Many business owners consider choosing a website design company primarily based upon the colors and pictures in the website company's portfolio. That is somewhat understandable considering the subconscious emotional connection that images and colors make.
Problem with this approach: Most of those pictures were provided by someone else, most likely a photographer and/or culled from a stock photo website. Furthermore, pictures don't get one ranked in Google, nor help a shopper quickly find what he or she needs. The term 'designer' is often taken too literally to designate what a web designer does. A good web designer/web design firm brings many things to the table, one small part of which is choosing a photo for the home page. Web success most often comes from the architecture BEHIND the site – the usability, the search engine optimization, the customer service tools, and more.
My advice on choosing a web company would be to pick a website company that:
1) Works in your industry, and with your business colleagues.
2) Offers functionality that meets your customers' needs.
3) Knows how to get your site ranked well in Google.
4) Knows how to organize information.
As an analogy, when you choose a location for a physical store front, you don't choose it based upon the color of the current store you're considering renting. Why? You know you'll repaint it and customize it. The key factor in setting up a retail location is location, and how it serves your customers. Similarly, when you build a website, you'll be repainting and choosing photography. The web designer's most important function is to provide the 'location', a.k.a. the technical underpinnings of the site. With this said, there are even truly ugly website that make tons of sales and have many 'happy' customers because the site is easy to find in Google and easy to use.