By Barrack Diego
A professional business website depends on designers and developers, but even before that, it depends on the visionary who wants the site to get developed. You may be an entrepreneur, a project manager, a homemaker, a student, a scientist, a journalist, a photographer, social worker, or from any other profession and tier of life. Whatever the reason for developing your website — whether you are doing it for business or charity, whether you want it to look flashy or functional — it’s totally on you how you may get exactly what you envision.
This is only possible by delivering what is in your mind to potential designers and developers through a complete and detailed description. The kind writing used to describe the website plan, your ideas, concept, requirements, etc. is called a request for proposal, or in short, an RFP.
There are certain things to be mentioned in a website RFP so that while planning the site design, the developer talks to you about these, and finally makes a concrete plan involving these aspects. This will ensure that the much-needed things are not missed, and you get a website designed exactly they way you want. As you think about your website, consider including details about the following topics in your website RFP.
Content Management System
You will have to think about the content management system you will use for your website. You may not want to pay for the ongoing assistance of the web developer once your site is handed over to you, so you will have to have an understanding of the system it is built in so you can keep it updated.
The most popular content management system — and easiest for non-designers to use — is WordPress. As the leading content management system in the world in terms of ease of use and popularity, coupled with rich features for marketing, SEO, and many other aspects, you should consider requesting the use of Wordpress for your website in your RFP.
Web Host
Next in your RFP is the matter of a web host. Assuming you don’t have experience managing a website, you will rely on your developer to set up your host and upload the site to that hosting server. But you as the site owner will have a complete say on which web hosting service you use, or exactly what your hosting requirements are.
Your hosting requirements, bandwidth, budget, and plan can be stated clearly in your website design RFP. On the basis of the RFP, only the web designer will make plans for the site, figure out the right hosting service, and give you plan and budget. Therefore you must set your expectations right from your end first. If this is new to you, these tips on choosing a web host are a good place to start.
Marketing
It’s a popular belief that marketing for a website is done after the website live and indexed on search engines. The actual truth is that a website must be made marketing friendly from the very beginning by developing site building plans that way.
Website marketing is often done on the basis of two things: keywords and social media. Although other modes are there, these are the two main online marketing tactics most used. And to make the website friendly for marketing, the site must be made that way even before uploading content to the site, or wireframing the site.
The social media pages for the website or company have to be prepared and made fully ready. Only then the web developer will be able to integrate social media into the website. Also, when content for the site is written thoughtfully while involving all targeted keywords the right way, then only the site will be made ready for SEO.
Content, SEO, and Social Media
When a website gets developed, the developed needs the content for the site ready with the targeted keywords used in the right way for on-page SEO. On-page is a vital part of SEO so search engines detect the content easily and relate it to the keywords. This promotes the later efforts of off-page SEO and promotes ranking and traffic. That is why your RFP for the website must cover these points as well so that the web designer focuses on SEO and social media marketing at the time of developing the website.
If you don’t have experience writing SEO-focused content, this is an area you may want to hire a professional to help you before you have your site developed.
While these areas may be considered among the most important, there are many other things you should consider for your website RFP in order to get the best proposals and, ultimately, the right website. For more tips, review this guide from Hubspot.
Planning a website right from the scratch in such a complete form is the pillar to success. If you plan it right with all needs and possibilities from the very beginning, then the site is more likely to be a success.