Your organization has decided that you need a new website. You’ve put in the work of identifying key challenges to solve, aligning goals and needs across departments, and clarifying your vision. You’ve achieved a state of what we call client readiness, and now you’re ready to make it happen.
You may be preparing to write a Request for Proposal (RFP) to describe the project in more detail, so that you can ask for proposals from agencies. But before you start jotting down technical needs and requirements, we encourage you to share a little bit about your organization, what motivated the project, and what success will mean for you.
Why? Because we think that you will get better results when you give agencies an opportunity to connect to your mission, your purpose, and your vision.
Here are a few questions we recommend you respond to at the beginning of your RFP:
1. What makes your organization unique and compelling?
By taking the time to describe who you are and what you do – not just what kind of website you want – you’ll attract the attention of the agencies that care about your work and are aligned with your organization’s goals and values.
2. Why are you redesigning your website now?
This is one of the first questions we ask when kicking off a project. Addressing this point will help get your project off to a strong start by ensuring that your team is unified in the ‘why’ of the new website, and it helps the agency to understand the project’s dynamics and your most pressing needs.
3. What do you want your website to accomplish?
We love to ask our clients what success would look like to them a year from now. Are there metrics you’d like to track, conversions you’d like to increase? Including these aspirations can help an agency understand how they can build a website that not only looks beautiful, but that also actively drives progress toward your goals.
