The complete guide to creating web design RFPs that get you accurate proposals, meaningful comparisons, and the right partner.
After two decades of responding to website design RFPs in higher education, we’ve seen it all. The 80-page behemoths filled with procurement boilerplate. The two-pagers that leave everything to guesswork. The ones that ask for the moon but whisper about budget. And occasionally, the beautifully crafted RFPs that make it easy for everyone: your team, responding firms, and ultimately your institution.
We originally published guidance on this topic years ago, but the landscape has changed. AI discoverability, sophisticated governance models, accessibility requirements, and the sheer complexity of modern institutional web ecosystems demand a more comprehensive approach.
Whether you’re writing your first RFP for a website redesign or updating your institution’s template, here’s what we’ve learned about creating an RFP that gets you accurate proposals, meaningful comparisons, and sets your project up for success from day one.
The Paradox of Procurement: When More Is Actually Less
Let’s address the elephant in the room: we’ve received RFPs that exceed 80 pages. Eighty pages. For a website redesign. The actual project description is usually buried somewhere between legal boilerplate, insurance requirements, and procurement policy that was probably written in 1987.
Look, we get it. Larger public institutions have compliance requirements and established processes. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: at a certain point, procurement requirements start working against everyone.
When an RFP becomes a bureaucratic labyrinth, you’re not just making life harder for responding firms. You’re making it harder for your internal stakeholders to understand the project, for your evaluation committee to compare proposals meaningfully, and for everyone to stay focused on what actually matters: finding the right partner to transform your web presence.
The best RFPs we’ve seen from large institutions do something smart. They separate the wheat from the chaff, putting essential project information and strategic context upfront, with administrative and legal requirements organized in appendices. This respects everyone’s time and keeps the focus where it belongs.
Before You Write Your Website RFP: Know Thyself
Here’s something we’ve noticed after responding to hundreds of RFPs: the single biggest predictor of a successful project isn’t the size of your budget or the expertise of your chosen vendor.
It’s how well you understand your own situation before you hit “send.”
Take Inventory of Your Tech Stack
Even if you’re explicitly looking for recommendations, strategy, or a comprehensive audit, you should know what you currently have. What CMS are you running? What third-party integrations are mission-critical? What’s working, what’s broken, what’s redundant?
This isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about eliminating guesswork. When firms can see your current ecosystem clearly, they can scope accurately, identify risks early, and focus their proposals on solving your actual problems rather than hypothetical ones. The alternative? Proposals based on assumptions, budgets with massive contingencies, and timelines padded for all the unknowns.
Face the Content Migration Reality
Here’s a question that can swing your budget and timeline by 30-40%: what’s your plan for content migration?
Think about it. Do you have 4,000 pages that need to be winnowed down to 800? Does your information architecture need a fundamental restructuring? Do you have internal resources who can own the content consolidation and migration work? Or are you expecting your vendor to audit, recommend, migrate, and rewrite?
There are automation tools and efficiencies that can help, but content migration is still one of the most labor-intensive aspects of a website redesign. Be honest about what you can realistically handle internally and what you need from a partner. Firms can then propose solutions that match your actual capacity and price them accordingly.
Establish Internal Consensus on Core Decisions
The smoothest projects we’ve been part of share one thing in common: the institution did the hard internal work before the RFP went out. You don’t need to have everything figured out, but you should have alignment on:
- What strategic outcomes you’re trying to achieve (not just “a new website”)
- Who your key decision-makers are and how decisions will be made
- What your must-haves vs. nice-to-haves are
- What your realistic timeline constraints are (and what’s driving them)
When you’re clear internally, you’ll write a clearer RFP. When you write a clearer RFP, you’ll get more accurate proposals. When you get more accurate proposals, you’ll make a better decision. It’s that simple.
Seven Essential Elements Every Website Design RFP Needs
1. Project Overview & Strategic Context
Skip the corporate mission statement you pulled from your about page. Instead, give us the real story. What’s broken? What’s working? What does success look like for this project specifically? What are the top 3-5 strategic outcomes you’re trying to achieve?
This isn’t about being comprehensive. It’s about being clear. Two tight paragraphs that tell us what you’re actually trying to accomplish are worth more than two pages of organizational background.
2. Scope & Deliverables: Be Specific, Not Exhaustive
Delineate your must-haves from your nice-to-haves. This is critical for apples-to-apples comparison. When everything is presented as equally important, firms either over-scope to be safe (and price accordingly) or make different assumptions about what’s essential.
Key questions to answer:
- Photography and video: needed, have it covered, or TBD? What does your current bank of visual assets look like?
- Copywriting: do you have the internal resources and bandwidth?
- Core functionalities: what must the site do on day one?
- Third-party integrations: what tools need to work seamlessly with your new site?
- Ongoing support: training, hosting, maintenance, governance. What’s in scope?
One insight from the trenches: feature lists without strategic context are nearly useless. Don’t just tell us you need a “robust search function.” Tell us why search is currently failing your users and what success would look like.
3. Technical Requirements & Current State
Share what you know about your current technical environment, even if it’s incomplete. This helps firms understand what they’re working with, what they’re working around, and what might need to be replaced or integrated.
If you haven’t determined your CMS, say so, but also share what your decision criteria might be. If you’re locked into a specific platform, make that clear upfront. If you have technical debt or known constraints, put them on the table. Nobody benefits from surprises six weeks into a project.
4. Timeline: Realistic, Not Aspirational
Institutional websites typically take 8-14 months depending on complexity, scope, and internal readiness. Your timeline might be driven by enrollment cycles, fiscal years, or leadership transitions. All valid reasons. But if you’re requesting a timeline that’s aggressive, explain why, and be open to hearing how that timeline impacts scope, budget, or risk.
Also consider: when do you actually need to make a decision? We’ve seen RFPs with two-week response windows followed by three-month deliberation periods. If you’re going to take time on your end (and you should), give firms adequate time to craft thoughtful, thorough proposals.
5. Budget: The Naked Elephant in the Room
We know why many institutions don’t include budgets in RFPs. You’re worried about leaving money on the table, artificially constraining innovative solutions, or navigating internal politics around budget disclosure. We understand all of that.
Here’s what we’ve learned, though: not including a budget range costs everyone more time and creates more frustration. Without budget guidance, you’ll receive proposals ranging from $75,000 to $750,000 for what you thought was the same project. And then you’ll spend weeks trying to figure out why.
You don’t need to share your exact number. A range works. Even bracketed options work (“here’s what we could accomplish at $150K, $250K, or $400K”). What matters is creating boundaries for meaningful comparison.
If you’re truly unable to share budget, at least share what’s driving your constraints and what you’re trying to maximize for your investment.
6. Evaluation Criteria: Tell Us What Actually Matters
Different firms have different strengths. Some excel at complex technical implementations. Some bring exceptional creative vision. Some have deep expertise in your specific sector. Some are process-driven and systematic. Some are scrappier and more entrepreneurial.
By clarifying your evaluation criteria, you help firms understand what you value. And you help yourselves stay focused on what matters most to your institution.
Consider including:
- Relevant work samples and case studies
- Team composition and who will actually be doing the work
- Approach to research, discovery, and strategy
- Client references (and what you’ll actually ask them)
- Project timeline with realistic milestones
- Interview process for finalists
One note: don’t over-index on portfolio alone. Some of the best partners we’ve seen clients select didn’t have the flashiest portfolio, but they had the right process, the right team chemistry, and the right strategic approach for that particular project.
7. Questions Process & Point of Contact
Make it easy for firms to ask questions, and make it fair by sharing answers with everyone. Two approaches work well:
Written Q&A: Set a question deadline, compile all questions (anonymized), and share responses with all participants. This ensures everyone is working from the same information.
Live Q&A Session: Think of it like an open house. Less common, but can be valuable for complex projects where real-time dialogue helps clarify scope.
Designate one point person to manage this process. Even if you have a committee (and you probably do), streamlined communication keeps things moving efficiently.
What Modern Website RFPs Need to Address
The fundamentals above are table stakes. But the best website design RFPs we’re seeing now go further by addressing three critical areas that separate forward-thinking institutions from those still operating like it’s 2015:
AI, Search, and Discoverability
Your website needs to work for both humans and machines. That means structured data, schema markup, and content organized for generative engine optimization (GEO), not just traditional SEO. If your RFP doesn’t address how your site will show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews, you’re missing a major opportunity.
Site search is no longer optional, either. Specify requirements for faceted search that actually helps users find what they need across your entire web ecosystem, not just the main site.
Web Governance and Content Management
Here’s a truth bomb: most institutional website problems aren’t technical. They’re governance problems. Who can publish what? How do you prevent template sprawl? Who owns the homepage vs. department pages? How do you stop the proliferation of rogue microsites?
Your RFP should address governance explicitly. What’s your model? Who owns what? How will you prevent returning to chaos six months after launch?
Accessibility and Inclusive Design
WCAG 2.2 AA compliance isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a legal and ethical requirement. Your RFP should specify accessibility standards, testing requirements, and ongoing monitoring. And it should push beyond compliance to actual inclusive design that works for everyone.
What Separates Good RFPs from Great Ones
Great RFPs are honest. They share what’s working, what’s broken, what’s known, and what’s uncertain. They don’t oversell the institution or undersell the challenges. There’s something refreshing about an RFP that says, “Look, here’s where we are, here’s what’s a mess, here’s what we’re trying to fix.”
Great RFPs are focused. They respect that a proposal is a significant investment of time and expertise. They provide enough context to be useful without drowning firms in information that doesn’t matter.
Great RFPs think like partnerships. They’re not shopping for a vendor to execute orders. They’re looking for a partner who will challenge assumptions, bring expertise, and help achieve strategic outcomes. The best RFPs signal this from the first page.
Great RFPs make comparison possible. By being specific about scope, clear about evaluation criteria, and transparent about budget, they set up true apples-to-apples comparison. Which is the whole point, right?
The Real Goal: Set Your Project Up for Success
Here’s what we want you to remember: the RFP isn’t just a procurement tool. It’s the first major artifact of your project. The clarity and thoughtfulness you put into it will ripple through every phase that follows.
A good RFP helps you find the right partner. A great RFP starts the partnership off on the right foot, with shared understanding, realistic expectations, and a foundation of trust.
After 20 years and hundreds of proposals, we can tell within the first few pages whether a project is going to be smooth or rocky. Not because of budget or timeline, but because of how well the institution knows itself and how clearly they’ve communicated what matters.
You know that feeling when you read something and it just clicks? When you can tell the person on the other end has done their homework, knows what they want, and is ready for a real conversation? That’s how we feel when a great RFP lands in our inbox. There’s a little fire in the belly, an excitement to dig in and craft something thoughtful in response. We want to win that project, not just because it’s good business, but because we can already tell it’s going to be a great partnership.
That’s the kind of RFP worth writing. And that’s the kind of project worth doing.
The Complete Website Design RFP Checklist
Use this checklist to ensure your RFP covers everything needed for a successful web redesign project. Not every element will apply to every project, but this represents best practices we’ve seen work across hundreds of higher education website redesigns.
Strategic Foundation
- ☐ Tie the redesign to institutional strategy (new programs, mission evolution, market shifts)
- ☐ Connect explicitly to enrollment, advancement, and reputation goals
- ☐ Define primary and secondary audiences with clarity
- ☐ Identify high-impact user journeys (prospective students, donors, career seekers)
- ☐ Set clear strategic objectives with phased priorities
Current State Assessment
- ☐ Document your current CMS and tech stack
- ☐ Describe your web ecosystem (number of sites, pages, templates)
- ☐ Identify pain points (governance gaps, redundancy, technical constraints)
- ☐ Acknowledge technical debt and known limitations
- ☐ Share what’s working and what’s broken
Scope & Requirements
- ☐ Distinguish must-haves from nice-to-haves
- ☐ Specify core functionalities required on day one
- ☐ Define content migration approach (manual, scripted, hybrid)
- ☐ Include formal content audit and consolidation plan
- ☐ List third-party integrations (CRM, LMS, giving platforms, etc.)
- ☐ Address photography, video, and copywriting needs
Technology & Platform
- ☐ Take technology-agnostic approach (let partners evaluate platforms objectively)
- ☐ State platform preferences if they exist (SaaS vs. self-hosted, security requirements)
- ☐ Specify SSO and authentication requirements
- ☐ Define hosting preferences and security standards
- ☐ Address compliance requirements (GDPR, accessibility, etc.)
Design & User Experience
- ☐ Articulate design principles (mobile-first, minimalist, accessible)
- ☐ Require WCAG 2.2 AA compliance (or higher)
- ☐ Mandate reusable design system and component library
- ☐ Specify performance expectations
- ☐ Define requirements for visual hierarchy and brand consistency
Modern Web Capabilities
- ☐ Build for AI discoverability (structured data, schema markup)
- ☐ Include GEO (generative engine optimization) strategy
- ☐ Specify site search requirements (faceted, cross-domain)
- ☐ Define personalization requirements
- ☐ Address voice/assistant readiness if relevant
Content Strategy
- ☐ Treat content strategy as major workstream (not afterthought)
- ☐ Define roles for content migration and rewriting
- ☐ Establish content governance model
- ☐ Plan for content syndication across sites
- ☐ Include tools and processes for ongoing content management
Governance & Operations
- ☐ Define centralized governance model (who owns what)
- ☐ Establish clear roles and permissions
- ☐ Prevent template and microsite sprawl
- ☐ Create workflows for approval and publishing
- ☐ Address how marketing leads the web ecosystem
Analytics & Measurement
- ☐ Define KPIs (conversion, engagement, visibility)
- ☐ Specify analytics setup requirements (GA4, heatmapping)
- ☐ Include SEO tracking and monitoring
- ☐ Establish ongoing analytics governance
- ☐ Define how success will be measured
Project Management
- ☐ Clarify vendor vs. institution responsibilities
- ☐ Define communication cadence and collaboration tools
- ☐ Specify documentation and knowledge transfer requirements
- ☐ Include training expectations
- ☐ Address change management and stakeholder alignment
Budget & Timeline
- ☐ Include budget range or constraints
- ☐ Define realistic timeline (typically 8-14 months)
- ☐ Identify what’s driving timeline constraints
- ☐ Request phased approach with clear milestones
- ☐ Ask for optional enhancements with clear pricing
- ☐ Address risks and tradeoffs
Evaluation & Selection
- ☐ Define evaluation criteria clearly
- ☐ Request specific case studies (especially AI/SEO examples)
- ☐ Require team composition details
- ☐ Include interview process for finalists
- ☐ Specify what proposals must include
- ☐ Request client references with guidance on what you’ll ask
Post-Launch
- ☐ Define ongoing support expectations
- ☐ Address maintenance requirements
- ☐ Plan for future enhancements
- ☐ Ensure flexibility to evolve with technology changes
- ☐ Establish relationship for additional scopes
Process & Communication
- ☐ Set clear question deadline and Q&A process
- ☐ Designate single point of contact
- ☐ Provide adequate time for thoughtful proposals (3-4 weeks minimum)
- ☐ Organize legal/procurement requirements in appendices
- ☐ Keep essential project info upfront and focused
Remember: This checklist represents comprehensive best practices. Your RFP doesn’t need every element, but it should thoughtfully address the areas that matter most for your specific project and institution.
Common Questions About Writing Website Design RFPs
How long should a website design RFP be? Focus on clarity over length. The best RFPs we’ve received are typically 8-20 pages of actual project information, with legal and procurement requirements in appendices. If your core RFP exceeds 30 pages, you’re probably including too much noise.
Should I include our budget in the RFP? Yes, at minimum include a budget range. It creates boundaries for meaningful comparison and saves everyone time. If internal politics prevent exact numbers, share what’s driving your constraints and what you’re trying to maximize.
How much time should we give firms to respond? For a comprehensive website redesign RFP, give firms at least 3-4 weeks to respond. Complex institutional projects require significant research, strategy development, and team coordination to propose thoughtfully.
What’s the typical timeline for a higher education website redesign? Most institutional website redesigns take 8-14 months from kickoff to launch, depending on complexity, scope, content migration needs, and internal decision-making processes. Be wary of firms promising aggressive timelines without understanding your constraints.
How do I evaluate proposals fairly? Define your evaluation criteria in advance and share them in your RFP. Look beyond portfolio to assess team chemistry, strategic approach, process, and expertise in areas that matter most to your institution. The flashiest portfolio doesn’t always indicate the best partner.
Need help crafting your website design RFP, or want a second set of eyes on one you’ve drafted? After responding to hundreds of RFPs in higher education, we know what works and what creates headaches. We’re happy to help you write an RFP that attracts the right partners and sets your project up for success.
Last updated: 2025
