Service business websites typically have a portfolio or 'Our Work' page. A handful of project names, maybe an image gallery, perhaps a short paragraph about what they did. They'll call it a case study section and move on.

It's not a case study. It's a list.

A real case study is a sales tool disguised as a story. Done right, it doesn't just show that you've done the work. It shows the right kind of prospect exactly what it looks like to hire you, what they'll get out of it, and why they should pick you over the next person on their shortlist.

This post is about how to get case study material from your clients and what to do with it once you have it.

Why case studies matter more than testimonials

Testimonials are passive. Someone says you were great to work with, maybe mentions a result, and moves on. A case study earns trust differently; it puts the reader in the situation.

When a potential client reads about a business similar to theirs, with a problem similar to theirs, and sees exactly how you solved it and what happened afterward, they stop wondering if you're the right fit. They start imagining what their own version of that outcome looks like.

That's the difference between someone skimming your website and someone picking up the phone.

Case studies also do something testimonials can't: they help you attract more of the clients you actually want.

Case studies as a client targeting tool

This is the part most businesses miss.

If you want to win more work from say, manufacturing companies, write case studies about manufacturing companies. If you want to attract larger contracts, write case studies where you solved a larger company's problem. If you've done work you're proud of and want more of it, document it properly and put it where your ideal clients can find it.

A prospective client reads a case study about a business that looks like theirs. The industry matches. The size feels familiar. The problem described is one they recognise. At that point, you're not a stranger pitching your services. You're someone who has already solved their problem for someone else.

One of the first things I tell new clients is to lean on the projects they want more of. Smaller jobs show you're accessible. Larger ones demonstrate you can handle scale, and a mix of both gives potential clients somewhere to see themselves in your work.

That's not marketing. That's just showing your working.

How to actually get the information you need

This is where most businesses give up before they start.

The word "case study" puts people off. It sounds like effort: a long written piece, a formal interview, something that takes an entire afternoon. So the ask never gets made, and the website stays empty.

It's simpler than that. Most of what you need, you already have.

Stage 1: Your own records

Start internally. For each project you want to write up, pull together what you already know:

• What the client does and roughly how big they are
• How long the project took and what was involved
• What approach you used and why
• Any challenges that came up and how you handled them
• What the contract was worth (you don't have to publish this, but it helps frame the story)

You don't need to ask anyone for this. It's in your head, your emails, your project notes. Get it down first.

Stage 2: Ask the client for their side

What you can't answer yourself is what the experience was like from their perspective — and what changed for them afterward. That's the part that makes a case study worth reading.

Here's what to ask — and why each question matters:

What was the situation before you came to us? What was going wrong, or what made you decide to act?

This is the most important question on the list. Push for the real version, not the polished one.

Now, you should already have at least a basic understanding of this one (because they came to you with this problem in the first place). All I'm asking for here is to dig a little deeper.

For example, say you're a bookkeeping firm — you client might have got in touch because "they needed to sort out their invoicing" — but what actually happened was the business owner was spending every Friday afternoon chasing overdue invoices by hand, had £140,000 sitting in unpaid invoices at any one time, and had just lost a member of staff partly because the admin burden had become unmanageable. That's the trigger. That's the sentence that makes the next reader think "that's happened to us."

What changed? Any hard numbers — time saved, costs reduced, problems that stopped happening?

"It's better now" doesn't do anything. "We stopped losing two days a month to manual invoicing" does. Not every project has clean metrics, but most have something: time saved, money saved, clients retained, problems that stopped happening. Push for specifics. Even rough estimates with honest caveats ("we think we're saving around half a day a week on admin") land better than vague positives.

What's the less obvious impact been — team morale, confidence, peace of mind?

Don't skip this one. Numbers matter, but "the owner actually goes home at 5:00PM on Fridays now" or "the team stopped dreading month end" is sometimes what convinces someone. Confidence, relief, reclaimed time — these are outcomes too.

Would you be happy to provide a short quote for our website, with your name and job title?

Ask for this directly. A named quote with a job title carries far more weight than an anonymous one. Most clients are fine with it — they just need to be asked.

Bonus points if you can get them to provide it as a third party review (Google, Trustpilot etc.) — two birds and all...

What makes a case study weak (and how to avoid it)

The most common mistake is writing the case study about you.

"We onboarded X as a client in March. We migrated their payroll system and completed the project in six weeks."

That's a supplier update. It reads like a status report. The client is barely in it.

Flip it. The client is the main character. You're the one who solved their problem — but it's their story, their situation, their outcome. Write it that way and the reader puts themselves in the client's seat, not yours.

The second mistake is leaving out the problem. A lot of businesses are coy about acknowledging that something wasn't working before they got involved. Clients don't want to look bad, and suppliers don't want to seem like they're talking out of school. But without the problem, the solution has no weight. A bookkeeping transformation means nothing if you don't say what was wrong with the old system.

Get explicit permission to be honest about what the situation looked like before — most clients are fine with it once you explain why it matters.

A note on the writing itself

Gathering the material is most of the job. The writing is the fast part — though it still needs to be done properly.

A good case study has a clear structure: the situation before, the problem that triggered action, what you did, and what changed. It uses the client's own language where possible. It leads with the most compelling outcome, not a chronological history. And it ends with something that makes the next prospect think "that could be me."

Getting that right consistently is its own craft — and it's where a lot of case studies fall apart even when the underlying material is good. If you've got rough notes from your clients and you're not sure what to do with them, that's exactly where I come in.

A practical starting point

If you have at least five satisfied clients and no case studies, start there. Pick the five projects you'd most like to replicate and send them a version of the brief above.

You don't need formal interviews, long write-ups, or a photography budget. You need specifics: a problem, a solution, a result, and a quote from someone willing to put their name to it.

The businesses that do this consistently end up with a website that sells for them. The ones that don't have a portfolio page that nobody reads.

There's a reason one of the first things I do with a new client is ask for case study material. Good ones take time. The groundwork starts on day one.

If you'd rather hand the whole thing over — notes, quotes, and all — that's exactly what I'm here for. Get in touch today.