How to check an agency's case studies before you hire it

1. Pick one number and ask for its source. A task list, an invoice count, a report, an analytics export. Any real answer names a thing.
2. Check a date against the Web Archive. Paste the client's site into web.archive.org and look at the year the agency says it launched.
3. Ask what the agency did not do. A case study that claims the whole project, when other teams were involved, is the one to question.
4. Ask who on the client's side would confirm it. A role is enough, even if a name cannot be shared.
5. Ask when the page was last checked. Case studies go stale; a date tells you whether anyone looks.

Case study	The page said	The source	It now says
WOW Sight and Sound	A new owner brought the brand back in 2014	A trade report dated 22 May 2012	The name was bought in May 2012 and relaunched online in 2014
TreatOA	19 wireframes	The project's file list: 19 uploads, two of them the same file	17 wireframes
DynamicXX	About 200 tasks	The two projects' task lists	More than 230 tasks

The corrections kept the story and made its details accurate.

The Web Archive keeps copies of public websites with the date each was taken. It is the simplest check a buyer has, and it needs no help from the agency.

Our WOW case study says the shops ran from June 2014 to February 2017. The archive holds 27 captures across those dates, and anyone can open them.

Each page on our site has a record for its rationale and evidence: the links, the captures, the files and the dates. When a page's words change, a check on our site flags the changed source until its record is updated. The reviewer still has to check that the evidence supports the words. The record also identifies claims still waiting for evidence.

Our work page lists every public case study, and each one can be checked this way.

A case study is the agency's own account of the work. The source behind one number tells you how much of the rest to believe.