The portfolio page that gets you cut in forty seconds.
A US procurement analyst opens your site with a shortlist of six vendors and forty seconds each. Here is what they look at, in what order, and what a case study needs to contain to survive that skim. Most offshore case studies fail on the first scroll.
A procurement analyst at a Series C SaaS company has six vendor sites to review before a 3pm meeting. Two hours, six vendors. That is forty seconds per vendor on the first pass, and only the ones that survive the forty seconds get read in detail.
Most offshore agency sites do not survive it. Not because the work is bad, but because the site is optimized for the wrong reader. It is written for a founder browsing on a Saturday, not an analyst racing a calendar. Here is what the analyst actually does in those forty seconds, and what has to be on the page for them to keep going.
What they look at, in order
First five seconds: the hero. Not the tagline. The logos below it. Are any of them names the analyst recognizes as peers of their own company. A single peer logo is worth ten strangers.
Next ten seconds: the case study grid. Are the case studies real projects with real client names, or are they anonymized "Client A" studies. Anonymized case studies get the site closed. The buyer has to run their own diligence and the anonymization eliminates the artifact.
Next fifteen seconds: one case study, opened. Does the opening paragraph name a specific outcome with a number attached, or does it start with the vendor's process. Process-first case studies get skipped.
Last ten seconds: about page. How big is the team, where are they, is there anyone in a US or UK timezone, and does the founder look like a person a director could email today.
What a case study has to contain
The analyst is not reading for narrative. They are reading for artifacts that will survive the internal memo they will write about you next week. A case study that produces those artifacts has four things.
One: a named client. If the client cannot be named, the case is worth about a third of what it could be worth. Consider commissioning testimonials with permission to name.
Two: a specific problem framed in the client's language. Not "they needed a modern platform." "They were losing 40% of trial signups at onboarding step three."
Three: an outcome with a source. "Signups up 32% Q1 2025 vs Q4 2024. Source: client's own Amplitude, verified with head of growth [name]." That sentence is what the analyst will paste into their memo.
Four: a linkable artifact. A public URL you built. A repository. A screenshot from a public site. A case-study PDF the client co-signed. Something the analyst can click. If nothing is clickable, the case study reads as marketing.
The three case studies that matter
You do not need twenty case studies. You need three. The three most similar to the buyer's engagement, in industry, size, and scope. Every additional case study past the third one that is not directly comparable dilutes the page.
If your homepage shows twelve logos and none of them belong to a company at the buyer's size or vertical, the analyst reads it as "they have never done this before." Six curated logos with two lines of context each outperform twelve unlabeled logos every time.
The About page is a due diligence surface
The About page is not brand storytelling. It is the page where the analyst decides whether they can defend the choice to hire you.
It needs to state: how many people on the team, where they are, what percentage of hours are in a US timezone, who the US-facing point of contact is, when the firm was founded, and whether the firm is registered as a legal entity in a jurisdiction the buyer's legal team will recognize.
Every question that is not answered on the About page becomes a question the buyer has to ask you, and each unanswered question makes them less likely to bother.
The trust bar
Above the fold on every page, one horizontal bar with three things. Client logos of peers. A verification badge with a link to the verification page. A named US liaison photo and email. That bar is the difference between the analyst opening a case study and closing the tab.
Nothing about that bar is subtle. It should not be. The analyst is on a clock and their default is to move on. Give them a reason to stay in three glanceable pieces of evidence.
- 01The first pass on your site is forty seconds. Optimize the hero, case-study grid, one case study, and About page for that time budget.
- 02Anonymized case studies are worth roughly a third of what they could be worth. Get permission to name clients.
- 03Every case study needs a named client, a specific problem in their language, an outcome with a source, and a linkable artifact.
- 04Three tightly relevant case studies beat twelve mixed logos. Curate for the buyer, not for your archive.
- 05Above the fold: peer logos, verification badge, named US liaison. Three pieces of evidence, no subtlety.
Get vetted. Get listed. Get the paper that survives the memo.
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