Because you’ll fall flat on your face if you try putting both feet out at once.  Let me elaborate by asking some related questions:

• Is it easier to find fault in your best 5 examples, or your most recent 100?
• Is it easier to find fault in your best 1-2 examples of each category type, or letting me choose a category and then seeing 10 examples of it?
• Are your best examples presented to me, or are they waiting for me to find them (if I can find them)?

Doesn’t really sound too complicated, does it?  The conscious act of deciding that one thing is more important than another, and going with it.  And yet nearly everywhere I go on the web, many websites prefer to inundate a visitor with every possible choice, every possible option, and every possible example.  Instead of making a design decision to give the user “something”, and then letting them poke around or customize it further, we give them “everything”.

You’re probably confused, so I’ll give you some concrete examples.  Since I’ve decided to update my website and turn it into something other than a glorified placeholder, I’ve been looking at portfolio sites in an attempt to get ideas and inspiration.  My thought process was, “web design firms do this for a living, so I bet they have some examples I could mimic/copy/borrow/pilfer.”

Web design firms do indeed have examples that I can get ideas from, however very few of them ever do personal portfolios.  This fact, upon reflection, actually makes sense as I don’t know too many people who’d shell out good money for a respectable website.  Most of their examples are corporate or professional organization websites.  This didn’t bother me, as I can still look for good ideas on these sites too.

What did bother me, was the total lack of thought that went into the presentation of these portfolio pieces to the visitor.  Some websites decided the best approach was to overwhelm me with numbers (Example 1, Example 2).  Some websites required that I know exactly what I was looking for first (Example 4, Example 5, Example 6).  One website even went so far as to tell me to GO AWAY!  Very few of the websites made conscious decisions as to which examples to showcase (Example 7, Example 8).

The point being that in overwhelming me with examples of their work, or interrogating me before providing me anything of value, they are passing the burden of legwork onto me.  By giving the power of decision to me, there is a good chance I will discover a lesser value example.

As a web content provider, you will both do me (the visitor) and yourself (the website owner) a huge favor by ferrying me to your best content in a quick and painless manner.  If I am a discerning visitor, I may ask to see more examples, or inquire which project leaders ran the websites that I find exceptional, but I doubt I will leave based on your best work.

Some may argue that by only presenting a small subset of examples to choose from, you are presenting an incomplete picture.  That you are being deceptive in your capabilities.  I disagree.  Being selective does not mean that the portfolios are misleading, since they did in fact actually do the work.  It simply means that what is being presented represents the high watermark of your capabilities.  To that effect I think it saves the visitor a great deal of time.  And in this world of 4 second attention spans, saving a visitor time is a very good thing.