A personal website is a digital space where individuals can showcase their professional skills, achievements, interests, and portfolios. Typically, these websites boast distinct branding, polished images, and a detailed "About Me" page that introduces the host. Additionally, they often include an informative blog and links to a newsletter sign-up.
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Zarla checks that sites meet basic web standards for mobile and desktop. We also use Google's PageSpeed Insights, and WAVE, a service that evaluates accessibility for individuals with disabilities. PageSpeed scores and accessibility are important factors for search engine rankings. PageSpeed scores may not match user experience and can vary substantially.
https://www.justinablakeney.com/
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Justina Blakeney is the founder of Jungalow, an online lifestyle brand and creative design studio that originally launched as a personal blog in 2009. The entrepreneur's website opens with a captivating split hero image of Justina and a view of her home, creating a welcoming introduction.
The home page maintains a strong focus on visual entertainment, featuring captivating motion graphics, fun typefaces, and bold imagery. While the website lacks interactive content, the sleek floating menu, coupled with easy access to social media links and a "Contact" page, promises a smooth browsing experience.
The website features a convenient floating menu that provides quick links to Justina's books, artwork, speaking events, and design services, appealing to users who value accessibility and fast results. A standout feature includes the motion graphics highlighting Justina's collaboration with Ruggable. Moreover, WAVE did not detect contrast errors.
The site's narrative is unclear, primarily due to the lack of cohesive subsections, while the available information appears tailored for existing fans of Justina. Although the floating menu is valuable, the lack of engaging entertainment leads to an uneventful scrolling journey, and the link to Justina's blog is easily missed in the footer menu.
The website impresses with its high-quality visuals and hover-activated functions, which help desktop users track their selections. While the motion graphics and colorful images are particularly striking on larger screens, scrolling through the spacious home page can feel tedious, and the absence of impactful content and CTAs further hampers the desktop browsing journey.
On Google's PageSpeed Insights, the website performed well, receiving an impressive 95/100 for accessibility and 100/100 for best practices. Overall, the desktop site scored 70/100 for performance.
Featuring a more compact layout with less visual breathing room, the mobile website appears complete and well-organized, offering a swift and seamless browsing experience. Like its desktop counterpart, the main menu remains fixed at the top of the screen, but its options are tucked behind a hamburger menu, resulting in a tidier home page.
Despite our real-world experience proving pleasant, the mobile site scored 48/100 for performance on PageSpeed Insights. However, it maintains the desktop site's high accessibility and best practices scores, underlining its commitment to efficiency and usability.
https://www.louisecrozier.com/
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Louise Crozie, a seasoned graphic designer based in Brisbane, Australia, provides over a decade of experience building brands across various sectors, including beauty and hospitality. Louise's website serves as an online portfolio, showcasing her designs with high-quality images and hover-activated functions.
Upon arrival, visitors are greeted by a slideshow reel that includes Louise's designs in staged layouts, offering a vivid display of her work in action. For ease of navigation, a floating menu remains within reach, while potential clients can read through testimonials and FAQs for further insights.
The website ensures key features remain easily accessible with a floating menu, notification bar, and a sticky, rotating logo in the bottom-right corner, all designed to seamlessly guide visitors to the contact form. Visitors can browse through Louise's portfolio, which conveniently features images of her designs on mobile and laptop screens.
While the visuals are polished and well-staged, their large size necessitates multiple scrolls to fully appreciate them. Louise's introduction toward the bottom of the home page fails to catch the attention of newcomers, especially as they're more likely to value quick results. WAVE detected several instances where alternative texts were missing.
On large screens, the website's newspaper-inspired aesthetic and high-quality visuals are especially striking, allowing visitors ample time to appreciate finer details. Moreover, the website's hover-activated selections help streamline navigation and engage desktop users seeking visual confirmation.
The Instagram banner in the footer menu makes a more impactful impression, while the sticky, rotating logo in the bottom-right corner is a nifty addition to the desktop site. On PageSpeed Insights, the website scored 89/100 for accessibility and a modest 66/100 for overall performance.
Contrasting its desktop counterpart, the mobile version does not include a sticky logo in the bottom-right corner. However, the floating menu, now neatly condensed into a compact hamburger icon, remains a key navigation feature. Additionally, the mobile version's linear layout ensures the text-heavy sections are more digestible, with the images of Louise's designs providing great visual breathing room.
Despite solid real-world tests, the mobile site scored 31/100 for performance. That said, the site performed well in the accessibility and best practices categories, scoring 95/100 and 100/100, respectively.
New York City, New York, U.S.
Misty Copeland, regarded as one of today's leading ballerinas, presents an engaging website that showcases her achievements, performances, and athletic prowess through polished visuals and multimedia content. The website boasts a clear and well-structured narrative, with intuitive navigation guiding visitors through the press and social media updates.
Visitors can browse Misty's image and video galleries, explore her calendar, read reviews, watch performances, and access the dancer's contact details. Moreover, the website promotes links to online stores that sell Misty's books and tickets to performances.
The site greets visitors with a full-screen image of Misty in a striking dance pose, alongside a neat hamburger menu and a prompt to scroll down. This captivating introduction engages visitors and entices them to delve deeper. The compact hamburger menu icon complements the transparent floating menu, enhancing the site's flow and visual impact.
The home page is packed with content, demanding extensive scrolling and close attention. While a floating menu and navigation lines help guide visitors through important sections, the lack of a back-to-top button is noticeable. In terms of usability, WAVE flagged several contrast errors, as well as missing alternative text and link-related issues.
With commanding visuals and interactive multimedia content, the Misty Copeland website feels tailor-made for desktop screens. Hover-activated functions and bold visuals make navigating the site a cinematic and intuitive experience, ensuring desktop users are always fully engaged. In a departure from the static presentations typical of most desktop websites, Misty's site features a hamburger menu, underscoring its emphasis on clean visual aesthetics.
The visuals retain their compelling aesthetic on mobile screens, with Misty's backdrop images commanding greater attention on longer displays. However, the expansive layout of the home page causes smaller titles and key options, such as social media links, to be easily overlooked.
Moreover, the absence of a back-to-top button feels more noticeable on the mobile site. While our real-world tests resulted in a pleasant user experience, the site scored 58/100 for performance, as well as 79/100 for accessibility, and 79/100 for best practices.
Radcliff, Kentucky, U.S.
Jericho Brown is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for his lyrical exploration of diverse themes, including race, masculinity, and sexuality. Jericho's website opens up to a captivating hero image of his latest book's cover art, followed by two text-heavy sections that introduce the writer and provide insight into his latest book. Together, these elements create a memorable first impression.
The home page's spacious layout is adorned with polished images of Jericho's books and links to his poems, while brief reviews help build trust. In addition, visitors can easily access contact information in the bottom-page menu.
A floating main menu is easily accessible, and it includes anchor link functions to help streamline navigation. The "POEMS" and "PROSE" sections are particularly engaging, as Jericho uses logos of publications to bring attention to his extensive reach and poem collection. Moreover, the site performed excellently on WAVE, with no errors detected.
While contact details are visible in the footer menu, the "Contact" anchor link in the top menu is hidden behind a "More" option, leading to initial oversight. The opening to Jericho's latest book is good for marketing, but it would be beneficial to introduce the writer sooner. This way, loyal fans and newcomers are fully engaged from the start.
Navigating the desktop website feels quick and intuitive, with a floating anchor link menu and hover-activated selections helping to keep users engaged. On a landscape screen, the website appears spacious and easy to follow, though the absence of multimedia content and visual entertainment is more noticeable.
Unlike its mobile counterpart, the website is missing a back-to-top button. However, this omission does not feel pronounced, as the anchor link menu is always within reach. On PageSpeed Insights, the site produced brilliant results, scoring 93/100 for performance and 90/100 for accessibility.
Contrasting the desktop website, the mobile version is missing a floating menu. However, the main menu, now presented in the hamburger format, retains the desktop site's anchor link capabilities. While retaining this feature helps automate navigation, the anchor link menu feels less intuitive on the mobile site due to its reduced visibility.
On a more positive note, the mobile site does include a valuable back-to-top button, ensuring accessibility and efficiency remain top priorities. Additionally, the site performed well on PageSpeed Insights, scoring 89/100 for accessibility and 71/100 for overall performance.
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Shekhinah, born Shekhinah Thandi Donnell, is a South African singer-songwriter whose vibrant personal website captivates with whimsical graphics and an engaging design. Upon entering the site, visitors are greeted by a striking artwork of Shekhinah, accompanied by a simple menu leading to her music profile, festival details, and "About" and "Contact" pages.
The main menu also features a nifty search tool for easy browsing and a kebab menu that navigates to her social media pages. Unlike most personal websites, Shekhinah's home page mainly showcases her music videos and active Instagram feed.
Visitors can enjoy Shekhinah's albums and videos directly from the home page and extensive "Music" webpage. This focus on media elements is particularly advantageous for mobile users who seek quick results. The website boasts creative graphics that capture Shekhinah's personality. Furthermore, WAVE only found one empty link and one contrast error.
With no introduction, calendar, or personal blog, the website is missing a personal touch. While the focus on multimedia content is commendable, the site feels less engaging due to the scarcity of bold text and calls -to-action. Additionally, Shekhinah's logo is hard to read, and the website does not feature a floating menu.
The website introduces Shekhinah's vibrant personality through music-themed graphics, striking artwork of the singer, and a bold color palette — all of which appear more alluring on desktop screens. Additionally, the focus on video content feels designed for desktop users who can appreciate the video elements better.
Despite this, the lack of hover-activated functionalities and text makes browsing the website feel cumbersome. While a back-to-top button is available on the desktop site, its low contrast causes it to go unnoticed. Contrasting our positive experience, the site scored a modest 40/100 for performance.
On the mobile site, the layout follows a linear flow, resulting in increased scrolling. This makes the absence of a floating menu and a back-to-top button more pronounced on the mobile site. On a more positive note, the music streaming tools on the home page and "Music" page offer mobile users swift accessibility.
In contrast to our real-world tests, which proved pleasant, the mobile site received a low performance score of 30/100. That said, it retains the desktop site's high scores for accessibility and best practices.
A personal website is an online digital hub that spotlights an individual's interests, profession, qualifications, and/or portfolio. This space typically includes high-quality images of the individual, an informative "About" section, a blog or newsletter sign-up, and a clear understanding of their character and branding.
Your personal website should reflect your personality, showcase your work or offerings, and provide quick access to contact information and social media profiles. To add a more personalized touch, include images of yourself, along with an "About" section, a blog, and links to booking information.
We've prepared a list of personal website examples that excel in intuitive navigation, quick access to contact information, and a clear overview of the hosts' profession. Among these, the Misty Copeland website is a prime example with its compelling visual entertainment.
