Making a decision is always a tough job. And when it comes to deciding in terms of business and money matters, it is the toughest of all.
A website is important for your growing business and every business professional want it to be the best in your business territory. Thus the web solutions provider, whom you seek to hire for your website making, should be the finest…isn’t it?
Various Web Design and Web Development firms desire to display their knowledge and experience on any given topic, thus making a good impact on the business goals if given the opportunity. For venturing into different talents, a proper and intelligent RFP is a must. Let’s find out how an effective Request for Proposal can be prepared in order to find the best of services.
Identify the goals and target audience: The defining of the business objectives is the most essential thing to initialize any project, and the development process is also based on the same. Besides this, the target audience matters a lot. You need to brief them the objectives and how you intend to serve them. The target audience who will be using your site might include the potential clients, existing clients, prospective employees, business partners, etc. and thus benefit from gaining priority.
Talk about the estimated budget: It is no use being shy about your expenses or budgets. In order to scale the proposal of the service providers exactly, the budget range should be clearly displayed on the RFP. The best part is that, if you announce your budget, you will be sure about your exact expenses and that all the work is accomplished within that amount given. A fair-budget always helps!
Specify the requirements of the site: The site specifications are an important part in your RFP. It may include the design parameters, the factors to be included regarding web accessibility, the platform used for making of the website (if it will be built in ASP, PHP, .NET, etc), the server in which the site is hosted (if it will be hosted on Apache, IIS, Tomcat, etc), the Search Engines on which you want to promote your business.
Plan for the needed tools and functionalities: It is required to segregate the essential and the non-essential components in your website. For instance, in an e-commerce site, the product catalogue, the payment gateway, etc are the essential components; whereas regular content pages (when not in huge numbers) may be regarded as the non-essential components. Thus it is your homework to find them out and then mention in the RFP.
Outline the Site Structure: Providing a suggested site map at the outset would help the Web Design and Development agency to comprehend the entirety of scope of the project better. During the process of putting together the structure, you would realize that there is some amount of thought you will have to put into the exercise. This could also involve researching counterpart sites which is all a very good thing to do at the outset.
Clarify the Maintenance part: Be clear about the maintenance and continuity of your website. In case the business relationship with your provider ends (for some reasons), confirm about the hosting and renewal of domain name. It should not happen that your website feels left out!
Look and feel matters: Graphics and illustrations are basic to every website and for a website to look interactive and attractive, their inclusions are important. So, it is you who should decide if you or the developer should provide with the requirement. No doubt, you can always specify if your website will be photograph strong or content strong, or both wisely balanced.
No matter however successful your business is, the website speaks it all. So make a good beginning to reach your goals.
Thus, all that begins well ends well! Let us know if you are making Request for Proposals ( RFPs) as we might be able to help you….