Web Designer

We have a great website idea, we have a cool name now we needed to find someone to design the site for us. We considered designing it ourselves but thought it would take too long and we wanted it to look GREAT. First we tried people who we knew who designed websites. We sat down and talked to a couple of them. The plan was they would create the website in their spare time. We quickly realized that 1) they would not be able to get the site done quick enough and 2) it was too complicated for them to create. We then meet with two web developing firms. That is what there business was, designing websites. The first had been recommended to me by a friend. They had created a great site for a not-for-profit that she worked with and had only good things to say about the company. The second company was local which would make it easy to meet and they ran a lot of ads on the radio. We talked, we emailed our ideas, we meet with both companies, we emailed some more and some more. Finally we had made our decision. They had great ideas, it was a smaller company, we like the person we were dealing with. They were a little far away....all the way in Chicago, but that would be okay too. We liked the other company too or should I say that we liked the sales person we were dealing with. The reason we chose not to go with them was that their price was a little higher, we were not going to get as much, we feared that they would start to nickle and dime us for every little thing, we thought that our sales person was just that, a sales person and would be disinterested once the contract was signed. We were happy with our decision. They told us it would be two months before they could start on our project but that once they started it would only take 3 months to complete. We were fine with that. Were we excited and started to plan accordingly.