How to read a web design company's portfolio: five checks before you trust it
A portfolio is a sales page. These five checks turn it into evidence you can actually weigh, using nothing but your own phone.
Every portfolio looks impressive. That is what it is for. To get something useful out of it, treat each piece as a claim and check it.
Five checks
1. Is the work live and does the link open? A screenshot proves nothing. A live URL shows what was actually delivered and whether it was maintained.
2. Does it work on your phone? Open each site on your phone, not the laptop the agency used in the pitch.
3. Is it fast and easy to read? Wait for the first screen to appear. Check text size, contrast, and whether buttons are easy to tap.
4. Which part did they build? Ask whether they designed, built or both, and who did the work. Design-only portfolios can hide who would write your code.
5. Are results claimed, and can they be shown? Any numbers about traffic or sales should come with a source, or a client you can talk to.
What to ask next
- Can I speak to a client from a similar project?
- What was the hardest part of this site, and how did you handle it?
- What would you change about it now?
Our UI and UX design and web development pages show how we describe and document our own work.
Common questions
- Should I worry if a portfolio has no client names?
- Not necessarily, as some work is under NDA. But ask for at least a live link or a reference you can speak to.
- Does a beautiful design mean a good website?
- Not by itself. A site also needs to load fast, work on phones, be findable and convert. Check those, not just the look.
- How many portfolio pieces should I look at?
- Three or four recent ones are enough, chosen from different kinds of project.
This is what we do
Work of this kind is UI/UX Design and Web Development — the same hands that wrote this.
A guide from the team at RiverPoint Web & App. It describes how we would approach this and makes no measurement claims. If you want to talk it through, get in touch.
