How To Write A Website RFP (and choose the right agency)

04.24.2014 | in Technology | by Ashley Hurshman

Let me start this post by making it clear that the traditional process for conducting requests for proposals (RFP) is probably the worst way to evaluate a web design partner (I loathe the term ‘vendor’ as it bears a striking resemblance to ‘vending machines’. Pushing a designers buttons does not a good website make).

Mule Design published a great post on how to make the RFP process better. In the post they recommend not using an RFP template and defining the problem from scratch. That is great advice in theory, but in practice, it can be hard to assemble a website RFP if you’ve never written one before, and especially if you don’t know much about websites.

That being said, many of the points made by Mule still apply:

• Keep it brief and define a purpose
• Do allow for questions and conversations
• Do share your budget
• Do define the RFP process timeline
• Don’t define the project timeline
• Don’t invite the whole world
• Don’t ask for spec work
• Don’t be prescriptive

Many organizations don’t have the luxury of bypassing the RFP process dictated to them from on high. Because they need a little help knowing what to ask for, I put together a standard template of must-have items when planning a website project in 2014:

Website RFP Standard Proposal Template

Company Overview

Explain who you are as a company, why you exist, what you believe and other high-level branding information that will help offer context to the firm bidding on the project.

Market Information

Similar to the above paragraph, outline high-level information — except instead of writing about yourself as a company, write about who you serve as a customer, i.e.: your market. This includes demographics, location, and the underlying problem you solve or need that you meet, and how it differs from your competition. This doesn't need to be exhaustive but will help the agency create a more tailored proposal.

Project Goals

Explain the background of this particular project and why you need to redesign your website or, design one in the first place.

This is the real meat of the RFP. Agencies want to know about the specific project and what problem you’re trying to solve. It will include the following information:

• At a high-level, why do you want a new website?
• Who are your different users (this will line up with your market information)
• What actions do you need them to take when they visit the site? (sign up for an account, buy a product, contact for a quote, enter their email address, etc.)
• Define success - how will you know if the project is successful? Do you want to see a specific increase in traffic, sales, signups or some other form of conversion?

Remember that this information isn’t final and will probably change and evolve after the project kicks off. The point is to give the bidding firm enough information to paint a clear picture of how they can help you reach your goals.

Project/Proposal Requirements

The goals above discuss the outcome of what you want from the project. The requirements get more into specifics but should not be prescriptive. In other words, don’t try to do the work you’re hiring a web agency to help with.

Think of it like hiring architects for a building - it’s ok to say what you want, but don’t tell the architect how to create it. Don’t tell the bidder how the site will be laid out, what colors the buttons will be or anything else that is a) too detailed at this early point and b) bypasses the design stage. This is an easy way to discourage quality firms from responding because they think you’re going to paint them into a corner and not let them do their job.

Many RFPs come across as very cold and rigid, which is why creative companies hate responding to them. You are looking for a partner who understands you, is enjoyable to work with, generates results and will be with you for a long time, you aren't just purchasing a commodity like painting supplies. Sometimes the way an RFP is written can make you seem difficult or demanding (even if you’re not), and could scare off some potentially great agency partners. The agency is evaluating you as a client just as much as you are evaluating them as a service provider.

Any information you provide in the RFP is just a starting point. Requirements may be different depending on the type of website you’re building. So with all of that said, here are some pretty basic requirements you should be asking for in most cases:

• The agency should be experts in user-experience, design and usability, and outline their process of how they achieve beautiful and functional interfaces. Ask for case studies and work examples. There’s no point saying you want your website to be clean, attractive and easy-to-use as it’s redundant—if any agency is going to design your website to be dirty, ugly and hard-to-use you don’t want to hire them.
• The agency should describe how they approach content strategy and production, and you should make it clear whether or not you are doing data entry or you want to pay the agency to do it.
• Outline functionality; ‘The website should include feature X, Y and Z’. Again, don’t be too prescriptive in terms of user-flow, but be detailed in what the requirements are. For example “The website needs to allow users to create accounts, log in and purchase items from a store. The website will need to include a secure checkout.” This is probably enough info for now, but expect follow up questions from the bidding agencies. A basic site-map or list of pages is helpful, but again, expect it to change later.
• Outline your expectations regarding platform or CMS. Almost every website now is built with some sort of back-end technology, such as Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, Magento, Craft, Shopify etc. It’s OK to say your preference but leave it open so the firm knows they can recommend the platform they think is right for your needs and not be locked into a solution just because it’s the only one you are aware of. You may hire an amazing firm who doesn’t know Wordpress well and Craft would work just as well. Don’t exclude them just because they don’t use your favourite tools. Generally speaking, it makes sense to ask for whichever recommended platform to be a) open source, b) scalable so it can grow with you and c) owned by you, the client, so you aren’t tied to the agency if you need to switch down the road.
• The website should be built using modern web standards (semantic HTML, CSS and Javascript) - in other words, no Flash!
• The website should be built with accessibility in mind and the agency should outline what steps they take to ensure the site can be accessed by differently-abled users.
• The website should be built in responsive design and be mobile friendly. The agency should outline what mobile devices they test the site with.
• The website should work in all modern web browsers, including Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer (note: older versions of IE are hardly worth the effort or expense to bother with. IE7 for example is horrendous in adhering to modern web standards and only a fraction of the population uses it. However if you know a good portion of your users are still using a legacy browser this is important to include). The agency should outline what browsers the test the site with.
• The website should be hosted on a secure, scalable server. The agency should provide recommendations and pricing for hosting.
• The last is an important question that doesn’t get asked enough; Ask the agency to recommend a brief approach to market the website and a retainer for ongoing support, maintenance and consulting. It doesn’t mean you have to buy this service if you don’t have the budget for it (although you should have a marketing strategy in place, otherwise why build the site?). But at the very least, you’ll see how the firm would approach the marketing and whether or not they’ll be good long term partners.

Whatever you do, don’t provide a scoring matrix or grid to show how many points will be awarded to various things like cost, approach, quality of work etc. That’s not the way to judge a proposal. A robot isn’t choosing the agency, you are. You should be basing your decision off of:

• How you feel about the agency?
• Is there a good fit? Do you think they’ll be a great partner?
• Do they have experience solving similar problems for similar types of clients?
• Do they show and explain amazing work examples?
• Do their references sing their praises?
• What’s their general reputation around town?
• And finally, can you afford them?

The answer to all of these questions should be “yes” and should carry equal weight. Agencies expect this is how they’ll be judged, so they don’t need you to show them a scorecard. Budget should not be the most important factor, since the cheapest bidder may be the most expensive in the long run if they are simply undercutting the competition and hiding the true cost until later.

The best approach is to review all of the proposals without looking at the budget. Decide on who is the best fit, has the best work, and the best experience for you - scrap the ones that don’t give you a good feeling in your tummy and don’t reintroduce them later if you find out they are the lowest cost.

Once you have a good gut feeling about a few, compare the cost between the ones that make the cut. If you provided a budget, they should all be similar in cost anyways, so cost isn’t such a major deciding factor. Which brings us to...

Budget

This is important. I know what you’re thinking: “If I say my budget is $20,000 then that’s exactly what the website will cost, even if it could be done for $10,000.”

You’re partially correct. No one wants to get ripped off and everyone wants the best value for the price. However if you don’t outline what you’re prepared to spend:

a) Qualified firms may not bid on the project because they don’t want to invest the time into the proposal if they deduce that you have unrealistic expectations on price.

b) It’s impossible to provide solutions when you don’t know how much budget you have to work with. A good agency can build you a sailboat or an ocean liner. Both will be seaworthy, but what they build depends on your budget.

c) Your budget will impact which firms respond to your RFP. Depending on where you live, some web agencies may charge $10,000 for a website, others don’t take projects under $100,000. Unfortunately, economics dictate that you can’t hire the top agencies if you can’t afford it, but not everyone needs the top agency.

If you really don’t have a specific budget, outline the minimum you’re prepared to spend (i.e.: not $500 because you know you won't get good quality) and the maximum you’re prepared to spend (eg: $20,000 is literally all you can afford this year). Take into consideration ongoing costs for maintenance. A website is not a one-off project with a beginning and end. It’s an ongoing investment in your business and deserves time and money to be spent on regular tweaking, testing and maintenance.

It’s better to spend the minimum amount up-front to get the basics right, and then spread your budget throughout the year for ongoing testing and optimization. A good agency partner will recommend this rather than the one-off type of project, and as a bonus you’ll get a better performing website over the long-term.

Desired Launch Date

Once again, this is just to let the agency know your expectation. Don’t set a hard date unless there’s a reason to, such as the beginning of your peak marketing season or a specific launch event that’s set in stone and can’t be changed.

Insisting on a short timeline just because that’s when you want it could scare away great potential bidders. If you have no idea, then just ask the agency to include a proposed timeline in their proposal and outline what the major milestones will be.

It takes time to do things right, so don’t be put off if the proposed timeline is a little longer than you’d like it to be, but ask if there’s any way it can happen sooner. The agency may propose a phased approach that gets you up-and-running sooner and holding off on certain features until later.

People Involved

Let the agency know who the major players are on your side, and how decisions will be made. This will impact the cost—if you have a steering committee that will collectively make decisions by way of consensus, it will inherently mean more time is required from the agency than if the main point of contact is the CEO who will make all final decisions.

Ask who the key team members will be on the agency side including the lead account manager and ask them to provide bios explaining their roles. Don’t ask for resumes or CVs - a simple bio and link to their LinkedIn profiles should be sufficient.

Proposal Delivery

Outline when you expect to receive the proposals (no less than two weeks). Setting the exact day and time is acceptable as it offers a great way to screen out potential problem agencies. Most sales and account people at agencies understand the importance of getting a proposal in on time and that delivering late means automatic disqualification. After all, if they can’t even meet the first deadline, how will they meet the others throughout the project?

In terms of format, a PDF should be acceptable, or even a web link since more agencies are using web-based proposal software to respond to RFPs. Don’t ask for printed copies delivered unless there's a very specific reason for it because you're simply wasting trees. 

Include your contact info and invite the agency to contact whomever is leading the project on your side to follow up with questions via email or phone. This is a chance to date the agencies before you marry one so you can get a good feel for who is asking good questions and who seems like a good fit.

Making your final decision

After the proposals are received, narrow it down to your favourite two and invite them to a pitch meeting. The pitch meeting is extremely important and often gets overlooked - you can’t make an informed decision without meeting the agency in person.

The pitches should be close together, on the same day if possible so that you already have everyone on your team together and no firm has an unfair advantage. If you held the meetings on separate days, agency A might pitch on a warm, sunny day when you’re in a chipper mood and agency B might pitch on a cold, dreary day when you hate the world. Keep it even as much as possible so you are judging each firm solely on their merits and not giving either one the upper hand.

One or two representatives from the agency should lead the meeting, delivering a solid presentation and answering any of your questions. What you’re looking for is confirmation that you shortlisted the right agencies and make your final decision based on all of the same factors you judged the proposal by: fit, experience, quality of work, quality of team, professionalism and how well they answer your questions.

Making your decision will be hard, but taking the right approach will make a huge difference in how good your website turns out and how smooth and painless the process is to get there.

• proposals
• Web Design