Effective Communication
One of the most important requirements for your website is good communication between you and the designer you choose. Without a doubt, a local designer can meet face to face with you (although meetings might add more to the cost) which will typically increase effectiveness of the communication. But if another designer is remote, it doesn’t mean effective communication cannot be achieved. A good designer knows the right questions to ask to increase the effectiveness of the communication and ultimately, get you what you want. Choose the more experienced, better designer over the local designer in this case. In the case of international designers, the prices are typically good, but communication suffers drastically. You’ll probably end up spending more for an often, lower-end product in the long run, with lots of headaches as well.

Pricing
As noted, a local designer will usually be a little more. A good remote designer will know how to work efficiently, but a fair remote designer might lack the experience necessary to ask the right questions. An international designer will usually be the cheapest per hour, but will take several corrections to get what you wanted due to the communication barrier.

Scale
The larger the website, the more effective and efficient the communication must be. If you need a  large corporate website that ties into your existing infrastructure, you may not have any other choice but to hire a local company. Medium and small websites can be done either way, as long as you’re comfortable sharing files and information with new technology. If you don’t like to use e-mail or would be opposed to installing an FTP program, allowing you to upload large files for your designers, you should probably go with a local company.

Goals
Having your own website goals and ideas complete or close to it allows the designer to get started right away. If you’re unsure about several parts of your website, it may take a couple meetings with a designer to get your pages and ideas complete.