A revolution in web browsing has transformed how we decide to engage and communicate with our favourite brands. Whilst PCs and home computers were the devices of choice a decade ago, fresh technologies such as tablets and smartphones now reign supreme. As a result, savvy businesses must showcase their online brands on websites that cater to the needs of their target audience, bringing their content to the right users on the right devices. In Northern Ireland and beyond, this means delivering a stable and flowing web design that captures the attention of web users for longer, driving increased engagement and digital sales.
Let’s talk about how to choose the features and requirements of your website according to your needs and the different types of websites out there, particularly Portfolio websites.
Are You Looking for ‘Web Design Northern Ireland’?
ProfileTree – Expert Web Designers and Developers with a Local Flavour Serving Businesses across Northern Ireland
We are a leading web design and website development agency based in Belfast and Monaghan. We’ve established ourselves in the Northern Irish market since 2010. We’ve grown the team, collected awards, and helped local and international businesses with building top-notch websites. We’ve also helped hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses with free web design and development training through programs funded by Northern Ireland’s Councils over the course of three years. Investing in building a website for your business in Northern Ireland means making sure your new website partnership is built on proven methods. We’re also SEO specialists and a leading content marketing agency, so not only can we help with building a website, but we also help you get traffic for that website.
Web Design Northern Ireland: Types of Websites
Whether you want to redesign an existing website or build a new website from scratch, the starting point is to identify the type of website you need. From the outside, all websites look the same. However, there are many different types of websites to choose from. It all depends on your business objectives. Before choosing the type of website, make sure you’re already aligned with your team on the objectives of building a website. Let’s touch on Portfolio Websites. You can also check other articles tackling e-commerce websites, business websites, and blog websites.
Web Design Northern Ireland Type #4: Portfolio Website
Professional creatives such as graphic designers, photographers, dancers, writers, creative agencies, developers, design agencies, freelance architects – and the list goes on – all need a place to showcase their work. All these professions mainly rely on their portfolio and showreels to make a point to their client and convince them that their creative approach is relevant to what they’re looking for. A portfolio website is an evergreen, owned platform for your projects, case studies, and information about you. In addition, it’s the most professional way to express your personality, experience, and capabilities, as well as how serious you are about your personal brand. For sure, a professional creating a portfolio website for their work is someone who takes it seriously.
Web Design Northern Ireland Portfolio Website: Homepage
- Focusing on introducing your personal story and the best examples of your work.
- A clean and simple site map that has very few pages. Most portfolio websites opt for two more pages other than the homepage. Portfolio websites are naturally minimal.
- Clear categorisation of the services or industries you have experience with.
- Collaborations with brands, businesses, and fellow creatives if any.
- Featuring any testimonials, reviews, and case studies that build credibility for your work.
- Contact form for interested customers, media outlets, and businesses to interact with you.
- Promoting your social media channels where visitors can get in touch and follow to see more of your work.
Web Design Northern Ireland Portfolio Website: Must Have Pages
About
Portfolio websites are your chance to sell your skills and experience to the world. In today’s world, where everyone’s talking about how artificial intelligence is going to replace humans, people are hungry for real human connection. Whether you’re an agency or a sole trader, people want to put a face to the name. They want to know your background and what kind of person you are. It’s true that people do business with people.
So, it’s crucial to have an About page to introduce yourself, glimpses of your experience, your personal values, and your vision. They want to connect with someone who looks like them, knows their daily challenges, aspirations, and quirky moments. Dedicate time to use the right words that resonate with your work.
Work
This is the real hero page. Its layout and design play a major role in determining whether a visitor will convert. Some of our clients have a huge portfolio of work. Therefore, we categorise their content per service or per industry. This is the safest option even if you still don’t have that much work to add because you can add to it as you go, without needing to get back to the assigned agency. Some clients love to portray their work through a timeline with relevant career milestones. There are endless ways to tell people about your journey. The most important part that goes behind the scenes is selecting the work you want to showcase on that page.
Web Design Northern Ireland Portfolio Website: Contact Us
As a professional or someone creating a portfolio, your goal is to sell your skill set and experience so they can hire you for their next project. In other words, your website is a major part of your sales funnel. Clients who want to engage with your website will look for a responsive Contact Form as soon as they go through your work portfolio. It is a must-have to increase your chances of new businesses and projects.
Web Design Northern Ireland Portfolio Website: Additional Ideas
Testimonials
Testimonials are your way to build credibility with your audience. Pairing creativity with great customer service is the perfect equation every client aims for. Unfortunately, one rarely sees these two together. Therefore, putting the feedback of your customers on your work, process, commitment, and customer service delivery is a huge perk that many portfolio websites miss out on.
Blog
A blog is a plus if you intend to attract not only clients but also build a community around your expertise and monetise your website. Think of Pinterest, for instance, it’s the best platform for sharing creative work and ideas, this is a way that you can build authority for your creativity and solutions. Driving traffic to your website through Pinterest or through search engines’ organic traffic is a great way to monetise your portfolio website and be part of Google’s Display ads network.
Web Design Northern Ireland: Business Website Tips and Tricks
Web Design Northern Ireland Tip #1: Your Work Is the Hero
Whether you decide to have a blog, testimonials, or any other additional page, your work should be the hero across all the pages. A portfolio website is about your work. Don’t be tempted to focus on secondary elements. Instead, utilise content, tone of voice, videos, user experience, design, and technical features to put the spotlight on your work.
Web Design Northern Ireland Tip #2: Design Personality
Portfolio websites have a reputation that they’re all the same. So, the best advice here is to spend time creating your own design stamp. Before briefing the agency, spend time creating your brand persona and voice. Dedicate time to understanding your audience and what makes them impressed. Keep checking portfolio websites within and outside of your industry. Check as many websites as possible. Observe what you like and dislike. Take notes of all the ideas you like, then start crossing out those that don’t relate to your brand. Create a list of references. Share and discuss them with the agency while briefing them.
Web Design Northern Ireland Tip #3: A-Class Visuals
We know that content is king, but the most engaging content is visual content so that’s why it’s safe to say that for a blog website, visuals are king! For any website, design plays a major role in telling the story of the brand. But for a portfolio website, design is really a part of your selling pitch. Your goal is to wow the audience and convince them that you’re the right mind for their project. So, your work should be laid out to impress.
Without powerful photography, videos, and a compelling UI/UX, your visitors wouldn’t buy your skillset – and the ‘portfolio website’ would lose its purpose. That’s why an agency with an experience in web design and video production makes perfect sense for building a portfolio website.
Web Design Northern Ireland: Your Choice for a Web Design Northern Ireland Agency
Technology is changing, and along with that, our expectations of the online world. Gone are the days when a website was a mere presence for an online business. Indeed, in today’s digital marketplace, maintaining a strong, secure, and functioning website can make that critical difference between success and failure. In Northern Ireland and beyond, we at ProfileTree have become celebrated for our web design services which place security, visual appeal and user experience and the very core of their offering.
Our Approach
In the modern market, responsive web design is key. And, throughout each stage of this process, our web design team put each and every website project through the most stringent usability testing inspired by the latest findings in UX research. We believe in a holistic approach to web design, delivering industry-leading sites for clients across Northern Ireland. We’ve built our business on gorgeous web design and engaging content – now let us do the same for you.
Web Design Northern Ireland: Why Choose ProfileTree?
For web design in Northern Ireland, find out why we’re a different kind of agency. Based in Belfast, County Antrim, we specialise in web design made to work hard for your business. Our content marketing and SEO expertise means your website can be designed to perform hand in hand with your business, marketing, and digital goals.
Local Insight
We all know Belfast is becoming a better and better place (we hope!) to do business. But as the competition goes increasingly global for all of us, we can double down on our home-grown expertise to make local knowledge a strength. We have returning customers from across Belfast who come to us for web design, and more, that truly change with their business. That’s because making web design work hard for YOU means deciding to engage with a local company that’ll:
Understand Your Business
We’re – like you – a straight-talking, company with a clear approach to how we do business and what we want to achieve.
Understand Your Customers
We’re based in Belfast, with web design customers all across Northern Ireland. We know an industrial business in Greater Belfast and a retailer in Belfast city centre are two different customers. We know every industry in Northern Ireland has its own challenges, and we know the ups and downs of your business world.
Understand Your Area
Imagine explaining to a web bureau overseas about doing business on our changing high street, about the modern tourism boom or about responding to cross-border trade. We know your areas because we already live and work among your customers.
The Web Design Process
How to make the process of working with a web designer work best for YOUR business? You’ll find our four headline tips on this page. The essentials are that a website designed around your goals, with your team, brought in to engage in the investment and a ‘bigger picture’ eye on how you involve vital considerations like SEO and social, means better ROI for you! We also advise our clients to chat with us about website reviews in the future to check how changes in technology could create better SEO, more leads or more engagement.
Where Did We Get Our Expertise?
A great question! We’re a small team, based in Belfast, who built our own company using the very latest in SEO and content marketing thinking. We did this to show our clients what we did and how it worked…complete with stats, including live updates. The ProfileTree team includes web design, development, SEO, video, and content writing specialists who love two things: exploring new methods to benefit from the latest digital changes and making real results happen. We’re proud of how far we’ve come, using the techniques we’ve tested ourselves to help clients and proud of the work we’ve achieved with those customers.
Result Oriented Agency
When you’re busy running a business in Northern Ireland, constant offers of digital support – including web design – from every quarter can turn into background noise. We get that. It can be tempting to aim for the most cost-effective and quickest ‘fix’ when it comes to web design and hope a ‘just good enough’ approach will do. What if you could have fair pricing, timely turnaround and high quality based on results from a local company?
A Reminder of Our Promise…
We’re a Northern Ireland web design company with a difference: because we use tried-and-tested methods and processes, we’ll help you understand your target audience. We’ll work with you to plan web design around working hand in hand with your social media, SEO and more. We’ll show local examples of our work, and we’ll prove how we’re different, thanks to transparent pricing and a clear process based on methods we can prove.
Set Yours Sights
Yes, we make beautiful websites. But to produce leads, engage customers or bring people into your brand, you’ll need a website made for what success looks like for YOU. We’ll help you find your ultimate goal and how to get there. How? By listening more and applying the expertise grown by building our own business in Northern Ireland online.
Excite Your Team
Will your new site benefit every part of your business? If not, engage with your team to find out how we can help THEIR work by making your site a genuine tool for business. You’ll have a site that works harder for your company. We’ll help you turn their suggestions, challenges, and needs into a successful web design. This way, your new site becomes a performing part of your company.
Bring It Together
Make your SEO ambitions, social media activity and offline marketing pull together with your site. We’ll take a look at your bigger picture to make sure your entire digital marketing strategy works as a single unit with your business goals in its sights. Your online presence can’t be seen as individual ‘items’ as your customers won’t see your digital world this way. We’ll help you do better.
Don’t Be a Stranger
You wouldn’t install a shop-front and ignore it forever. So why neglect your digital shopfront? Your site will be optimised to, for example, display beautifully on phones and tables. And for current SEO methods. But keep in touch with ProfileTree to stay ahead of the very latest digital changes. We’re only a phone call or even a coffee chat away!
Web Design Northern Ireland: How Much Does a Website Cost
Working with so many different businesses over the years taught us to work with different budgets and requirements. We have created three different packages for our web design and development projects, through which we cater for different needs and requirements. In other words, you set the requirements; we tailor a package within the limits of your spending. The average cost of a website at ProfileTree is 7000£ covering research, UI/UX design, web development, SEO, and content migration. This price figure is subject to change according to the requirements of the website and future updates to our packages.
Web Design Northern Ireland: Ready to Book a Free Website Audit?
Fill out the form and send us your questions; we will be happy to answer all of them. Please do let us know if your business is registered in Northern Ireland. Alternatively, you can book a chat with one of our team members to audit your website for free and find out how we can help you establish a strong website presence in Northern Ireland.
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