Website RFP examples · buyer guide
Website RFP examples should make vendor answers easier to compare—not make the document longer.
A useful website RFP gives every vendor the same decision context: why the project exists, which user journeys matter, what is in scope, what constraints are real, how SEO and migration should be handled, and how proposals will be evaluated.
Example opening
“We are redesigning our website because…”
Continue with the business change, current problem, target audience, priority conversion, and technical context. This is more useful than starting with a feature inventory because vendors can understand what trade-offs the project is supposed to optimise.
1. Business context
Explain what the organisation does, what changed, who owns the project, and why the website project exists now.
2. Project goals
State measurable outcomes such as lead quality, product understanding, application completion, ecommerce conversion, performance, search visibility, or editor efficiency.
3. Users & priority journeys
Describe the audiences and the actions they need to complete instead of listing pages without context.
4. Scope
List required page types, applications, integrations, content migration, CMS work, forms, search, ecommerce, authentication, localisation, or other product behaviour.
5. Technical constraints
Document existing stack, hosting, domains, analytics, CRM, APIs, security requirements, accessibility expectations, and any systems that must remain.
6. SEO migration
For redesigns, include URL inventory, redirects, canonicals, structured data, metadata, internal linking, sitemap, rendering, and monitoring requirements.
7. Timeline & decision process
Share real deadlines, dependencies, internal review windows, procurement steps, and what can move if assumptions change.
8. Budget context
A realistic range helps vendors propose an appropriate solution instead of guessing whether the project is a template adaptation or custom product-level build.
9. Vendor response format
Ask every vendor to answer the same questions so proposals can be compared on approach, assumptions, team, proof, timeline, price, ownership, and support.
Redesign-specific example
“Preserve useful organic visibility while replacing the site experience.”
A redesign RFP should explicitly require an inventory of important URLs, redirect planning, preservation of useful content, canonical review, internal-link updates, analytics continuity, structured data review, sitemap validation, and post-launch search monitoring.