1. About Us Page
Clients will feel more comfortable working with you if they know a little bit more about you as a person or company. Let people get to know you instead of appearing as a foreign entity with no emotions or history. You don’t have to tell them what you eat for breakfast, but let people know who you are, what you are about, and how your business can benefit them.
2. Full Contact Details
The more contact information you have, the better. You may prefer only using specific contact methods. Still, you need to make the potential client feel comfortable, and you will build more trust if you display a variety of contact information, including an office phone number, fax, email, and physical address. This information should be displayed on your contact page, about page, and even in the header or footer. Make it easy for people to contact you if they need to!
3. Previous Clients List
The portfolio is what most people will go straight, and that’s why it needs to be the best part of your site. You need at least 6-12 clients listed in your portfolio, and they should be current. It is best to have information about each project. You should also consider including a page specifically for a previous client list if you have many well-known clients.
Working with brand names of any scale can be a great confidence booster for interested clients, especially if they can relate to one of your previous clients. For example, someone with a construction business might be happy to see you have done some great work already for other construction companies.
4. Trust Building Graphics
If people are ordering from your site, you should consider adding trust-building graphics such as a PayPal-verified logo, branded SSL certificate, symbols like Sectigo SSL, GeoTrust SSL, RapidSSL, etc., or a secure checkout graphic. These graphics can make people feel more confident about ordering design services from you online.
5. Organization Memberships
Joining design organizations such as the AIGA and taking part in them is a great way to be more involved in your industry and show clients you really care about your craft. You add the organizations’ logos on your website. Many organizations already have pre-made member-only graphics you can display when you join.
6. Explain the Process
Visitors are coming to your site for information so they can make the best judgment about how to design their projects. If you explain the process from start to finish and guide customers every step of the way, they will be much more likely to want to work with you. They will feel more knowledgeable and comfortable knowing they have an idea of how it will all work. It would help if you considered creating a page for this, or you could make something more straightforward, such as a FAQ ( Frequently Asked Questions ) page.
7. Professional Website
This is pretty obvious, but many designers do not have friendly portfolio sites. Even if you are not a web designer, you still need a nice-looking website because the quality of your website will reflect on you. If you can’t stand doing website designs or are having trouble finding a good web designer, try purchasing or modifying a pre-made website template.
There are a lot of websites out there that offer both HTML and WordPress theme portfolio templates, which make it super easy to put up an excellent fresh looking portfolio website ready to attract new clients.
Hope you enjoyed these trust-building portfolio site tips!