Last week, Slate brought attention to a web-design project that ought to be interesting to anyone who is familiar with web design or has worked for a web design and development agency, especially if they’ve been in the game for a while. But not only that, it should also be of interest to anyone who is thinking of employing such a professional to provide web design services in Charlotte, NC or in any other area where the field of competition can be expected to be well-informed, extensively experienced, and extremely up-to-date about web design best practices.

The site in question is sort of an organic internet time capsule created by Berlin-based web designer Fabian Burghardt. It allows people to get a general sense of what the same site might have looked like at various points over an approximately 25-year period, from 1991 to the present day. Drawing on his own study of the aesthetics of the internet during that time, Burghardt has managed to turn a web page dedicated to NASA into a period piece, dressed in web design styles as a film actor might be dressed in period garb.

For a really long-lived web design and development company, this could be an exercise in pure nostalgia. It could be the same for any casual internet user who remembers dialing up the “information superhighway” in its earliest days, but hasn’t much noticed the way it’s evolved on his various computer monitors.

But make no mistake: a project like this can be of practical significance, too. That is, it serves as a potentially useful reminder for a web design and development company, and for its clients. It reminds us all of how long 25 years, or even two or three years can be as far as web design and local web marketing services can be.

We often highlight information for our readers in order to give them some of the tools they need to properly vet their would-be web design and development agency, and to make a truly informed choice. Burghardt’s brief history of website aesthetics fits into that category at least insofar as it allows you to identify whether your prospective contractor’s existing portfolio is antiquated.

But more than that, it serves to inform small business owners of an important fact they may or may not be aware of when entering into a relationship with a web design and development agency. And that is that your dealings with the company, if well-chosen, are likely to be long-lasting, especially if your web marketing solutions make your business lucrative and durable.

The work of a highly effective web design and development company is not a one-time thing. It involves updates and redesigns aimed not only at keeping up with the accumulating e-commerce needs of your company but also at simply keeping up with the aesthetics of the web as they continue to evolve all around you.