20 Reasons Your RFP is Not Detailed Enough for an Accurate Web Design Quote

Companies often ask for a proposal or quote with very little information given to an agency. This is not only a waste of time but a bad idea because it can lead to a lot of misinformation and confusion about how to best tackle the project for your business needs. Here are twenty reasons and areas to be more specific in your RFP.

You have not determined a CMS or Framework to use.

How you build your site has a major impact on cost. If this is open-ended, the agency is going to have to pick something they can do to meet the requirements that might not even be the best fit for your business and budget. A project built in WordPress versus Laravel could have a huge swing in cost.

You have not determined what unique pages you need to be designed and developed.

A major cost to most projects is design and front-end development. If your site is 20 pages all with the same exact template that is far less work than 20 pages with all different designs and templates. Determining this, or even having an approximate idea, will help get the cost more accurate.

You have not determined whether you want a custom theme or prebuilt theme.

Most CMS platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Magento, Hubspot, etc. offer a prebuilt theme option. This could be something from Themeforest.net or another site that sells themes. You can also build a custom theme. The pros and cons of a custom or prebuilt option are very important and will also impact the cost of the project greatly.

You haven’t determined the extensions you need.

In most cases, you will use a framework or CMS and will leverage third-party extensions or add-ons for certain functionality. The complexity and work to implement these different options can greatly impact the cost of the project.

You haven’t determined if you need a blog.

A blog can be a large cost if you need to invest a lot into a unique design and different layouts for different types of pages, like the main blog page that lists all posts, the individual blog post, the author page, categories, and more.

You haven’t determined who is creating the content.

Content is the cornerstone of a good website. If you are responsible for all images and content, that should be done as up front as possible to make sure the design fits your content and vice versa. This is a big time commitment and someone has to do it.

No clear sitemap or number of pages required in the project.

What is the sitemap going to look like? How many pages will there be? How are people getting to each page? If this needs to be figured out this is a major variable that could determine the cost of your site as well as cost money itself to do.

You have not determined how data transfer will happen.

If you have a lot of blogs or other types of content that need to be transferred, this will take a lot of time to do, as well. For eCommerce or other types of websites, the data transfer itself could be a major task.

You have not chosen your eCommerce functionality (if applicable).

Do you simply need to add a few products and set up a payment gate to accept credit cards? Or is there a lot more complexity to the project? eCommerce can be very complex and a major area that needs to be defined in many different ways.
Some examples are:

• What payment gateway are using?
• How are you shipping products (Fedex, UPS, etc.)?
• How is fulfillment going to work?
• Do you need product reviews?

No defined objectives.

What is the actual purpose of the project? To drive more website visitors, build brand awareness, improve operations? There are many ways a website can help your business. Depending on the goals and objectives, it’s possible to tailor the project to a more defined role that may increase or decrease costs.

Unclear custom functionality requirements.

Many non-technical people may think something is easy but, realistically, could require a significant amount of frontend and backend work. If you know something is not straightforward static content and potentially requires significant frontend or backend development this must be clearly defined for an accurate quote.

No plan for post-launch maintenance.

Depending on how you want to maintain and grow the site may impact how the site should be built. Having a plan for this is paramount for future success.

Your integrations are unclear.

If you do not outline exactly what data needs to pass back and forth between the integrations and systems you need, such as an ERP, ATS, or other platforms, the cost will be unclear. There may be prebuilt solutions that fulfill your requirements or you may need a custom solution.

No deadlines or timelines.

The saying goes, “You can get things done, fast, cheap or quality. You can only pick two of them.” How fast the project can be completed is a major component of the cost and budget.