Let’s dive in!

QUICK TIPS

1. What NOT to include on your Contact page

Self-portrait

A self-portrait does have its purposes (making the site more personable, more trustworthy), but here’s not the place. The About/Bio page is better suited for it. On the Contact page, it simply distracts people from writing the message.

If you combine About & Contact (which I don’t recommend), make sure you’re providing enough info about yourself and include a portrait, without it being too much of a distraction from the contact information.

Instagram image grids

Sarcasm warning: why not also play some music here or include a YouTube video of cats chasing laser pointers? The goal of this page is to get an inquiry, not be entertained.

Comments

I don’t see why you’d want contact messages to be public. This is not a blog post, comments are too distracting.

2. Social media / external links in your nav menu

When people see a menu item, they expect it to link to an internal page of the site. So having “Instagram” there as a link (looking like the rest of the menu items) is confusing. That means nothing like this:

People expect those menu items to link to pages on your site, not to point them externally.

The only way to include social media links in the header would be to have them as (recognizable) social media icons, and visually separated from the menu (maybe above or below the main navigation line).

It’s acceptable to sometimes link to an external blog of yours (or another portfolio site you have), but never link to other people’s websites in your main menu.