My mentor told me to kill my hero section and it worked

Last year, a senior designer named Mark from Chicago looked at my portfolio and said 'nobody cares about your intro paragraph, show the work first.' I had spent 3 weeks perfecting that section with a fancy animation. I finally removed it from 2 of my 5 case studies and my interview rate went up by about 40% in the next 2 months. Has anyone else tried leading with a project image instead of text?

2 comments

2 Comments

janahenderson1d ago

Mark from Chicago (I love that) basically told me the same thing my gym trainer said about workout logs. I used to write down every set and rep with notes about how I felt, and he was like "nobody reads that, just take a picture of the machine's weight stack before you start." It hit me that people scroll past text like it's wallpaper now, whether it's a portfolio or a menu at a coffee shop. I did the same thing with my recipe blog actually - moved the step-by-step photos to the top instead of the ingredient list and my traffic jumped way up. It's like everyone has this two-second rule where if something doesn't grab them visually, they're gone. Even my husband does this with his resume now - has a big project screenshot right at the top before any words.

barbara4292d ago

YES, THIS! "Nobody cares about your intro paragraph" - Mark from Chicago was SO right. I did the SAME thing last year. I had this whole story about my design philosophy and how I approach problems. Replaced it with just the hero image and a one-line project name. My callback rate went through the roof. It's like people decide in TWO seconds if they want to scroll. I also cut my About page text by like 70% and just put my face and a short sentence of what I do. Simple wins.