Skip the Testimonials: How to Vet a Web Designer's References

Every web designer's website has a testimonials page. It is the single most persuasive page on the site and the single least informative. Testimonials are chosen by the designer, edited by the designer, and published by the designer. Nobody puts the three-star review on their own homepage.

References are different. A reference is a past client you can actually reach, who agreed to be contacted, and who will answer your questions without the designer in the room. If testimonials are the brochure, references are the inspection. Here's how to run one properly.

Ask for references the right way

Early in the conversation — before any proposal, before any payment — ask for contact details for two or three past clients whose sites are live and who have agreed to be contacted.

Three things to notice:

A note of fairness: some clients decline to be contacted, and designers can't force them. The request you're making is for references who consented, and any working designer has a few of those. What you don't want to hear is that nobody can be contacted, ever, for any project in the portfolio. That's not confidentiality. That's a pattern.

The questions that actually reveal something

You'll get fifteen minutes with most references. Don't spend it on questions the testimonial page already answered. Skip "were they nice?" — everyone says yes. Ask these instead.

"Did they deliver on the original timeline they promised?"

This is the most valuable question in the entire process, and it's the one most business owners never think to ask. It doesn't ask whether the designer was eventually good. It asks whether the schedule they sold you was real. A reference who says "yes, roughly on time, with one stretch when we were slow getting them photos" is telling you the timeline was honest and the delays were shared. A reference who says "it took about twice as long as they said" is telling you the sales timeline and the delivery timeline are different documents.

"What was it like when something went wrong?"

Something always goes wrong — a plugin conflicts, a form breaks, a photo behaves badly on phones. How the designer handled the first problem tells you more than how they handled the parts that went right. Listen for whether the reference even has a story: "nothing went wrong" is usually a failure of memory, not of the project.

"What did you have to do that you weren't expecting?"

This question surfaces the invisible client-side work: the hours spent writing copy nobody mentioned, the photos you had to reshoot, the decisions you had to make faster than you wanted. References answer it honestly because it's not really a complaint about the designer — it's just what happened. It's also the best preview you'll get of your own project.

"Who answered when you had a question after launch?"

This tells you what happens after the invoice clears. If the answer is "the same person who built it, usually same day," the designer's support story is real. If it's "a ticketing system, mostly," you've learned what your second year will feel like. We cover what good aftercare looks like in what great post-launch support looks like.

"Would you hire them again?"

Ask it last, and let the pause do the work. Most references say yes. The ones who hesitate, or who say "for the right project," are giving you the honest version — and the honest version is still useful. A designer who's right for a simple site but out of their depth on custom functionality is worth knowing about before you're the one finding out.

What to be skeptical of

The reference who was coached. If every answer arrives suspiciously polished and on-message, you may be talking to the designer's best friend. That's not a reason to skip the call — it's a reason to ask the unscriptable questions. "What did you have to do that you weren't expecting?" is hard to rehearse an answer to.

A portfolio with no people in it. A designer whose work you can see but whose clients you can never speak to is asking you to buy the brochure without the inspection. Published testimonials are worth something — consistency, specificity, and names you can verify independently all add up. But they're the starting point of your evaluation, not the end of it.

Reviews on third-party sites as a substitute. Google and Facebook reviews are useful signal, especially patterns across many reviews. But they're public and permanent, which makes even unhappy clients diplomatic. A private conversation with a consenting past client is where the specific, unguarded details come out.

If you're the client, make yourself referenceable

A quick note from the other side of the table: good clients get better designers, partly because designers answer their emails faster, and partly because designers eventually want to show you off. When your project goes well, agree to be a reference for the next business owner who asks. The reference system only works because past clients take the call. Somebody probably took one for you.

Where references fit in the bigger check

References are one part of vetting, not the whole thing. Run them alongside the full questions to ask a web designer before you sign, and before you commit, make sure the ownership and payment terms are in writing — the contract red flags piece covers what not to sign.

Questions about a project you're vetting? We're happy to hand over references. We answer every enquiry personally, within one business day.