Most website RFPs are written by people who have never had to respond to one. The result is a document that’s too long on company background, too vague on actual requirements, and impossible to respond to without making guesses. Agencies fill those gaps with assumptions — which is why proposals for the same project can vary by $50,000 and still not be comparable.
Running a better RFP process produces proposals you can actually evaluate against each other. Here’s how to do it.
What an RFP Should Actually Accomplish
An RFP is not a competition to find the cheapest price. It’s a structured way to get comparable information from multiple vendors before making a significant commitment.
The operative word is comparable. If each agency is guessing at different things — different scope assumptions, different platform choices, different levels of post-launch support — their quotes tell you nothing about relative value. You’re comparing apples to agencies.
A well-structured RFP produces:
- A consistent scope that every agency prices against
- Enough information about your business context for agencies to make relevant recommendations
- A clear picture of who will actually do the work and how they approach it
- Terms that allow you to evaluate risk — not just price
The Right Length for an RFP
Most RFPs are too long in the wrong places. Fifty pages of company background and regulatory history add no value. Three pages of specific technical requirements add enormous value.
The right structure is:
One page: Company overview — what you do, current revenue scale, audience, and why the site needs to change.
One to two pages: Current site audit — URL, current platform, current monthly traffic, what’s working and what isn’t. If you have Google Analytics access, include key metrics.
Two to three pages: Scope requirements — page list, functional requirements, integrations, content migration needs, performance expectations.
One page: Selection criteria — how you’ll evaluate proposals and what matters most (quality of process, track record, price, timeline, technical approach).
One page: Instructions — submission deadline, format, questions policy, timeline for decisions.
Total: 6–8 pages. Agencies can read and respond to this meaningfully. A 40-page RFP gets skimmed.
Daniel managed procurement for a national staffing company. Their RFP was 62 pages, including 20 pages of legal boilerplate and a section requiring agencies to certify compliance with standards that had nothing to do with a website project. They received 11 responses, spent six weeks reviewing them, and shortlisted two agencies — both of whom had padded their pricing by 20–30% to account for the administrative overhead of responding to the RFP. A smaller, better-focused document would have attracted better agencies and produced cleaner proposals.
Writing Requirements That Agencies Can Actually Price
The biggest source of proposal variance is vague requirements. “Modern design” is not a requirement. “Integration with Salesforce CRM via existing REST API” is a requirement.
For each major functional area, write a requirement at the level of specificity that lets an agency estimate without guessing:
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Not useful: “User-friendly navigation”
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Useful: “Primary navigation with up to 8 top-level items, mobile hamburger menu, sticky on scroll”
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Not useful: “E-commerce functionality”
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Useful: “WooCommerce store with 200 SKUs, Stripe payment gateway, existing wholesale pricing rules for B2B accounts, integration with existing inventory system via CSV export”
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Not useful: “Fast-loading website”
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Useful: “PageSpeed Insights score of 85+ on mobile as a minimum delivery requirement, measured against final production URL”
The more specific your requirements, the less scope for agencies to pad estimates or cut corners invisibly.
What to Ask Agencies to Provide
An agency proposal should tell you more than price. Structure your RFP to request specific information:
Process description — what phases does the project go through, what are the deliverables at each stage, and how are client approvals structured?
Team composition — who specifically will work on this project? Agencies that won’t answer this are telling you something about their staffing model.
Portfolio examples — three to five projects comparable to yours in complexity, with results if available.
Technical approach — what platform, what build method, what hosting recommendations, and why?
Performance guarantees — what metrics are they willing to commit to? Agencies who can’t or won’t specify performance targets are not confident in their delivery.
References — two to three clients from projects of comparable scope, with contact information.
Post-launch support terms — what’s included, for how long, and at what cost?
If you’re evaluating proposals against these criteria, the differences between agencies become much clearer than price alone.
The Shortlist and Presentation Phase
Reviewing all proposals from the full field is a useful starting point. Selecting a shortlist of two to three agencies for a presentation or working session is where the decision actually gets made.
In the presentation, pay attention to:
- Does the agency ask questions about your business before presenting, or do they jump straight to showing you work?
- Can they explain their technical recommendations in terms of your business goals, not just technical correctness?
- Who is presenting — senior people or a sales team that won’t touch the project?
- Do they push back on any of your requirements if they think something is the wrong approach? (The ones who agree with everything are not thinking independently.)
The presentation is also the time to negotiate. Ask each shortlisted agency: if budget is X, what would you descope versus if budget is Y? This shows you how they think about priorities — and gives you a cleaner basis for comparison.
Anna ran the marketing team for a regional insurance company. Their RFP shortlist came down to two agencies. One presented a polished deck with lots of past work examples. The other spent the first 20 minutes asking Anna’s team questions about their conversion goals, current customer acquisition model, and what they’d learned from the existing site’s analytics. The second agency’s proposal was more expensive. Anna chose them. The site launched on time, conversion on the quote request flow increased by 38%, and the project came in under budget because the scope had been defined so clearly there were no change orders.
RFP Mistakes That Cost You Good Agencies
Some agencies decline to respond to RFPs on principle — not because they’re not interested in the work, but because of how many RFPs are structured.
Requiring extensive free work — asking agencies to produce sample designs, strategy documents, or technical specs as part of the proposal process is a way to get expensive work for free. Good agencies don’t do this. You’ll get these deliverables from agencies who are desperate, not selective.
No budget disclosure — refusing to share your budget because you want to “see what agencies quote” produces proposals that aren’t scoped for your real situation. Agencies will either miss high or miss low, and you’ll waste time comparing proposals that don’t reflect what you’d actually spend.
Very long response timelines — asking agencies to hold a price for six months while procurement reviews proposals is not reasonable for project-based work. Good agencies have limited capacity; they won’t hold time for that long.
Boilerplate legal requirements — attaching 15 pages of standard vendor contract terms that have nothing to do with a web project signals an administration-heavy engagement. Agencies factor this into pricing.
When you treat the RFP as the beginning of a working relationship rather than a procurement exercise, the responses you get back are qualitatively different.
Consider reviewing our studio’s approach to understand how we scope projects — we don’t respond to traditional RFPs, but the framing explains what a productive agency engagement looks like from a practitioner’s perspective. If you’re in the early stages, talk to us and we’ll scope the right starting point with you before a larger custom engagement.
FAQ
How many agencies should I include in an RFP? Three to six is the right range for most projects. More than six creates an administration burden without improving your options. Fewer than three limits comparison. Pre-qualify agencies before sending the RFP — check their portfolio, their client references, and their technical approach — so the shortlist is already filtered.
Should I disclose our budget in the RFP? Yes. A realistic budget range gives agencies the context to scope appropriately and tell you honestly whether they’re the right fit. Withholding the budget produces proposals that don’t reflect reality. If you’re not sure of your budget, provide a range: “We’re working with a range of $30,000–$50,000 for this phase.”
What is a reasonable response time for agencies? Give agencies two to three weeks to respond to a detailed RFP. Shorter timelines produce incomplete proposals or cause agencies to decline. Longer timelines don’t improve proposal quality and can cause capacity issues if you’re hoping agencies will hold project time.
Is an RFP necessary for smaller web projects? No. For projects under $10,000–$15,000, an RFP is usually over-engineered. A structured brief, two or three reference checks, and a direct conversation about scope and price is a faster and more effective procurement process for smaller engagements.
How should I evaluate agencies that decline to respond to the RFP? If an agency declines to respond because the RFP requires free work or is structured in a way they find unreasonable, that’s useful information — but not necessarily a disqualifier. It’s worth a direct conversation to understand why. Agencies with strong track records are selective about what they engage with, and a direct conversation sometimes produces better information than a formal proposal anyway.