you are as a designer - highglight your cool experience and skills.

• Write about your past experiences

  • with 4 years of experience from Fintech / Meta

  • who crafted 13 products for 3 million users

• Mention your superpowers

  • who prototypes solutions in minutes, not hours

  • I thrive on making designs pop!

• Write about your current job situation

  • currently designing Instagram Stories

• You can also talk about your cool projects

  • writing UX Design Express 💌

3. Change case study titles to a hook

Don’t write any title for your case studies. Write catchy and insightful titles that will give hiring managers key information about a project. Writing just about a feature like “dashboard design” is so boring and definitely not unique.

Think about using these keywords when writing your titles:

• Action verb

• Company name

• Project goal

• User problem

• Business goal

• Product name

• Target user group

• Market

• Details

• Results

• Product type: B2B, SaaS etc.

• Feature

4. Show beautiful mockups

It needs to be beautiful, or at least clean and modern, because we all suffer from the attractiveness bias, whether we like it or not! But don’t worry, you don’t need to create flipping cards or fancy animations.

• Avoid overusing styling

• Large visuals sell better

• Use high-quality visuals

• Display only readable visuals

• Utilize readable and larger fonts

• More white space is better than too little

• Maintain a balance between text and visuals

5. Use clear CTA but also CTV

Make sure the path in your portfolio will be clear for hiring managers. Visual and interactive things can naturally bring attention but when it’s not clear, don’t forget about clear buttons. If you want to clearly communicate an action, use standard CTA buttons, like:

• Contact me

• See my work

• Check projects

• Copy e-mail

But if you want to play with more insightful content, try to use CTV (call-to-value). These buttons are still call to actions but they provide more context around the value hiring managers will get. Examples:

• Explore how I navigated complex B2B challenge

• See my visual skills in action

• Check my most impactful project

• Drop me an email, I’m available to chat ASAP

6. Use BLUF communication

BLUF is a military communication method that later was also adopted by Minto’s Pyramid framework. Both concepts are about communicating the conclusion first before sharing the context.

By being straight to the point, providing key information upfront, avoiding fluff, you can quickly grasp hiring managers’ attention. You show them what they look for, you empthasise with their constraints (lack of time) and needs (need to decide if they’ll call you), that way you respond to your users’ needs. Like a designer. Doesn’t it sound more strategic to you? To me, it definitely sounds like being more intentional.

Some concrete tactics how to use BLUF in your portfolio:

• Leverage project summaries

• Try fitting the juice above the fold

• Use highglights

• Show snapshots: of your designer’s profile, skills, experiences

Want to position yourself as a design agency?

Try business style portfolio where the focus is on a client, not you. If you’re 100% into freelancing or building your own design agency, this is the way to go. Your content should focus on explaining how you can deliver value for clients’ business, rather than describing how good you are at facilitating workshops. A typical designer’s portfolio can work for some freelancers but if you want to position yourself as a business, you need to change the mindset.

That's it for today!

Get portfolio support from me ⭐️

There are 2 ways I can support you individually with your portfolio.

1. Let’s do it long-term! The biggest results come from this

2. Hop on a one-time call with me

I’m back in two Fridays with another edition of UX Design Express 👋

Keep designing ✨
Aneta