Advance Internet Marketing, Inc.

Request for Proposal Guidelines
(RFP)

• A brief background of your company.

• A brief description of this project.

• Budget - ideally, you will already have a budget set aside for the project. It's helpful to include it in your RFP so that developers can tailor the solutions they propose to match your budget needs. Also, it will help save you the pain of exchanging a lot of ideas with developers who are out of your price range.

• Time frame - include any project deadlines you may have. Are there crucial meetings, milestones, cut-off dates, etc. that the developer should be aware of? Be realistic with a time frame; for example, an average brochure-ware site can take anywhere from 6-8 weeks. However, depending on the project and its complexity, it's good to know ahead of time how flexible you are willing to be with the project's completion date.

• Demographics - who will be the main users of your site?

• Comfort level with technology - how technically savvy is your audience? Will they know how to deal with plug-ins, for example?

• Audience base - how large do you expect your user base to be?

• Are there color palette and font treatment requirements or preferences, if any?

• Do you have corporate identity guidelines from your company that must be followed? If so, how will the developer be able to access these?

• How should the site "feel"? Include some adjectives to describe what your site should communicate.

• Examples of sites you liked/disliked, and why.

• Will there be any animated elements (i.e. Flash animations)? How many? How long should they be? How are they going to be used?

• Server hardware/software requirements - are there specific server software, operating system, application servers, database, etc. that need to be used?

• User requirements - are users on a particular type of browser? Will users have high-speed connections, or will many be on modems?

• Will there be forms on the site? If so, how many? How should they be handled? (e.g. e-mailed to recipients, stored in a database, etc.)

• Will the site require tools to manage information (e.g. ability for staff to update press releases or quarterly reports)?

• Will there be any e-commerce on the site? If so, who will be entering data on products offered? How will transactions be managed?

• Are there any other interactive features the site should have? What are they, and how do you envision them to work?

• Will there be downloadable documents on the site (e.g. MS Word documents, PDFs, etc.)? How many?

• Will you have other non-HTML content, such as audio or video files?

• Who will be the main point of contact on your staff?

• How will the tasks be divided between you and the developer in order to complete the project?

• Are there any third parties (subcontractors, etc.) that will also be involved in the project?