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A few tips to help you when you work with web site designers. Web site designers are very numerous and their capabilities vary. They are a good economical choice if you are creating a brochure site (a site that is presenting information about your business to casual visitors) but you will need to ensure that the marketing of your site is being handled too in order to get the visitors to actually visit your site.

Ensure anything they create is xhtml compliant. You can test this yourself (get them to insert validation icons at the bottom of the page like the ones at the bottom of this page) . If your site is not compliant then bots may have trouble with it which means you wont appear on search engines as effectively as you might and different browsers may exhibit a variety of problems with it. If non-compliant, your site is also likely to mysteriously stop working with browser updates.
If you want people to use search engines to find your site, ensure that the site is built with SEO in mind from the start. This will greatly help with people being able to find your site. You should have a keyword list before you start developing content in earnest.
If search engines are important, make sure that there is a plan in place for sitemap production, update and submission.
If you plan on using adwords to get traffic, ensure that the landing page or pages are designed with the intended keywords from the start.
Make sure that CSS is used in separate files to keep maintenance easy and allow easy ongoing development.
Make sure you understand Content management and, if/where you need it, make sure you get it from the start.
A website designer should always present you with a mock up or existing site template so you can see in advance if the layout and style really comes up to your expectations. Be prepared for these files to look scrappy in terms of content but they should look slick in terms of layout. Remember that they are showing you how the site will look in general (backgrounds, table layouts, menus etc.) but they wont necessarily show content detail (actual photos or real site content).
Ensure that the designer identifies the tools they are using (Dreamweaver etc.) and what (if any) specialised elements they are using. For example, Dreamweaver templates will make it relatively expensive to switch to some other system further down the line. These things can lock you into a particular designer which may prove undesirable in the long term.