When embarking on a higher education website redesign, drafting a clear and comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP) is a critical first step. Your institution's website is often the first impression prospective students, faculty, and donors will have of your brand, making the stakes incredibly high.
A well-crafted RFP will not only attract the right website redesign vendors, but also streamline the process, ensuring alignment between your institution’s goals and the vendor’s expertise.
Based on our experience of more than a decade in website redesign in higher education, let’s break down the steps to create an RFP that helps you secure a successful partnership.
Step 1: Set the vision and goals
Before you draft the RFP, articulate your vision. What does your institution hope to achieve with this redesign? Here are a few examples.
- Brand Leadership: Your new website should reflect your institution's prestige, academic excellence, and global leadership.
- Competitive Differentiation: Showcase what sets your school apart by leveraging design trends and features seen in the best university website redesign examples.
- Enhanced User Experience: Prioritize accessibility, intuitive navigation, and personalized content for diverse audiences.
- Global Reach: If your institution targets international audiences, you might want to consider multilingual capabilities and a design that resonates with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
By defining these goals upfront, you clarify your team’s vision for the project and you provide vendors with a sense of your goals.
Step 2: Scope of work — defining the project for accurate proposals
A key challenge in pricing is that the final website often isn't fully defined at the RFP stage. Important details, such as features, integrations, and content needs, are typically refined during the discovery phase. This means vendors must make educated assumptions based on the information provided in the RFP.
Without a clearly defined scope, pricing becomes guesswork—resulting in either inflated quotes to cover unknowns or underestimates that lead to unexpected costs later.
That’s the reason defining the scope of anticipated needs in the RFP as well as you can is critical.
A good website redesign company will be able to assist you with identifying the scope of work in initial conversations. However, the more accurate your can already outline your in the RFP, the easier it will be for web design agencies to provide you with quotes and the more likely you will be able to do an “apples-to-apples” comparison.
Acknowledge that the scope will likely evolve during the discovery phase as insights are uncovered. The vendor should use your scope outline as a baseline for their proposal, understanding that adjustments will be made as they work through the discovery process with you.
Below are the critical components of the scope to include in your RFP:
Content Management System (CMS)
Specify your current CMS and whether you plan to retain it or migrate to a new platform. If migration is required, indicate your preferred options, such as WordPress or Drupal. Vendors need to know:
- Current CMS (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, or custom platform).
- Expectations for the new CMS (ease of use, scalability, specific features).
- Whether training for your team is part of the scope.
Site size and structure
Provide an estimate of the site’s current size and a projection for the new site.
- Number of pages: Include the current total (e.g., 500+ pages) and an anticipated range for the redesigned site.
- Page types and templates: Specify distinct content types (e.g., academic programs, faculty bios, news, events).
- Site architecture: Highlight whether the structure will change significantly (e.g., consolidating redundant pages or adding new sections).
Integrations
List the third-party systems and tools that need integration. Examples include:
- CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce, MailChimp, Localist, PubMed, etc).
- Marketing automation platforms (e.g., HubSpot, Marketo).
- Analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics, HotJar).
- Event management or learning management systems.
- Payment gateways or donation platforms for fundraising.
Technical features
Outline key technical requirements and desired functionality. These might include:
- ADA and WCAG accessibility compliance and features.
- Mobile-first design and responsiveness.
- Advanced search capabilities.
- Multilingual support for international audiences.
- Integration or pass-word protection with your institute’s single sign-on authorization method.
Content development
Clarify the role of content development in the website redesign:
- Will the institution handle content creation, or should the vendor include it in their proposal?
- If you need support with content development, how much content needs to be created? Any type of estimate will help, even if will change later on.
- Will existing content be migrated as-is, rewritten, or removed?
- Does a content audit already exist?
- Do you have a writing style guide or does the project include creating one?
Photography and media
Indicate whether new photography or media production is part of the scope:
- Are existing visual assets sufficient, or is new photography/video needed?
- Should the vendor include production of new photography/video?
- Do you need infographic or icon design for the new site?
Using the current site as a baseline
If you’re not sure what the anticipated scope for the new website is, one way to define scope is to start with your existing site. Work with your team and developer to generate a full inventory filling in the sections listed above.
By providing this level of detail in your RFP, you empower vendors to deliver accurate and comprehensive proposals tailored to your institution’s unique requirements.
Step 3: Setting a budget, a critical design element
Setting a budget for your website redesign is not just a financial exercise—it’s an important design element that shapes the entire project. Websites can be approached and built in countless ways, and understanding your budget allows vendors to tailor their recommendations to maximize impact.
If your budget is limited, the vendor may propose creative solutions to prioritize essential features and structure the site for the best possible results within your constraints. Conversely, a more generous budget allows the vendor to suggest advanced features or enhancements that can further elevate your website’s outcomes.
While you might hesitate to share too much about your budget, providing a range or maximum budget will lead to more detailed and tailored proposals. It also helps uncover potential alignment or misalignment with a vendor’s approach early in the process, saving time and ensuring the best fit for your institution.
Transparency in pricing
At our agency, we prioritize transparent pricing, which empowers institutions to understand how costs are allocated and how adjustments to the scope will impact the budget. Here’s how we approach pricing:
- Detailed Scope Outline: We include as much detail as possible to define the scope of the work we’re setting out to do.
- Line-Item Breakdowns: Our proposals include detailed line items for each component—such as discovery, content strategy, design, development, integrations, documentation, and testing. This clarity helps you see where your budget is going.
- Optional Add-ons: We account for potential changes during the discovery phase by offering optional add-ons for features you may decide to prioritize later.
Step 4: Develop evaluation criteria
Higher ed institutions often face unique challenges, such as balancing input from multiple stakeholders and navigating bureaucratic decision-making. Your RFP should explicitly state the evaluation criteria, including:
- Experience with Higher Ed: Vendors must demonstrate expertise working with universities or large colleges. Look for portfolios featuring website redesign in higher ed or projects with institutions in competitive markets like Boston, New York or Philadelphia.
- Technical Expertise: Prioritize vendors with experience in scalable platforms, mobile-first designs, and experience in accessible website design.
- Support and Maintenance: Vendors should provide ongoing support post-launch, including CMS updates, feature additions, analytics, and accessibility audits.
Step 5: Putting it all together and structuring the RFP
An organized RFP is easier for vendors to respond to and ensures you get the information you need. Here’s a suggested structure:
- Introduction: Provide a high-level overview of your institution, including key differentiators.
- Project Vision & Goals: Outline your vision and what you aim to achieve.
- Scope of Work: Detail the website size, integrations, and technical requirements you established with your team.
- Timeline: Specify milestones, from RFP release to launch date. Give your team reasonable time for the vendor selection and anticipate that the selected agency may require 4–8 weeks (or more) from project award to kick off to allocate their team.
- Budget: Offer a realistic budget range to help vendors craft accurate proposals.
- Vendor Qualifications: Request case studies or examples relevant to higher education website redesign.
- Evaluation Criteria: Establish the evaluation criteria you established
- Submission Requirements: Include deadlines, format preferences, and evaluation criteria.
Proposal evaluation
When evaluating proposals, keep in mind that a website is along-term investment. Transparency in pricing is just as important as competitive rates. Look for vendors who provide clarity, flexibility, and a commitment to collaboration—partners who not only understand the complexities of higher education websites but also how to partner with you over time to continue to optimize and evolve it to maximize ROI.
By choosing a vendor who values transparency and partnership, you can navigate the complexities of a website redesign, knowing your investment will deliver measurable results.
Need help creating a scope for your RFP?
Writing an RFP requires effort and can be tough because you need to outline a scope for a project that isn’t defined yet.
With over a decade of experience building higher ed websites, we’ve guided many institutions through the process, offering educated recommendations to shape an initial scope. By partnering with us, you can create a scope outline that leads to detailed proposals and accurate pricing, ensuring a smoother and more effective RFP process.
