A personal website is a great tool to help you present yourself on the internet. Invaluable if you’re job hunting or if you’re a freelancer (or just starting out as one), a personal website is potential clients or recruiters’ first port of call when they start researching you – so you want to make sure you stand out.
Website builders like Go Sitebuilder can help you have a beautiful and professional-looking website out in minutes, but when you’re customising your website, there are certain things you need to make sure you include.
The most important thing to bear in mind is the goal of your website. Are you looking for a job? Or on the hunt for clients for your next freelance project? Either way, focus on your personal website so that it will help you achieve this goal, rather than uploading swathes of information about your cat and your favourite pair of socks. Now, let’s talk about what you should include in your personal website.
Your elevator pitch
This is paramount! Your elevator pitch should be one of the first things a visitor sees when they reach your website, and should say what you do, and what makes you different. Imagine that someone arrives on your website and only reads your elevator pitch; will they have a good idea of what you do and why you’re better than the competition?
Things you could include in your elevator pitch are your most important career moments, what you’re most proud of, and what you’d say is your “superpower” as a professional. It shouldn’t be any longer than two to three paragraphs – shorter if possible, but make sure it shows a little of your personality – you want to hook them in!
Your bio
You can put this on an “About Me” page, and is longer and more informative than an elevator pitch. Give details of both your education and your expertise in work; if you have a long work history, it might be a good idea to visualise it in a timeline to make it easier to digest.
Make sure that you are showing a bit of your personality here as well. The main aim is to highlight your professional achievements but you also want to humanise yourself, making yourself both more likeable and more memorable. Many companies screen potential candidates for company culture fit, and this is a way you can show your personality.
It’s also a good idea to have a downloadable CV in this section, for recruiters who have stumbled across your page. Normally you’ll optimise a CV for a particular job, but for this general one make sure you include a wide range of your skills and achievements so it could work for multiple different roles.
Samples of your work
It’s very easy to think you need to upload all the work you’ve ever done here, but in reality nobody is going to look at it. Only add your very best work to this section. You might find it difficult to do this if you aren’t in a visual industry, but if you work in marketing for example, you can outline the best campaigns you’ve created.
One tip is to make sure you quantify your work. Saying that you’ve managed “multiple successful campaigns” is vague and open to interpretation, so it’s better to be clear and say exactly how many you managed, and what results it had. Why not use a free infographic creator like Canva or Venngage to make this more engaging?
Blog
Creating and maintaining a professional blog does require a bit of time investment, but it is worth it. It shows that you are committed to your career path, that you’re knowledgeable about the industry and engaged in how it is evolving. You’ll need to update your blog at least a couple of times a month – there’s nothing more off-putting than an outdated blog that obviously hasn’t been added to in a while!
Be aware that this is also an opportunity for you to show off your communication skills and style, so make sure that you proofread your work for errors!
Contact information
What is the point in having a beautiful personal website showing off all your skills if there is no way to contact you? Make sure your contact information is visible and easy to find, and give multiple ways for people to contact you. It’s also a good idea to link to other professional platforms as well; the more times you are mentioned on the web, the more credible you appear.
Testimonials
Testimonials from people you’ve worked with are a great way to lend credibility to your online persona. Linkedin is a good way of sourcing these – if you don’t already have some, contact some former colleagues or clients to ask them to do so. Make sure they give details, not just saying that you’re a great person, but what exactly makes you good to work with and why?
Now you know what are good things to put on your personal website, it’s time to create one! Go Sitebuilder has a simple website builder with professional web design in the form of hundreds of customisable templates. On the go? Our website builder can be used from a laptop, tablet or smartphone, so you can create a professional website from wherever you are. Why not try our free 14-day trial today?