Portfolios are the wrong test
Every studio shows its best six projects. Ours does too.
What you cannot see is how those projects felt. Whether they ran late. Whether the client could use the thing afterwards. Whether the people quoted in the case study still work there.
So a portfolio tells you whether they can make something good. It does not tell you what working with them is like.
Who will actually do the work?
Ask this first. At bigger agencies the people who pitch are often not the people who deliver.
That is not automatically bad. But you should know before you sign, not in week three when a name you have never heard sends you a file.
Follow it up with: will those people be on it the whole time, or only at the start?
What happens when we disagree?
You will disagree at some point. Every project has a moment where the client wants one thing and the studio thinks it is wrong.
A good answer describes a process. They write down the reasoning, show you the trade-off, and you decide.
A worrying answer is “that does not really happen”. It happens. They are either not telling you, or not pushing back on anything.
What exactly do we get at the end?
Be specific here. Not “the files”. Ask what actually lands in your hands.
- Can our team edit the site without a developer?
- Do we get source files, and fonts we are licensed to use?
- Is there documentation, and who is it written for?
- What happens in the first month after launch?
Vague answers here turn into invoices later.
Tell me about one that went badly
This is the best question and almost nobody asks it.
Every studio has one. A project that ran over, or where the relationship soured, or where the work simply did not land.
What you are listening for is whether they can talk about it plainly and say what they would do differently. Someone who has never had a hard project has either not worked much or is not being straight with you.
Talk to a past client
Ask for a reference, then ask that person one specific question. What was harder than you expected?
General references are polite and useless. That question gets you something real in about thirty seconds.
What we would tell you about us
Since it is only fair. We are nine people. We cannot run four big projects at once. We push back on things, sometimes more than people expect.
And we have had projects run long, usually because content arrived late and we did not chase it hard enough early on. That one is on us and we have changed how we handle it.
If that sounds workable, we are probably a fit. If it does not, better to know now than in week six.
Worth remembering
In four lines
- A portfolio shows capability, not what the work is like.
- Ask who does the work, and whether they stay for all of it.
- Ask exactly what you receive at the end.
- Ask about a project that went badly, then listen to how they answer.
Questions we get asked
How many studios should we talk to?
Two or three. More than that and the calls blur together. Pick on fit and on how they think, not on the number of options.
Should we ask for a free pitch?
We would say no, and not only because we do not do them. Free pitches reward guessing. You get better work from a paid discovery, even a small one.
How do we compare quotes that look different?
Ask each studio what is not included. That single question usually explains the whole gap.
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