An article recently came up in our newsfeed from the Jamaica Observer. It was titled “Choosing the right web designer for your new website.” And it occurred to us how remarkable it is that you don’t see more how-to articles on this exact topic. It’s a basic question that the vast majority of businesses have to contend with at some point.

And the problem is not limited to choosing a website design and development company. The title of the Observer article actually suggests that website design is a one-time investment, when in fact many businesses can be expected to require the services of a website redesign and development agency at some point, after the success of their former website begins to wane with the changing times.

Naturally, these two companies might be the same. That is, once you’ve found a provider of effective web design services, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to keep them as a primary point of contact for future development work, even if your site eventually needs a complete overhaul.

But that assumes that the company that provided your initial web design services has continued to hone their skills and stay abreast of industry trends. And this goes to show that you personally have to have the know-how to evaluate a web redesign and development agency’s skills and portfolio on a recurring basis, even if you’ve worked with them before.

A thorough guide to choosing the right web design services should account for both of these situations – finding a contractor to build your website from scratch, or reevaluating a contractor for ongoing web design services.

We can’t say that the Observer article hit upon both these requirements. It was, in fact, a rather cursory treatment of the subject. But that’s better than has been offered by a lot of other outlets, given the seeming rarity of guides of this type.

We’re not going to try to prevent a thorough guide to selecting web design services in this article, either. For that matter, we don’t even presume to be able to encapsulate everything you need to know in one reasonable length post.

The Observer provides a couple of useful bullet points, and we can do the same. It is enough to teach you the basics of selecting a competent web design and development company. But when it comes right down to it, if you want someone you can count on over the long term, you need to personally know a thing or two about web design services, so you can quiz, challenge, and evaluate a contractor who wants to retain your business over the long term.

Neither the Observer article nor any other recent treatment of this topic has been thorough enough to provide that sort of knowledge, and we don’t suppose that any other single article will do so in the near future. But if we may say so, that is why our blog exists.

In previous posts, we have made an effort to highlight industry trends and design elements that you can use to better evaluate the knowledge and skills of your web design services provider. We will continue to do the same for as long as this blog is active. If you expect to need revisions of your web design sometime down the line (and believe us, you will), try to keep up with our posts. It won’t make you an expert web designer in your own right, but it will make you skilled at recognizing one when you see him.