Sourced figures or none at all

Open almost any web design portfolio and you will find the same thing: “+35% conversion”, “+120 enquiries a month”, “99.9% uptime”. They almost never say what they are compared against, over what period or with which tool. You will not find figures like that in mine, and I want to explain why.

A figure without a source says nothing

A site’s conversions depend on traffic, the season, campaigns, prices and a thousand other things. A redesign is one of those factors, not the only one. If a figure does not say where it started, which period it compares and where it comes from, there is no way to know how much of the change had to do with the site.

And the person reading it cannot check it. An experienced client knows this, and when they see a round number with no source they do not just distrust the number: they distrust the rest of the page.

What my case studies contain

Each case covers three things: what I was asked for, what decisions I made and what the site has today. All of it can be checked by visiting the live site. That the Floors For Everyone catalogue is organised by collection, that IEP José Félix Ribas news is filtered by category, or which fields the Drakkar form asks for: you do not have to take my word for it, you can see it.

It is less eye-catching than a percentage, but it is true, and it lets each client judge the work for what it is. You can see it in the projects.

When a figure comes back

A figure goes into a case when it brings its source: Google Analytics or Search Console data with two comparable periods, Chrome field data on speed, or a measurement the client made and agrees to publish. And then it goes in whole, with what it measures, the period and the tool. For example: quote requests per month, January to March, against the same months of the previous year, according to Google Analytics.

The only figure on the home page

There is one number on the home page of this site: how long the page took to appear in your browser.

It is not something I wrote. Your own browser measures it during your visit, using the moment the largest element on the page was painted (what Google calls LCP), and it changes with your connection and your device. Nobody can make it up, because it is yours. That is the standard I want for any figure I publish.

If you are going to redesign your site

Ask whoever builds it for three things, whether it is me or anyone else:

• That the starting point is saved before anything is touched: access to the current analytics and a speed measurement.
• That you agree on what will be measured: enquiries, calls, sales or whatever really matters to your business.
• That any result that gets published says where it comes from.

That way, when the new site works, there will be a figure you can stand behind.