Skip the slides. Build a UX writing portfolio website instead
- Sebastien Smith
- Jul 28
- 9 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Table of contents
UX writers are an odd bunch.
We're mostly refugees from non-tech backgrounds, like marketing and journalism. While that means we bring a much-needed outsider's perspective to product design, our knowledge gaps in UX stop us from moving up the ladder.
I've seen those knowledge gaps play out when recruiting UX writers, especially when candidates sent me their portfolios in Google Slides decks.
Slapping together projects in a deck might save time for the candidate, but it won't show consideration for the end user: For recruiters, decks are clunky to navigate, hard to read on mobile, and easy to forget.
Worst of all, they present projects as a process rather than a compelling narrative that explains the why and how of solving user problems.
If you're a UX writer, do yourself (and your potential employers) a favour: Build a website for your portfolio. You'll bridge those knowledge gaps and make yourself more employable.
Why a website portfolio will land you more interviews
You're designing an experience
Building a website is one of the surest ways to demonstrate an understanding of UX fundamentals, as you're literally designing a user experience from scratch.
UX design starts with understanding user needs and behaviours. The people who will see your portfolio website are busy hiring managers, recruiters and design leads. They'll typically spend three minutes or less on each portfolio.
At the same time, you have your own goal: landing a job. That overlap—where user needs and business goals meet—is the sweet spot of UX. It's your chance to quickly guide users straight to your strongest projects so you can get hired.
With those goals in mind, you have the opportunity to step out of your comfort zone as a writer and show recruiters that you understand the wider UX process.
After all, you're not just writing the words on the screen, but using design thinking to make your portfolio easy to navigate, intuitive, and optimised across devices.
You're telling your own story
Your portfolio is not just a collection of past projects, but a UX writing project in its own right.
At a surface level, that means crafting great microcopy throughout your website. But go deeper, and you have a bigger opportunity to tell your story through UX writing.
Storytelling—a core UX writing skill—means using a narrative structure to help readers understand, follow and connect with your product.
Tell a story on your portfolio website, and you can create a sense of flow and guide viewers through your narrative. Whereas a deck might merely list out what you've done, a website portfolio gives you more room to explain the challenges you've tackled.
That, in turn, aligns with the user and their goals: hiring managers who want to understand how you approach problems. A website portfolio can help you answer those questions with narrative principles and intentional content design that you'd apply to any user journey.
You're analysing the data
When you send off a deck in a job application, it's hard to know if anyone opens it, let alone how they interact with it.
A website portfolio gives you access to real data, so you can track user behaviour to improve usability and engagement.
Most free website builders have a built-in data dashboard to show you:
Which pages get the most visits
How long users stay on your pages
Where they click, bounce or drop off
That kind of data lets you treat your portfolio like a living entity. You can optimise the experience over time by adding navigational cues to encourage users to explore your work or removing low-traffic pages.
Best of all, analysing how others interact with your portfolio means you're demonstrating the user-centred thinking that you can bring to the job.
Summing up, building your own website proves you do more than just write—you can design an experience, tell your story, and analyse how users interact with your portfolio. Those are the kinds of UX skills that hiring managers and recruiters are looking for, and a website helps you demonstrate them all at once.
How to build a UX writing portfolio website
1. Choose a platform
Building a website is less daunting than it sounds when you realise how many free, no-code website builders are out there.
I personally love using Wix. The built-in page templates can speed the process, and their data dashboard is super intuitive.
Do I need my own domain?
The short answer: No. But it depends on your goals and budget. Are you sharing your portfolio directly with recruiters? Then stick to your platform's free default URL.
But if you want to attract organic traffic, investing in your own domain name will make your site searchable. Besides, yournamehere.com is much more memorable and professional than, say, wix.com/yournamehere/ux-writing-portfolio.
2. Plan your website
Your website needs three pillars: A homepage, project pages, and a contact section. Let's break down each pillar.
Homepage
First impressions mean everything in UX. A recruiter might spend mere seconds on your homepage before deciding to continue or not.
So remember the user goals: this recruiter wants to explore your projects and make a decision quickly (before moving on to other candidates' portfolios). Make sure that your projects take centre stage on the homepage, and use visual tiles and cards to link to your best case studies.
Don't repeat my mistake: I originally created a dedicated page for projects separated from my homepage. That meant an unnecessary extra step for recruiters. By placing projects directly on the homepage, you can let recruiters immediately find what they're looking for.
Project pages
Homepages are for making a first impression; product pages do the real work. Your projects should walk recruiters through your thought process, challenges, and results ( more on which later).
Clearly mark out entry points to projects on your homepage with eye-catching titles, visuals and punchy descriptions that entice clicks. A well-placed menu allows recruiters to easily navigate between projects.
Contact
No need to create a separate page for your contact details. Make it easy to get in touch by creating a contact form below your projects on your homepage. An email form and a link to your LinkedIn page will do.
Do I need an "About Me" page?
Introduce yourself, yes. But don't make a separate page. My old "About Me" page hardly attracted any traffic. Instead, I added a short "About Me" section (along with a skills list) to my homepage, between my projects and contact information.
3. Choose your projects and tell a story
Your UX writing case studies are the heart of your website. Pick projects with significant outcomes or at least demonstrate your strengths and thought process when tackling UX problems.
Most hiring managers will only review 1-2 projects, so present your strongest projects first. It's fine to add more projects to show your breadth of experience. But don't overload your site just to fill space.
How should I structure my UX writing projects?
UX portfolios written in decks read like, well, decks. They explain what happened step by step, but not why it mattered.
With your website, you have the space to tell a compelling narrative that shifts the focus from the process to the meaning behind your decisions.
When crafting your narrative, ask yourself:
How did your UX writing solve a problem?
What was your strategy, and why did you take it?
How did you measure the success of your solution?
To answer these questions, structure each project like an adventure-action story arc:
The status quo: What was wrong with how things were before you took action
Conflict: What happened that made you take action
Rising action: The strategy you took to solve the problem (mention any pushback you faced to add tension)
Climax: The solution implemented
Resolution: How the story resolved and the results of your solution
You can explore other storytelling approaches to see what works for you. Either way, structure your projects consistently to reduce the cognitive load for recruiters, making it easier for them to scan and compare your work.
Take an impact-first approach by leading your project page with a headline like "How I boosted click-through rates by 10% with A/B testing." This positions you as a UX writer who not only writes but also solves problems and is committed to achieving results.
Finally, include screenshots throughout your project pages that bolster your narrative and put your microcopy into context. These screenshots should make it clear at first glance why you chose those words within the user journey.
Present these screenshots consistently to show attention to detail and give your website a clean design. Some things to consider:
Adding a border around each screenshot to contrast them within the page
Labelling your screenshots can add context and make them more scannable (E.g. Before and After, etc.)
Making screenshots expandable for easier viewing (add a hover effect to make it obvious that they're clickable)
4. Personalise it
Personality goes a long way for recruiters sifting through dozens of portfolios.
Once you've completed the main pillars of your portfolio, move on to the look and feel.
Choose a colour scheme and typeface that fits your personality. Again, website builders like Wix make this straightforward with built-in themes that can be customised.
Your "About Me" section serves as your mission statement and an opportunity to show off your writing chops. Make it unique and memorable, but always easy to skim read.
Finally, be sure to add a selfie so recruiters can put a face to your well-designed portfolio.
5. Review, revise, publish (and repeat)
Before you hit publish, take a step back and review your site as if you were the recruiter. Are you guiding people toward your best work? Does every section have a clear purpose? Is it easy to scan?
Don't forget about your mobile site. Hiring managers might check out your portfolio on their commute, so make sure your layout adjusts smoothly to smaller mobile screens.
Next, consider consistency to demonstrate attention to detail. Here's a quick checklist for building consistency:
Typefaces and text sizes
Colour schemes
Spacing between paragraphs, images, text, etc.
Page structures
Button styles
Tone of voice
Any anchored content that appears across pages (e.g. navigation menu, contact, etc.)
Do your own usability testing with a friend. Give them three minutes to explore your portfolio and ask them to share what they learned. If they can't explain your strongest projects or your mission statement, go back and tighten your messaging.
Of course, a portfolio is never really "done". When you feel confident enough, hit "Publish" and send it off to recruiters. You can always update it later. That's the beauty of a portfolio website, in fact. When you have enough traffic, review the data to see which pages people click, how long they stay, and where they drop off.
Use that info to guide your next revision. For example, within the first few months after launching my website, most users dropped off after visiting just one project. That led me to anchor each project with a "Explore more projects" to improve navigation and increase clicks.
With every tweak you make to your portfolio, you're thinking like a product manager—taking in real user feedback and improving the experience. And that's what hiring managers love to see in UX writers.
UX writing portfolio examples
Impact-first approach and great story telling for the projects.
Clear mission statement and a beautiful colour palette.
Goes deep into content strategy, UX research and copy.
My own website-building experience: Fun and liberating
Building my own portfolio website wasn't easy. It became a full-time project with two weeks of early starts and late finishes. I'd spend hours just fiddling with screenshots.
But I was locked in, and that made the experience a lot of fun.
In fact, it was liberating. As a UX writer, I've often felt boxed in and left in the dark. My work was usually an afterthought in the design process—something to be filled in after the design is finalised.
I had no influence on the product lifecycle. And I rarely had access to the user data necessary to improve my content.
Building a site changed all that.
I had my own product, and I could call the shots. I created content and designs to reinforce one another. I had the data to improve my writing and the wider user journey.
The freedom reminded me of why I love the work. So yes, it'll take time. But once it's live and it feels like you, it's all worth it.
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