Website Redesign RFP Template: What to Include, and What to Leave Out

A website redesign RFP (request for proposal) is a document you send to agencies so they can quote the same project. A good one is short, says what the current site does and fails to do, names the pages and the launch date, and gives a budget range. A bad one lists forty features, hides the budget, and gets back five proposals you can't compare.

We answer RFPs for a living, so this template comes from the receiving end. It covers the twelve sections worth writing, the parts to leave out, and how to score what comes back.

The short answer

Keep the RFP to three or four pages. Lead with the business problem, not the feature list. Say who you are, what the site has to do, how many pages you need, what content exists, what the launch date is and why, and what range you can spend. Then ask every agency the same five questions and score the answers the same way.

Do you need an RFP at all?

If your company is small enough that one person can approve the project, a one-page brief and three conversations will get you a better result in a quarter of the time. The RFP format exists for procurement rules and committees. It is good at making proposals comparable and bad at surfacing the agency that will actually understand your business.

Write a formal RFP when procurement requires it, when more than three people have to sign off, or when the budget is large enough that a wrong choice is expensive. Otherwise, write the brief in this template's first six sections and skip the rest.

The template, section by section

1. Who you are, in one paragraph

What the company sells, to whom, in which markets and languages. Agencies read this first to decide whether they are a fit. If you sell to buyers in Japan and the US, say so here, because it changes who should be on the team.

2. Why you are redesigning

This is the most useful section and the one most RFPs skip. Describe what is wrong in observable terms: leads dropped since the last launch, the site doesn't show up for the searches that matter, sales won't send prospects to it, the CMS takes a developer to change a headline. Numbers help. "Organic traffic fell 40% after our 2024 relaunch" is a brief in one sentence.

If you are not sure what is wrong, say that too. A good agency will propose a diagnostic phase rather than guess.

3. What success looks like

Two or three measurable outcomes, twelve months after launch. More qualified inquiries per month, a page that ranks for a named query, a shorter sales cycle because prospects arrive informed. Avoid "modern look and feel" as a goal. Every agency will promise it and none of you can measure it.

4. Audience and the actions you want

Who visits, what they already know, and what you want them to do. A B2B site that needs to get an engineer to a demo request is a different build from a hotel site that needs a direct booking. Name the primary action and the one or two secondary ones.

5. Scope: pages, languages, integrations

List the page types you need, not every URL. "Home, five service pages, about, careers, blog with roughly 40 existing posts, contact" is enough. Add languages, and say which language the content starts in. Add anything the site has to talk to: a CRM, a booking engine, a job board, analytics.

Also say what you want to cut. Redesigns get cheaper and better when the page count goes down. If you have 200 pages and a dozen do the work, say that you expect the agency to recommend what to keep.

6. Content: who writes it

The most common reason a redesign runs late is content nobody budgeted. Say whether your current copy can be edited and reused, whether you have a writer, or whether you expect the agency to write. If you need the site in two languages, say who writes each one. Translation and copywriting are different jobs, and a quote that assumes one when you meant the other will be wrong by a wide margin.

7. Brand and design assets

Do you have a usable logo, brand guidelines, photography and a type system, or does the brand need work before the website can start? Be honest. An agency that discovers the brand problem in week two has to re-quote, and your timeline moves.

8. Platform and technical constraints

If you have a CMS requirement, state it and say why. If you don't, let the agency recommend one; "WordPress, Framer, Webflow or a headless CMS, with a recommendation and reasoning" is a fine instruction. Add hosting constraints, security reviews, accessibility requirements and anything your IT team will insist on later.

9. SEO and migration

If the current site has rankings worth keeping, this section protects them. Ask the agency to describe how they map old URLs to new ones, what they measure before starting and what they check after launch. We wrote up how to choose a website redesign agency that won't hurt your SEO; the five questions in that article belong in your RFP.

10. Timeline, and the reason for it

Give the launch date and what drives it: a trade show, a funding round, a product launch, a fiscal year. A date with a reason gets taken seriously. A date without one gets treated as a guess, because it usually is. For reference, a focused marketing site redesign typically takes four to eight weeks with us, or two to three when the client can review quickly. Larger sites and multiple languages take longer. Our post on how long a website redesign takes breaks this down by site size.

11. Budget range

State a range. Companies hide the budget hoping for a lower price and instead get proposals aimed at the wrong scope. A range lets each agency tell you what is achievable inside it, including when the honest answer is "not all of this, but here is what is." Our website projects start at $10,000, and the factors that move the number are in what a website redesign costs.

12. Process: how to respond and how you will decide

Deadline, format, who to contact with questions, whether there is a Q&A call, and the criteria you will score on. Tell agencies whether you want a fixed price or hourly estimates, and whether you expect design concepts in the proposal. (We would suggest you don't ask for free concepts. You will get what unpaid work produces, and it tells you nothing about how the agency works with a real brief.)

What to leave out

• A feature wish list copied from a competitor's site. Describe the job the site has to do and let the agency propose how.
• Requests for speculative design work. Ask for relevant case studies and references instead.
• Vague quality words: "modern", "clean", "engaging", "best in class". They cannot be priced or checked.
• A page count that includes everything you have today. Ask for a recommendation on what to keep.
• Technical specifications you don't understand. If an IT requirement is real, include it; if someone pasted it from a 2019 template, cut it.
• A hidden budget. See section 11.

The five questions to ask every agency

1. What will you measure on our current site before you design anything?
2. Who writes the content, in each language, and how is that priced?
3. How do you handle the old URLs, and what do you check in the month after launch?
4. Who will we talk to each week, and who actually does the work?
5. What is included in the price, what is not, and what would make the price change?

Put these in the RFP verbatim. Then score the answers, not the slide design.

How to score the proposals

Use five or six criteria with a weight each, agreed before the proposals arrive. A workable set: understanding of the problem (25%), relevance of past work (20%), approach to content and SEO (20%), team and communication (15%), price against scope (15%), timeline credibility (5%). Have each reviewer score independently, then compare. The cheapest proposal is rarely the cheapest project, because the parts it leaves out get done by you.

Pay attention to what a proposal says is not included. A proposal that is specific about exclusions is usually written by people who have shipped sites before. One that includes everything with no caveats will have the caveats later.

A sample timeline for the RFP itself

• Week 1: write the RFP using this template, agree the scoring with your reviewers, shortlist four to six agencies.
• Week 2: send it, hold one Q&A call open to all bidders, answer questions in writing to everyone.
• Weeks 3-4: proposals due. Score independently, then meet.
• Week 5: calls with the top two, talk to one reference each, decide.

Five weeks is realistic. Three is possible if one person can decide. Longer than eight and the people who wrote the RFP have usually moved on to other priorities, which is how redesigns stall before they start.

FAQ

How long should a website redesign RFP be?

Three to four pages. If it is longer, it is probably listing features instead of describing the problem. Appendices with analytics screenshots, brand guidelines or a sitemap are fine and don't count.

Should I include the budget in a website RFP?

Yes, as a range. Without it you will receive proposals for different projects and have no way to compare them. With it you will find out quickly which agencies can work inside your range and what they would cut to do so.

How many agencies should I send a redesign RFP to?

Four to six. Fewer and you may not see enough variety in approach. More and you will not have time to read the proposals properly, and good agencies decline RFPs with a dozen bidders.

Can I ask for design mockups in the RFP response?

You can, but we would not recommend it. Unpaid concepts are made without research or your input, so they show you nothing about the finished work. Ask for case studies that match your situation and a short description of how the agency would approach yours.

Sending an RFP soon?

Skydea is a bilingual design and development team in Tokyo. We have designed and redesigned websites for 60+ clients, and we quote a fixed price against a written scope so the proposal you read is the project you get. If you would rather talk before you write the document, send us what is wrong with the current site and we will tell you what the RFP should ask for. See how we run a website redesign, or start a project.