Determine the purpose of your site.
Your website developer should be able to consult with you on the decisions and offer advice as to best accomplish your goals for the project. "Free" should be a keyword here. Aztech Studios offer free consultations.

Study your competition.
Look at your competitor's websites. These are the sites you want to compete online with. Your web designer should research your competition and offer better ways to design your project. Your web designer should make a list as to what he or she thinks is effective or in-effective about your competition.

Target your website market.
You are building a website for a specific goal in mind. Remember when you build a website that you need to keep the visitor in mind. What you like might not be what your target audience likes. Consult your designer in this area, they are the experts.

Communication with the designer.
From the words of BT "it's good to talk", so remember that most web designers are good at what they do but they cannot read your mind. Send as many questions and instructions as you need to get across your massage. Keep everything you talk about with your designer in writing or just keep notes. This keeps everything running smooth.

Who knows best?
If you have chosen the right design company then in most cases the website developer will have most of the answers you might need. A real way to increase your costs is to make constant changes to the development process. Let your designer do what you hired them to and make note of all the changes you would like and submit them at or near the completion of the project. This will provide a smooth design process and make you a vital part of it all. If you use these guidelines to help yourself and your designer, the project will run smoother, take less time and cost less than if you had not used this information.