How do I evaluate a UX designer's portfolio?

Evaluating a UX designer’s portfolio for ecommerce work is different from evaluating a general designer’s portfolio. You’re not assessing aesthetics — you’re assessing whether this person can move your conversion rate. Here’s how to evaluate that specifically.

What to look for: the case study structure

A strong ecommerce UX portfolio case study has four components:

1. The problem — What was the business situation? What was the conversion rate or metric that was underperforming? What did the client believe was the issue?

2. The diagnosis — How did the designer identify what was actually causing the problem? What data did they use? Did they look at session recordings, funnel analytics, customer feedback? This is where you see their process — and process quality is what determines outcome quality.

3. What changed — What specifically was redesigned, restructured, or added? Before/after screenshots are useful here. Specificity matters — “redesigned the checkout” tells you nothing; “removed forced account creation and moved trust signals to the payment step” tells you exactly what thinking produced the design.

4. The result — What happened to conversion rate, cart abandonment, revenue, or other key metrics after the change? Results don’t have to be enormous — a 0.4 percentage point conversion rate improvement on a €2M store is a €32K annual impact. But some result needs to be present, or the work can’t be evaluated commercially.

Red flags in UX portfolios

Beautiful designs with no outcome data. This is the most common red flag. A portfolio full of polished Figma screens with no mention of what those designs achieved in production suggests either the designer doesn’t measure outcomes or the outcomes weren’t worth mentioning.

Only early-stage or concept projects. Design concepts for non-existent companies, hackathon projects, or academic work don’t demonstrate real-world conversion experience. They show execution ability but not commercial judgment.

Vague language. “Improved the user experience” or “made the checkout more intuitive” without metrics could mean anything. Look for specific claims: “Reduced checkout abandonment from 74% to 61%” or “Increased add-to-cart rate from 4.2% to 6.8%.”

No process documentation. If every case study jumps straight from problem statement to final design, the designer isn’t showing you how they think — only what they produced. Process matters because it’s repeatable. Good outputs from unclear process can’t be reliably reproduced.

Generic ecommerce work with no platform depth. “Designed several ecommerce sites” without specific platform experience (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) or category depth (fashion, electronics, B2B) is a signal of broad but shallow experience.

Questions to ask during portfolio review

Walk through their portfolio with them, not just by yourself:

1. “Walk me through how you identified the problem here.” Are they talking about data and research, or design instinct?

2. “What would you have changed if your initial approach hadn’t worked?” This reveals how they think about experimentation vs. certainty.

3. “What was the actual lift from this work?” If they don’t know, or the answer is vague, ask why. Designers who care about outcomes track them.

4. “What platform was this built on, and what were the constraints?” Platform constraints shape design decisions. A designer who worked within Shopify Plus’s Checkout Extensibility thinks differently than one who worked within WooCommerce’s unconstrained PHP template.

5. “What’s one thing you’d do differently on this project?” Self-awareness and ability to critique their own work is a strong positive signal.

Evaluating for your specific needs

Beyond the general criteria, filter for fit with your situation:

• Industry match: Has this designer worked in your specific product category? Fashion, electronics, and B2B ecommerce have different patterns. Category experience matters.
• Store scale match: A designer experienced with €10M+ stores operates differently than one who works with €100K stores. Both can be excellent, but the context shapes their defaults.
• Platform match: Shopify-specialized designers and WooCommerce-specialized designers have different knowledge bases.

Ask to see work most similar to your specific situation — not just their most impressive case study.

BTNG’s work is focused specifically on ecommerce conversion — the research page shows what the process looks like, and a call is where you’d evaluate fit for your specific store and situation.