New designers are often reluctant to make a portfolio as it may seem like a daunting task. And, creating a solid one requires time and effort, especially if you’ve never done it before. 

Whether you are an experienced designer, or a novice one, crafting your portfolio website comes with a handful of advantages, so make sure to get to work on it as soon as possible!

And to make things easier for you, here are eight tips on how to create an effective portfolio website!

1. Tailor your portfolio to your clients

As with other things in the digital world, the target audience is everything. Your portfolio needs to be user-centered. This means that knowing your clients should be your starting point when crafting your portfolio.

Once you’ve determined what your target audience looks for, tailor your portfolio in a way that showcases your skills that fit their needs.

2. Don’t forget to introduce yourself

Striking visuals are a great selling point, but too many portfolio websites just list the projects and display the designer’s work without any info on the person or team behind the work. Give your visitors relevant data, even before your visuals. 

People don’t hire portfolios, they hire people, so creating that initial connection with visitors is essential. 

You can get creative with your introduction, just bear in mind that a strong storytelling approach ensures a truly memorable experience. 

3. Aim for a simple and clean design

You want to focus your visitors’ attention on your message and your work, so eliminate all necessary information and decorative elements. Lots of white space with a simple typeface can be a great distraction-free base to frame your work. 

Try to be concise, and replace paragraphs of text with an image or a diagram when possible. 

4. Prioritize easy navigation

When creating a portfolio website, crystal-clear navigation is a must. A one-page layout allows the visitors to find all the information they need by simply scrolling through your website. In case your content is distributed across a few pages, the design needs to be consistent on all of them.

When you add categories and divide your work into segments, it’s much easier for your potential employers to scan and understand your portfolio and your work. 

5. Choosing a domain name

When you are building your website, you need a domain name. Making a strong first impression is crucial, and the right domain name can help you attract clients, and it can be very powerful in building your credibility. 

Keep it short and unique.

You can also personalize your website with a me domain to boost your marketing and branding efforts. It is also SEO friendly, and creates a call to action out of your brand’s name!  

6. “About me” page or section needs to be impactful

Make sure to provide your visitors with a compelling description of who you are and what kind of job you are looking for. The visitors who want to know more about you should be able to find this information with ease. 

Letting your personality shine through is an excellent way to humanize your portfolio. You can add information about your level of expertise, your passion, and your interests.

Avoid writing your entire autobiography since the “About me” page/section should be interesting, informative, and to the point.

Branding yourself with a concise bio is a great way for your clients to get to know you. 

7. Less is more!

People won’t spend hours analyzing all your projects. On average, they’ll spend 10-15 seconds checking out your portfolio. That’s how long you have to capture your client’s attention and make an impression, so lead with your best work. 

Displaying too many items can do more harm than good since they will compete for visitors’ attention. Carefully select projects for your portfolio and prioritize quality over quantity.  Follow the “less is more” rule and include only your most relevant projects.

And don’t forget to list the type of work you want to do more of. 

8. Show off your personality

The best combo is a professional yet deeply personal design. If you manage to spark emotions in your visitors, you are on a path to win them over. For instance, if you are experienced with graphical design, you can add impressive illustrations.

Also, you can emphasize abstract geometric shapes and typography to make your portfolio stand out among competitors.

9. Add testimonials

Social proof is a great way to develop trust and credibility. Make sure to put good recommendations, awards, achievements, and certification on display. They are a testament to your ability and experience.

Also, include social media buttons on your website to build stronger connections and keep your followers updated. And finally, your website portfolio needs to look great on all devices!

The post How to Create an Effective Portfolio Website appeared first on SiteProNews.

After all, the key to building a loyal brand following and acquiring new customers without breaking the bank is to elevate CX as much as possible. To do this, you need a good CRM solution, and you need to use it to fuel other teams in order to improve external communication – mainly sales and customer support. Let’s take a look how all of this ties together and how you can use your CRM software to drive customer experience forward.

It all starts with personalized interactions

Personalization is the name of the digital marketing game, but it also permeates the business world as a whole. Sales, marketing, support, PR, all of these and other external processes can be personalized to address the unique needs of the individual or the target group of consumers and your online audience as a whole. If you’re not personalizing your interactions and communication, then you’re just another faceless brand that doesn’t care about its customers – or at least that’s how the world is going to perceive your company. This is why personalization is imperative, and why it is essential in elevating the overall customer experience.

Of course, you can’t hope to achieve this without the right customer information in your hands, which is where your CRM tool comes into play. Aside from personalizing just the marketing processes, you want to use your CRM data to personalize your entire digital presence, including your website and social media, as well as all external communication whether it’s via phone, email, direct messaging, or other. 

Keeping in touch to build customer loyalty

Customer acquisition and customer retention should be your two primary objectives; however, there is no denying that the latter is the key to long-term success. Customer retention typically denotes customer loyalty as well, because returning customers are a clear sign that their past experiences and interactions with your brand have been positive and rewarding. It also means that your brand is memorable and engaging enough to keep them coming back instead of heading over to your competitors’ websites.

There are many ways to build customer loyalty, but for all the fancy solutions and strategies out there, simply keeping in touch is much more affordable and highly effective. CRM allows you to send regular emails, messages, news, updates, and tailored offers. This is a great way to check in on your customers, but if you really want them to fall in love with your brand, you will stop pushing products and instead ask them how satisfied they are, if there is any way you can assist them, and just let them know that you’re here to address their every need. The modern customer appreciates a brand that keeps in touch for their well-being instead of using the opportunity to make a quick repeat sale.

Pouring CRM data into external communication

Communication is the driving force behind sales, marketing support, and many other processes, which means that you need to optimize and perfect it to appeal to your online audience. Two things you need to achieve that: CRM and a comprehensive communication system like VoIP. Voice over internet protocol already brings call analytics to your company that you can use to make smarter decisions, but when complemented by your CRM data, you can take external communication to the next level.

That said, it’s not just about the data, it’s also about the VoIP system and the features it brings to the table. For example, the leading VoIP provider Nextiva offers call analytics but also the numerous communication tools that allows you to put that data to good use. After all, what good is knowing that your customers prefer mobile communication if you only use email? Find the right VoIP plan, and use your CRM data to communicate more efficiently and effectively.

Building an offer they can’t refuse

Personalized communication is a powerful way to build loyalty and bring new customers to your website, but so is building an offer tailored to the individual. If you want to make every customer’s experience in dealing with your brand a positive one, then you need to tailor your offer and even your online presence to their needs and preferences.

This means pulling the data from your CRM and VoIP analytics tools to optimize your website to the exact liking of a repeat customer, for example. In practice, this means that different returning customers will see different versions of your site based on their past interests, browsing history, purchases, and interactions with your brand. You can use this data to craft tailored offers that will inspire them to make another purchase and keep coming back to your brand.

Responding quickly and being omnipresent

Lastly, it’s important to note that CRM software allows you to identify the right channels for external communication, but more importantly, it helps you develop other sales and communication channels to drive the customer experience forward. Leveraging CRM data and its various features allows your sales and support staff to become omnipresent in the online world, meaning that they’re always ready and able to respond to messages, pick up calls, and engage with leads in a way that fits their needs and preferences.

Wrapping up

Focusing on continuously improving the customer’s experience is the way to ensure long-term growth, and to do that, you need a good CRM tool. That said, CRM is not the answer to all your problems, so make sure to leverage its functionalities to fuel all other departments, particularly sales and support in order to generate leads and build a loyal customer base.

The post 5 Great Ways to Use CRM Software to Elevate Customer Experience and Improve Support appeared first on SiteProNews.

The modern-day customer is sick and tired of pushy and aggressive sales tactics. There’s no more room for calling too frequently, asking the wrong questions, or spamming your leads with unwanted emails. You need to strike the right balance depending on each potential customer you want to woo, and you need to listen to their responses every time in order to improve your approach. To help you harness the power of outbound sales, take a look at the following strategies to help you boost conversion rates, but also foster strong customer relationships over time.

Create your ideal customer profile

Every company has its ideal customer and its ideal customer groups that it can use to tailor its sales, marketing, and communication strategies. When it comes to sales, it is imperative that you know exactly whom you’re selling to in order to make your sales pitch and all materials as relevant to your customers as possible. That’s why you need to conduct thorough customer research and create detailed customer profiles that will allow you to personalize your sale strategy and address the specific pain points that your target demographic is experiencing. 

Use your CRM to track and monitor progress

CRM is one of those essential tools every company needs to take marketing, sales, and customer support forward. This is your comprehensive tool for lead generation and management, and it provides meaningful insights pertaining to your customers, the market, and the trends that prevail so that you can craft data-driven sales strategies.

Most importantly, though, a good CRM tool will allow you to monitor every instance of your marketing and sales processes, so that you can compare and contrast with previous quarters to gauge your level of improvement. This will allow you to create better strategies over time.

Learn from past methods and refine

Cold calling might not be as appealing as it used to be, particularly because customers and clients don’t want to be bothered by countless bands, but that doesn’t mean that phone communication is not one of your most powerful sales tactics. In fact, it can be your biggest asset, but you need to do it right. Firstly, you need a cloud-based phone system like VoIP to minimize the cost of your phone infrastructure and get various digital tools so that you can communicate internally and externally via chat, video, mobile, and more.

Aside from upgrading your phone tech, you should use its built-in analytics tools to gather valuable information about your customers so that you can personalize all communication and approach them in a unique way. This will allow you to plan your calls using specific customer data and learn how to approach them without driving them away. Coupled with the data provided by your CRM tool, this will allow you to utilize your phone system to generate sales and guide quality leads to conversion.

Create a flexible sales strategy

Outreach plans are necessary for your teams to have a clear vision of how they should communicate your brand message consistently. Scripts are useful especially for novice sales reps, but they shouldn’t be rigid in any sense – leave room for improvisation and creativity, and encourage role play for your newcomers to practice before they start calling and emailing prospects.

Make time to review their outreach plans, scripts, and track record. You can help them by refining their tone of voice, the kind of information they share with customers, and the way they portray your brand in the process. 

Set measurable, realistic sales goals

There’s absolutely no merit in pursuing endless lists of unqualified leads with your perfect sales pitch, be it via the phone, email, or social media. If any of your strategies should work, they require well-researched, data-backed goals for each of your sales reps. First of all, calculate your sales goals for the short, mid, and long-term sales outreach for your teams. Then, assign appropriate sales strategies based on their traits and access to qualified leads.

Finally, track their progress, incentivize your teams, and always revisit your goals on a regular basis to make sure they’re on the right track. Keep in mind that setting the bar too high might be overwhelming for your sales teams, so it’s best to keep your goals realistic.

The era of cold-calling with nothing but tenacity up your sleeve is long over, and it has been replaced by customer-centric outbound sales with a steep learning curve. None of what you collect and learn about your customers is set in stone. Your sales teams will always need to revisit these and all other best practices in order to adapt to every lead that comes their way. Use these guidelines as your foundation, and then build upon it with your own creativity, all the while keeping your customers’ needs in mind.

The post 5 Outbound Sales Strategies to Boost Conversion Rates appeared first on SiteProNews.