We need a designer that can offer both an amazing UI/UX experience that can wow us and our customers. We need something different from the norm, we are fast-moving into an age where there are more offerings online for the same type of products or services, so the best way to create a unique selling position is to 'stand-out' from the crowd so we look different and this is key.
We want designers with their own deck of work, and we will need evidence of that, not pasting other websites and passing it for yours and the hoping to wing it, has this has been our experience once too often.
We are design directors so we know what we want and also know very aptly what we don't want. We will be issuing a detailed brief as to our requirements.
There will be clarity in our intention with examples of sites we like.
The e-commerce website has to work both from a user perspective and be easy to manage with a good CMS.