Competitive Analysis

Student Portfolio
http://www.thecraigdomain.co.uk/index.php

This is the portfolio of craig burges a former student at wakefield collage. His student portfolio is clean and precise.

I think Craig has shown a lot of the work that shows off what skills he is best at. CSS & Design.

As well as the site looking clean and professional it is carefully laid out in a nice orderly fashion. I think this is needed for a student portfolio, especially when you are planning to use it to present.

From looking at the site I can see certain characteristics which I would like use on my site.

Clean and easy to follow
I think this would help especially when doing a presentation as I would be able to look at the site with ease and select the certain pieces of information I needed for the presentation without forgetting where it all is.

Plenty of Images
The images are all perfect size to catch the Human eye, think this would also help in a presentation style as you can easily see and find the information you need just by glimpsing at the site. Also it would act as a sort of memory aid allowing you to easily remember what you was talking about / what you plan on moving to afterwards.


Professional portfolio / work portfolio
http://www.design2work.net/

This is the professional portfolio of Ken liang. I suppose very much like craigs all the information is related by pictures on the main page to allow users to see current and past works. Although I am a little dubious about this particular site.

One reason is that the full image background makes the site rather large and could be a problem for people with slow internet.

Another thing which I think this site could use Is maybe written text under each picture hyperlink, similar to Craigs. Because at the moment you are having to hover over the images to see what site they actually go to which can be a little frustrating.

Overall I like the idea and realize that in many ways it is very similar to craigs. This proves to me that the 2 sites need not be completely different but made so that they can easily be edited and updated.

Summery

Clean
Both sites are very clean leading me to believe that for a portfolio site it should be clean and straight to the point allowing users / potential employers to quickly and easily access previous works.

Easy navigation
Both Sites are easy to navigate round allowing you to access all current and previous works quickly and efficiently. Once again this would allow potential employers to look at the work you have done in a more efficient way.

Pictures
There seems to be a lot of picture links on both sites. Mainly a short thumbnail of previous work that actually leads onto the work in question. I think this is also a good idea to allow potential employers to find your work a lot more easily.

Skills
Both sites use a variety of skills they have picked up for web design. I think this again is important as a potential employer can see what you can do without actually looking through your work.