Website designers that have these skills will likely get your site off the ground and create an appealing site. Try to find out their strengths as well as their weaknesses. If you are designing a fashion website, what similar sites have they done before, what design skills do they have. How creative are they? If you are designing an ecommerce site, what development skills do they have. Have they designed database-driven sites before? What tools they use in their work? Consider also how well they know the industry. This will give them a good idea of what works and what doesnt.
Sometimes website designers will offer site hosting services. If they do, do they offer support services and if so for how long will offer it without extra costs? What kind of support will they provide? What guarantees do they offer for site maintenance, hosting and support? Ecommerce sites and database driven websites generally experience failures and due to the sophisticated functionality involved, such failures may be frequent. In addition, upgrades may be required. Website designers who offer guarantees and support services for such sites are good indicators that they know what they are doing and are confident of being around long enough to see that your site is up and running and keep running for a long time.
There are many website designers who do a great job in web design. Whether as freelancers or as companies, hiring these professionals will guarantee you a much better design and functionality than if you did it yourself.