Hiring a firm to design and develop a new website for your company has its own unique set of challenges, especially if you’ve never worked with a marketing services firm before. Before you collect proposals and begin the evaluation process start by creating a Request for Proposal – this is a very important first step that will ultimately help you get through the process smoothly with an end product that will be the best solution for your company.

Here are our tips for what to include in an RFP and why including these things will improve the outcome of your website.

Create a level playing field – Your objective with an RFP should be to produce a number of proposals that consistently address all of your goals for the site while offering unique tactics for accomplishing those goals. State your technical requirements, wants, etc. in the most straightforward way possible. Eliminate the moving pieces and you will reap the benefits in the proposal responses.

Put it into context – What are your corporate goals with the site? Is this part of a larger rebranding effort? Who is the target audience for the website? Although often overlooked at this stage, this information provides contextual insight to the bidding firms and gives a good top-level introduction to your company’s motivating factors behind the new site.

Get technical – Outline any components other than regular pages that should be included in your upcoming site such as a blog, third-party integration or e-commerce functionality. For each of these components, give any and all technical requirements so that firms understand all aspects of your functionality. The clearer you are about your expectations with the project, the more appropriate the recommended solutions will be in the proposals.

State your budget – There is a common misconception about giving a budget in an RFP; many people think that withholding this information will force the bidding firms to be very competitive in price, resulting in a number of solutions from which you can pick the most affordable option. Unfortunately, what’s more likely to happen is that you will get back bids that are all over the place in terms of cost and scope. Such a broad range of terms will ultimately require your team to revisit the process and require all prospective firms to revise their proposals based on an established budget. Save yourself the time: give a budget range from the start so that companies will be able to prioritize deliverables to work around a realistic budget. The result will be comparable proposals based on the same qualifications which will help streamline the process from RFP release to vendor selection and project kick-off.

Give a time frame – Establish a due date for all responses and identify a launch date or timeline if your team has developed one for the project. This will streamline the RFP process and ensure that the firm you chose is able to deliver the website to meet any deadlines you have set.

Define your selection criteria – What is most important for your team in selecting a firm? Rather than leaving it to the firms themselves to guess, list your selection criteria in order of priority. This will result in responses that are more tailored to your firm’s needs.

There is a surplus of RFP templates out there, but don’t feel like you have to work off of something boilerplate. If anything feels extraneous or unimportant for your particular project, scratch it and stick to the essentials. This will improve the quality of the proposals you receive and will make the selection process easier. Still have questions? Give us a call, we’re happy to talk with you more about the project you have in mind.