You have an idea for a website and you are now looking for somebody to build you the site. You want it to be a smooth ride, and want to have a good working relationship with your web designer. You are also looking for a low cost website, so how will you make all of this possible?

I believe that if you make life as simple as possible for the website designer, you are likely to keep him happy and onside. This way you are also more likely to obtain a cheap quote.

Before contacting the designer or designers, have a clear picture in your mind about how you want the website to look. You will need to decide colours, graphics and content.

I would put all of the content into a word document, with all of the words checked for any spelling mistakes. It should be in a very readable state, with page breaks and titles for each page. The titles could be the key phrases in your subject matter which people are likely to search for. Try to think of the niche phrases as the more obvious ones will be harder to achieve top placements in the major search engines such as Google.

If you are struggling to find sufficient content for your website, you could add articles from various article websites such as:

http://www.searchwarp.com
http://www.goarticles.com

Once you have your word document completed you can then contact the web designer. You can forward the document and explain the type of graphics and colours you would like, but then give them a free reign to use their skills to produce what hopefully will be a low cost professional website.