How to write a case study page visitors will read to the end

The case study page is where visitors decide whether "this company can handle my project". A good case study answers four questions within a single screen: who the client is, what problem needed solving, what we did, and what the result was. Add visuals that show the quality of the work, and visitors will keep reading, then move on to the next case study.

On many websites, a case study page is just a large image and a project name. Visitors come away knowing the company "did this", but not "how well" or "whether it's relevant to me". Below, we go through a case study page from top to bottom and what each part should say.

1. The opening sentence: who the client is and what the project was

The first sentence of a case study should make clear the client, industry, year and type of deliverable. For example: "Designed and developed the official website for a major film festival, carrying the full information and services for its awards, screenings, project market and international exchange." One sentence tells visitors the scale and scope.

Search engines and AI assistants also use this sentence as a summary. A concrete sentence is far more useful than a slogan like "creating a brand-new digital experience".

2. The challenge: spell out what was hard

What visitors most want to see is what made the project difficult. Once the challenge is clear, the solution that follows carries weight.

Common challenges include:

• Lots of information, many audiences. An event platform such as a film festival serves audiences, participants and press at the same time, covering registration, screening bookings and on-site check-in, industry meetings and more.
• A complex business that needs clear entry points. Platform businesses often need their complexity mapped into clear entry points before visual design can begin.
• A brand character that is hard to express. An investment firm needs to convey professionalism and long-term thinking; a law firm needs to convey rigour and trust. Both depend on careful work with layout and white space.
• A technical story that is hard to follow. A deep-tech company such as a high-performance computing chip maker needs ordinary visitors to understand what it does.

3. What we did: explain decisions, not just deliverables

"Built a website, a mini program and an admin system" is a list of deliverables; it doesn't show the quality of the work. It is more persuasive to explain a few key decisions: why the sections were organized this way, why this layout was chosen, which feature solves which challenge.

For a portfolio-style website for an architecture practice, for example, the key decision was "keep the sense of scale of spatial work on screen". For a business media app and website serving Chinese-language readers, the key was bringing global business content to readers in a more contemporary way. Following each decision with one or two matching visuals explains more than piling up ten renderings.

4. The result: write it if you have it, don't invent it

Results you can write about include the launch date, which parts of the business the work covers, and which services the platform carried during an event. If the client has agreed to publish data, include it. If not, it is better to describe only the scope of work than to make up an "increase of 300%". Visitors are sensitive to exaggerated numbers; one claim they don't believe undermines the whole page.

5. Visuals: few and precise

• Use the single screen that best represents the project as the lead image, not a collage.
• Show a few desktop and mobile screens each, so visitors can see how it looks in real use.
• Motion and interaction can be shown in short videos or animated GIFs, but keep file sizes under control so the page doesn't slow down.
• Give each image a one-line caption telling visitors what it shows.

6. The case study list: organize by visitors' questions

Visitors usually arrive at the case study list with a question: "Have they worked in my industry?" "Have they built a mini program?" So the list should ideally be viewable in two ways at once:

• By industry: culture, technology, automotive, finance, fashion, education, law, architecture and so on.
• By service type: brand websites, mini programs, apps.

The same project should be findable under both industry and service type. A film festival's digital platform, for example, belongs under "culture" and also under both "brand websites" and "mini programs".

7. Don't forget: case study pages need to be searchable too

Give each case study its own URL, title it "client name + project type", make the body real text on the page rather than text inside images, and state the year and industry clearly. Then when people search for "film festival website design" or "investment firm website", the case study page itself can appear in the results, and it is more likely to be cited by AI assistants.

A well-written case study page is the most persuasive salesperson on your website. FIM's design and development services cover information architecture, web design, front-end and back-end development, and SEO. Leave us a note at fim.com.cn and let's talk about how to present the case studies on your website.