Writing a Web Designer Resume With a Great User Experience

You know the importance of good web design — now you need to apply those same creative instincts to your resume.

Applying for your dream web designer job comes with stiff competition. You need to make your resume move to the top of the stack, just like your design-skills move a client webpage to the forefront of consumers’ minds. And we're about to show you how to do just that.

Below, we'll tell you exactly how to write a web designer resume to help you land an interview. 

What Every Hiring Manager Wants to See in a Web Designer Resume 

A talented web designer does more than create fancy page layouts. They understand user experience and transform visitors into customers. They know branding and can turn a multi-page website into a cohesive experience. They have an impressive portfolio, yet never stop pitching original ideas to the rest of the creative team.

You portray entire companies through a single site. Now, it's time to convey all of your knowledge and experience in a single page (or two).

When writing your web designer resume, keep these three objectives in mind. 

1. Show Concrete Examples of Your Work

As a creative professional, your portfolio is the most enticing thing on your resume. Recruiters want to see real examples of your work, and the results they earned for clients.

Link to your portfolio in your contact information, but go further in-depth about those projects as you travel down the page. Your work experience section gives you the opportunity to describe what client problems you solved, awards or recognition you earned, and languages or tools you used in each project.

In other words, think of each role or client as a mini case study to include on your resume. Describe a problem you were confronted with, and how your solution(s) gained measurable results. Here are a few examples:

• For an ecommerce site: Designed an ordering platform for a local at-home meal delivery service, leading to $25,000 in sales in the first month.
• For redesigning a nonprofit: Lead the rebrand of a local charity, increasing their individual giving base by 20% in the first year.
• For an individual consultant: Designed and launched a Wordpress site for an experience design consultant, landing her on the front page of Google for "DC based experience design firms" 
• For a wellness company: Improved the user interface for a local yoga studio, allowing customers to more easily sign-up for classes and increasing customer retention by 22%

2. Point Out Your Technical and Design Skills

Sought-after web designers have a designer's intuition and the technical savvy of a web developer. If you understand coding languages as well as you understand the Adobe Creative Suite, this makes you a sought-after candidate.

Show the hiring manager that the left- and right-sides of your brain team-up to create stunning, responsive websites, complete with clean code and expert user experience. Here's how to weave both into your web design resume: 

• Prove you're a talented graphic designer: Hand-illustrated custom icons and graphics for a meal kit service, creating a one-of-a-kind brand to be used across packaging, social media, and web.
• Display your expertise in coding languages: Built a React component library that was used to build a new sign up flow that increased conversion by 15%.
• If you have a niche, point it out: Transformed all web icons into custom animations using SVGs and CSS animations

3. Show That You Can Collaborate in a Team Environment 

As a web designer, you need to be able to communicate effectively with the client, copywriters, graphic designers, web developers, and other teams. As a designer, you will need to have excellent oral and written communication skills, being able to break down complex problems (from the engineering team) and convey it to the client. Simultaneously, you should be able to communicate the clients’ tone and voice to the rest of the creative team.

Here's how to show you are a team player on your resume: 

• To show you understand their audience: Used Joomla to design a new ordering platform as a response to customer concerns, increasing customer repurchases by 13%.
• To prove you can project manage a team: Lead a team of six copywriters to conduct a complete overhaul on the client content management system, moving them to the 1st page of Google for five different blog posts.
• To display you can work alongside the engineering team: Lead rebrand and performed front-end development for a nonprofit giving app, leading to a viral social media campaign with 500,000 impressions.

Web Designer Resume Template 

Now, it's time to put the above resume objectives on paper.

Your resume template will be broken out into five sections: a brief summary, contact information, professional experience, skills, and education. Within your work experience section, list your most recent role first, followed by the second-most recent, and so on (this is called a reverse chronological resume format). 

Below, we dive into each of your resume sections, starting with:

1. Contact Information

Your contact information includes your name, recent position, contact information, and your portfolio: 

• First and last name
• Most recent job title
• City and state 
• Phone number
• Email
• Portfolio, website, or business social media handles, if necessary

For your portfolio, you can link to a Github account (if you have one), or a website displaying samples of your design work. Do not link to any personal social media handles — only link to business accounts you managed, displaying your designs.

2. Resume Summary 

Keep your resume summary succinct, explaining how your web design skills will earn results for the client (or in-house company, depending on the role). Try to keep your summary to two brief sentences, reflecting keywords used within the job description.

For example: ​

Senior web designer with 10 years of experience designing PHP websites in the wellness space. Led the branding for a pilates studio that expanded to 20 United States cities and grew to a $120M valuation. 

3. Work Experience Section 

Your work experience gives you the opportunity to describe what your portfolio can't say. Explain any earned results, awards, and how your impactful design converted to client sales.

For example:

• Designed 33 client websites from rebrand to launch using HTML5, Javascript, and CSS
• Redesigned a website for an independently-owned sports apparel company, decreasing the site bounce rate by 32%
• Created over 45 client site PDF mockups in Adobe Illustrator, communicating with web development teams as they hard-wired each wireframe into Wordpress
• Designed a SaaS app for a real estate company, allowing virtual walk-throughs for hopeful homebuyers 

4. Education Section

Keep your education section brief. List the schools attended and degrees received. If you have any certifications, list them here as well. 

​For example: 

American University, Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science | 2004 - 2007

5. Skills Section

List all your technical skills, including coding languages, software, and even project management tools. Do not list soft skills — such as "communication skills" — instead weaving these throughout your work experience. 

​For example: 

Figma, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe inDesign, Adobe Illustrator, HTML, CSS, Javascript, React, jQuery

Approach Designing Your Resume Like You Approach Website Design

You know clean sites, user-friendly apps, and sensible branding lead to conversions. And when it comes to a website redesign, you know the client is in the best of hands when they trust you — the expert — to lead the project.

The same can be said for your resume.

Your resume should be clean, modern, easily readable, and designed by resume experts. Over 100,000 people trust the Standard Resume builder to design a resume that will land them the interview. 

To begin resume writing and get one step closer to getting a face-to-face interview with the hiring manager, start designing your resume today.