Website Request for Proposal

for

[PROJECT_TITLE]

[BUSINESS_NAME]

REF: [PROJECT_REFERENCE_NUMBER]

Issue date: [ISSUE_DATE]

Proposal response by: [SEND_DATE]

[BUSINESS_NAME]
[BUSINESS_ADDRESS]

Tel: [BUSINESS_TELEPHONE]

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

1. Introduction
Quotations are invited for the provision of an ecommerce store for [BUSINESS_NAME]. Please
take care in reading this document, in particular the Specification. If you have any further
questions please contact the named person below.

[BUSINESS_NAME] reserves the right to carry out due diligence checks on the awarded
provider before project commencement.

[BUSINESS_NAME] are seeking a provider that can help with:

● Graphic design of the website

● Responsive web design for Mobile, Tablet & Desktop
● Ecommerce
● Hosting (Web & Email)
● On-going support and maintenance

Clarification Questions

Any queries about this document, the selection process or the proposed contract itself, should
be referred to:

John Smith (Project Manager)

01234 567890
john.smith@example.com

Quotation Responses

Should you wish to take part in the selection process please complete the RFP and email it to:

Jon Doe (Director)

jon@doe.com

By 5pm on Monday [SEND_DATE]

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

2. Company Overview
What does your company do?

Who are your customers?

What makes them buy from you?

What’s your style? Modern, traditional, funky, corporate, playful, etc?

How is this project going to help your company?

A brief history about your company (one or two sentences).

Our main competitors are...

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

3. Project Overview
We require an ecommerce solution to take online orders for our products. This is our first
ecommerce store / We have an existing ecommerce solution but require and upgrade to the
system and a fresh design.

We have approx. 500 products in 30 different categories. Our product range includes
__________. [Describe your products and any attributes they have].

Our customers can fit into the follow profiles:

Type Objective Influences

Money Savers To find the cheapest price for a Price only

product they already know about

Mums To save time organising the kids Price, quality and fun factor
party by buying pre made gift bags

Some sites we like:

Web Address Likes

www.example.com Really fun design with vivid colours and fantastic photography

4. Project Goals and Objectives

We are doing this project because...

● This is our first ecommerce store and we require a solution to help manage orders online
● We are unhappy with the current website and provider
● Our website is X years old and is starting to look dated
● Our website doesn’t work on iPhones and iPads
● We are moving into a new market and want to attract a different audience
● Our conversion rate is very low and we want to increase sale leads from the website
● We’ve recently rebranded and we want to make the website align with our new brand

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

5. Technical Brief
We require an open source ecommerce store built in PHP with a MySQL database that offers
scalability and flexibility in design to adapt as we develop our business.

The ecommerce software should be modular, so we can request new additional functionality
without the requirement to completely redevelop the entire website.

The ecommerce software should separate out the design from the database and core
functionality so that we can change the design without having to recode the functionality of the
website (known as MVC).

The front-end of the website should use a framework for responsive design (such as Bootstrap)
that is tried and tested on multiple devices and platforms.

The use of jQuery should be adopted for any client-side functionality such as form validation,
carousels and interactive elements.

The website should utilise responsive image technology and take advantage of high definition
screen (such as Retina displays) capabilities.

Speed is critical to the performance of our website, therefore the website needs to use a cache
engine within the content management system to ensure our pages are served up lighting quick.

The website should protect us against SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks by
using best practice in data sanitization.

We will require integration with sagepay/paypal/worldpay/epdq payment partner.

We require integration with Google Analytics along with setting up goal funnels and conversion
tracking so we can report on the cost per sale of paid campaigns.

We will be using Google Shopping to help promote our product range, therefore we require a
feed of our product database integrating into Google Merchant Centre.

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

6. Usability Brief
Our customers use a multitude of devices to access the internet on the go. We therefore require
that the website is tested, at a minimum on the follow devices:

● iPhone 6,7,8
● iPad 2, iPad Air, iPad Mini
● Google Nexus
● Microsoft Surface Pro 3+
● Laptop
● Desktop (PC & Mac)

Using the following browsers (where possible):

● Internet Explorer
● Chrome
● Safari
● FireFox
● Opera

We require that all forms are tried and tested with validation.

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

7. Functionality Brief

Core functionality

The ecommerce software should have the minimum following features:

● Catalog management
○ Inventory management
○ Batch import and export of products
○ Configurable products for size, colour, etc
○ Downloadable and digital products
○ Customer personalised products (like engraving)
○ Advanced pricing rules
● Marketing promotion tools
○ Flexible coupons (pricing rules)
○ Free shipping option
○ Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts
○ Bundled products
○ Customer and group specific pricing
○ Upsells and cross-sells
● Search engine optimisation
○ SEO Friendly URLs
○ Google site map (auto generated)
○ Meta-information for products and categories
○ Rich snippets using Schema markup
● Site management
○ Control multiple websites and stores from one location
○ Multi-lingual
○ Multi-currency
○ Content management system
● Product search and browsing
○ Layered navigation to filter through product categories
○ Configurable search with auto-suggested items
○ Recently view product widget
○ Product comparisons
○ Product search filters (Price, Brand, etc)
○ Breadcrumbs
● Shipping
○ Free shipping
○ Flat rate shipping per order
○ Flat rate shipping per item
○ Table rates for weight and destination

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

 ○ Table rates for product sub-total and destination
○ Table rates for number of items and destination
● Checkout
○ One page checkout
○ SSL security support for orders front and back end
○ Checkout without creating an account
○ Shopping cart with VAT and shipping estimates
○ Checkout with account to pre fill customer details
○ Saved shopping carts
● Payment
○ 100% Secure payments
○ Integration with multiple payment gateways
○ Accept cheques and purchase orders (on account)
● Customer service and accounts
○ Order stats and history
○ Re-orders from account
○ Recently ordered items
○ Wishlist
○ Newsletter subscription management
○ Product reviews
○ Account dashboard with secure login
● Order management
○ View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel
○ Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit notes to allow for split
fulfilment
○ Print invoices and packing slips
○ Create re-orders for customers from administration panel
○ Email notifications of Orders
● International support
○ Multi-lingual
○ Support for multiple currencies
○ Tax rate support
○ Localisation
○ Configurable list of allowed countries for accounts, shipping destinations and
billing addresses

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

8. Content Brief
The content for the website will be supplied by [BUSINESS_NAME] in full. The website will be in
English only.

The site hierarchy will consists of:

● Home
○ Promotional banner area
○ Latest products
○ Special offers
○ Social media feeds
● About Us
○ Introduction
○ Meet the team
○ History
● Category 1
○ Sub category
■ Product 1
○ Sub category 2
■ Product 2
● Shopping Cart
○ Checkout
○ Payment
○ Confirmation
● Search
○ Search results
● Customer login area
○ Dashboard
○ Orders
○ Wish list
● Contact Us
● Site map
● Terms / Privacy / Returns / Delivery

We are looking to have a 3 minute introduction video created that will be visible on the
homepage and hosted by Vimeo or Wistia.

We have all the product imagery for the website to supply you. We will write all the product and
category descriptions and load straight into the ecommerce store admin system. We will require
stock photography for some pages.

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

9. Questions
To help choose the right agency for [BUSINESS_NAME] we would like you to provide answers
to the following questions:

● Who will be project manager and what are their skills / experience?
● Describe your design and development process
● Have you got examples of previous similar work?
● We have an existing product database, will you be able to import it?
● What professional indemnity insurance cover level do you have?
● What is your hourly rate for additional development and support?
● How will the website be hosted?
● We require email addresses setting up - will this be ok?
● We have already registered a domain name, but need to transfer to it to the selected
agency, is this ok?

10. Timetable

We are looking to appoint a web development agency by ___________.

We would like to start work as soon as possible post appointment.

We will supply all the content for the website by ___________.

The website should be completed and live by ___________.

Budget

We have a total budget for the project of ___________.

We require ongoing hosting and support of the website for a term of 2 years. The budget for this
is ___________.

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877

11. Next Steps
Send your project proposal to hello@newedge.co.uk and give us a call on 01536 516877

Thank you for taking the time to complete this website brief.

We look forward to working with you,

© Copyright New Edge Media Ltd | www.newedge.co.uk | 01536 516877