If you work with web design clients, you've probably got a rough process you follow for every project. The question is whether your clients can actually see it clearly, or whether it's mostly living in your head and a handful of email threads.
This post walks through how to structure a client portal for a web design project, using a real example you can log into and poke around in. There's also a free template you can download and import straight into Client Portal if you want to use it as a starting point.
How this portal is structured
The portal is split into three phases:
- Discovery - Getting started guide, kickoff meeting, brand guidelines, brand asset uploads, and a timeline. Everything a client needs at the start of a project before the real work begins.
- Design and development - Design mockups for client review, a mood board for inspiration, a feedback and revisions page (with comments enabled so clients can leave feedback directly), and SEO foundations.
- Launch and handoff - Final deliverables, a site management guide, invoice and payment, and ongoing support. Everything the client needs once the project wraps up.
It's a fairly straightforward structure, but that's the point. Clients can see exactly where the project is, what's been completed, and what's coming up, without needing a tutorial.
The content page
The thing worth highlighting in this example are the content pages.
This is a good example of what's now possible with the content pages. The whole thing is built inside Client Portal using the available blocks - pull quotes, tables, image galleries, call-outs. No external tools, no links off to a separate document. It all lives right there in the portal.
You could use something like this for brand guidelines, project proposals, strategy documents, process guides - anything you'd normally send as a PDF or a Notion link.
A quick note on the brand guidelines page: most of this is built using the standard content page blocks, but a couple of the tables use some custom HTML. The template includes that HTML so you can borrow it directly, but it's worth knowing it won't be editable in the visual editor the same way the other blocks are. If you're comfortable with a bit of HTML it's straightforward to adapt; if not, a regular Client Portal table block works fine as a simpler alternative.
Have a look around
Rather than just look at screenshots, you can log into the demo portal and click around:
π View the live demo portal
Download the template
If you'd like to use this as a starting point for your own web design projects, you can download and import it directly into Client Portal:
It includes all three phases, the module structure, and the brand guidelines content page. Tweak it to fit your own process and you should be good to go.
