Request for Proposal

We seek a partner to build a website within the next 3-6 months. Our budget is . The response to this RFP is expected on or before . Thank you for interest in our RFP. We look forward to your response.

File Requirements

Should you have any questions regarding this RFP, please send them to the email address above.

If your RFP is too large to email, please provide a download link, i.e. Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive.

High-Level Project Summary

🖥️ It's important to nail down exactly why a site exists. Most sites do many things, but what's your primary function?

The core function of the new website will be marketing our firm.

The website will be organized as a a single destination.

The website will be centrally controlled and updated.

The website is currently live and functional.

The current website will continue to use its current Content Management System. As part of this partnership, we will expect our Partner to work with us to identify areas of improvement, and to make suggestions based on past experience.

The Project

Strategy & Planning

📜 Somewhere along the way someone must do some research and planning. Will it be you or the vendor?

The project will start with a strategic planning phase.

The selected Partner will work with our team to: Gather key requirements for the site. Identify the expected users of the site. Define how they will use the site (i.e. user journeys). Perform competitive/peer group research in order to understand user expectations. Define key conversion opportunities. Define key success metrics and performance indicators.



Design & Branding Requirements

🇨🇭 Be mindful that "get lots of vendors together" is expensive and requires lots of coordination. Unless it's a truly major project, look for a one-stop shop.

To meet our design requirements, we expect our Partner to provide design services

The design partner will take the findings of the Strategy Phase and progressively create an attractive, modern design for the website. We have existing brand resources and a style guide. The Partner will work with existing brand assets, as defined in our style guide, to guide the design process.

Please outline your design approach, and typical processes and artifacts that might be produced: Sketching and whiteboard sessions. Wireframe development. Low-resolution interactive prototype designs in a prototyping tool like InVision, Framer, Adobe XD. Higher-resolution final visual and interactive designs.

Please also identify how design feedback will be gathered.

Technology Requirements

Backend & CMS

💽 A CMS doesn't exist on its own any more. It integrates with other services for analytics, search, relationship management, or e-commerce.

The platform will feature a Content Management System, or CMS. We will need a new CMS.

The CMS should: Be capable of reaching thousands of readers/visitors per month. Support monthly updates with new content. Support an editorial team consisting of 1-5 people . Publish to one site . Integrate with one or two external services for analytics along with other third party solutions. We strongly prefer existing, off-the-shelf solutions for content management. We have a strong preference for as the core CMS platform.



Search

🔍 If you don't have much content you can use what your CMS provides out of box. If you do, though, you should look for a good external solution.

The website will use the default search built into our CMS.

Please outline how your firm approaches would create a compelling search experience.

Authentication

🔒 Who has access? Who can do what? If you're just going to have a few editors and authors, you're fine. But if you're building a newsroom with workflow, or plan to have comments or user-generated content, your needs will expand.

We seek the following features:

Editor/administrator login. Some password-protected content that requires a login. User/member registration. Multiple user tiers with different access types. Paid subscriptions/memberships to users. Content accessible behind a paywall. Registered users to contribute comments. Registered users to contribute blog posts.

Please describe your approach to authentication and login, as well as your recommendations given the above requirements.

Site Taxonomy & Content Strategy

📓 Project planning often neglects content and user migration. It's important to bring over older content to the new platform, and to plan accordingly.

Our content will be partially migrated.

Please describe your overall approach to creating useful site taxonomies and structure, and how you will ensure that the site is easy to use and that content can be discovered.

Please describe how you would define a content strategy for the site, including but not limited to: Content audit and overview of content across sites. Content inventory and detailed analysis of content and media types. Content migration plan. Overall content strategy. Editorial strategy for future content development. Editorial workflow implementation around author, editor, contributor permissions, etc. Editorial calendar for determining velocity. Content and editorial staffing recommendations, where appropriate.



Content Types

📚Different sites feature different content types. You can assume that blog and article-style content is a given, but it's worth noting when you'll need e-commerce integration or special features.

Longer-form, article-style illustrated content. Rich content like case studies. Blog posts. Product profiles. Interactive, code-driven content. And pages feature e-commerce integration for sales. Textual content. A video player. Audio player. Content syndicated from other sources. Advertising from third parties.

Front-End & User Experience

📄 Most content-driven platforms are still sent over the web as HTML pages. But increasingly people are building app-style experiences using web component libraries like React. HTML is tried-and-true and great, and it indexes well and just works. But app-style experiences are flexible and allow for more experimentation and modern, social-feeling content experiences (think Instagram or Twitter). Your PR blog probably needs HTML, but most innovation in publishing is happening with app-style interfaces.

The core platform will be exposed as HTML+CSS web pages

The web pages that are produced by the CMS should be built using clean, semantically valid HTML and CSS.

Where appropriate, JavaScript can be used to enhance user experience.

The site should be responsive and adapt to different sizes.

We expect our users to be primarily on mobile devices.

devices. The full front-end experience should be available on modern desktop browsers .

. HTML pages should be highly responsive and work at multiple screen resolutions and on multiple platforms, including small phones, small and large tablets, laptops, and desktop screens.

E-Commerce Functionality

💰 Unless you've got a large catalog of products or special requirements, think Stripe or Shopify.

The site does not require e-commerce platform.

Analytics, Integrations, Marketing & SEO

Third-Party Analytics

📈 Sometimes analytics is as simple as a few lines of pasted-in JavaScript; sometimes you want to track user behavior all the way through a funnel starting at content marketing. This is one of the places where knowing what you want can save you so much time and money.

The site will include a common analytics platform. We prefer Google Analytics.

The site should also support:

Instrumentation to support custom tracking of site/front-end usage. Instrumentation to support a third-party real-time analytics product like Chartbeat.

Integrations

🔗 Most modern and large sites end up connecting to lots of other services, because content isn't just a thing unto itself but part of an overall platform strategy.

We plan to integrate with third-party marketing automation platforms.

Integrations include: A CRM, such as Salesforce. A newsletter manager, such as MailChimp. A marketing management software, such as Pardot or Hubspot. A digital asset manager, like Canto. A virtualized helpdesk like Zendesk. A third-party project management tools, like Slack. Workplace chat, like Slack. Waitlisting tools, like Waitlisted.co. A chat app onboarding tool, like Intercom or Drift. Please describe any relevant experience or best practices around integrating third-party APIs.

Marketing

🌐️ The goal of a site build isn't to solve every SEO or marketing problem but to put you into a solid place so that you can adapt to a very rapidly changing market. An ounce of planning is worth a ton of cure.

We plan to market the site using third-party platforms.

We will be marketing the site using the following platforms: Google Adwords. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Instagram. Social media networks. Please describe relevant experience in implementing and measuring conversions with advertising networks at top-of-funnel.

SEO

It is our goal for the site to have prominent placement in search results.

Please describe your strategy for maintaining SEO rankings with a new platform.

The website will integrate with third-party SEO platforms, like Moz or BrightEdge.

Please describe your overall strategy for implementing an SEO strategy.

Social Media and Syndication

We will syndicate to:

Google AMP pages that are optimized for mobile. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Instagram. Other social media networks. A social sharing toolkit like Gigya.

Internationalization

Content on the site will be made available in English.

Advertising Integration

📣️ You can skip this if you're not a media company.

The site will not feature advertising/native content.

Data Migration

We will require:

Migration of legacy content and data prior to launch of the new site. Migration of user data.

Launch & Post-Launch Support

🚀 Don't forget day two. Don't forget day two. Don't forget day two. Don't forget day two.

Please briefly describe an ideal launch for this product.

We expect to manage support in-house.

Partner Overview

🚦 This is the last section—and your vendor will fill out most of it. Almost there...

Please provide basic information about your firm including:

The name of your firm.

A brief description of the firm, including: The types of services your firm delivers. The number of employees. Location(s) of offices. Where your firm is registered. Insurance carried (errors and omissions, etc.)



Cadence, Communication, and Process

Please describe the process you use to develop software, i.e. agile, continuous integration, etc.

How are issues/challenges raised with clients? How is scope managed? How are change orders managed?

Please describe the process you use to communicate with clients about progress. We would prefer an open conversation channel, i.e. Slack.

Will we have a primary point of contact? What role will that person have?

Outsourcing & Subcontracting

👨‍💻 Outsourcing is complicated. Often when everything adds up the initial cost savings don't materialize. If buying services, get comfortable asking about how local and offshore teams work together, the cost differences, and the structure of the relationship.

We are planning to work with a single Partner.

Please describe where and when your firm uses overseas labor, and how communication is managed between your firm, the overseas employees/partner, and with clients.

Please describe any subcontracting relationships you would expect to enter into in order to meet the requirements of this RFP.

Relevant Work

Please provide any examples of relevant work, including case studies, testimonials, or related materials that demonstrate expertise at solving

Team & Costs

🛑 Congratulations—This is the last section! And there's nothing more to do. Now you can export the RFP and edit it as needed.

Please describe the team roles of the people on this project.

Please outline the structure of the team for this project.

Please outline all costs associated with the project.

Please describe the basic fee structure used by your firm.

We would prefer a delivery-based billing structure for this project.