Turning Portfolio Traffic into Clients
Open your own site in a private window and work through this list. It takes about an hour and it is uncomfortable, which is the point.
The audit
- Five seconds. Show the home page to someone outside your field for five seconds, then ask what you do. If they cannot say, the headline is wrong.
- Three clicks. From the home page, how many clicks to a piece of work with a written result? If it is more than two, the navigation is wrong.
- One number. Find a measurable outcome anywhere on the site. If there is not one, the case studies are descriptions rather than evidence.
- The phone. Load the site on a phone on a slow connection. Time how long until the headline is readable.
- The ask. Read the last screen of a project page. Does it tell the reader what to do next?
What to fix first
Fix in that order. Headline, then navigation, then evidence, then weight, then the ask.
The order matters because each one is wasted if the one before it is broken. A perfect call to action at the end of a page nobody understood is a perfect call to action nobody reads.
Run it again in three months. The list stays the same; the answers should not.
