Web design projects fail in four places: information architecture that nobody owns, CMS choice made on instinct, accessibility deferred until launch, and performance targets that exist only in the kickoff deck. This template forces each of the four into the RFP itself so agencies pitch against a known frame and the proposals are comparable.
Information architecture is the single most under priced piece of a web project. Most pitches quote a flat per page rate that hides whether the agency is doing real IA work (card sorting, tree testing, taxonomy design) or skipping it. The RFP should require the IA approach as a separate priced item with named deliverables and not let it disappear into the design line.
| IA deliverable | What it produces | Typical timebox |
|---|---|---|
| Content audit of existing site | Inventory of pages, traffic, content health score per URL | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Stakeholder + user interviews | Synthesis doc with prioritised user tasks | 2 weeks |
| Card sort + tree test | Top-tested taxonomy with quantified success scores | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Sitemap (revised) | Top-down site structure for the new site | 1 week |
| Wireframes by template | Low-fidelity layout for each page template | 2 to 3 weeks |
| Navigation patterns + IA spec | Documented IA model handed to the design team | 1 week |
Six IA deliverables, typically 6 to 10 weeks. Agencies that skip half the list are skipping IA work that will surface as redesign tickets in month 4. The Nielsen Norman Group has good public reference material on each of the deliverables above at nngroup.com/articles.
The CMS choice is a 5 year commitment. It dictates what content editors can do without engineering help, what the post launch hosting bill looks like, how easy it is to switch agencies, and what shape your tech stack takes. Pick before the RFP goes out or instruct each agency to pitch against a defined option. Letting each agency pitch their preferred CMS makes proposals incomparable.
Open source, vast plugin ecosystem, well known to most editors and developers. Hosting and maintenance available from hundreds of vendors so you are not locked to your build agency. Watch for plugin bloat, security patching overhead, and over reliance on page builders like Elementor or Bricks that fight with custom design. Hosting cost typically $30 to $300 monthly depending on scale.
Visual builder with a real component model. Great for design driven marketing sites with moderate content scale. Editor experience excellent for non technical users. Lock in to the Webflow hosting and pricing model; export to self host is awkward. Suited to sites with up to a few hundred pages.
Content as data via API, rendered by a frontend you control (Next.js, Astro, Nuxt). Best when content is reused across web, app, and email. Higher initial build cost; better long term flexibility. Requires a team that owns the frontend code, not just the CMS. Editorial cost typically $50 to $500 monthly plus hosting.
Strong in regulated, large institutional contexts (government, higher ed, healthcare). Steep learning curve. Editorial workflows are mature. Requires Drupal specific developer talent. Worth considering only if you are already in the Drupal ecosystem or have governance requirements that map well to its modules.
Build the site as static HTML at deploy time. Cheapest hosting ($0 to $20 monthly via Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Vercel), fastest performance, smallest attack surface. Editor experience varies (Git-based, Markdown-first). Suited to sites where the engineering team is technical and content scale is moderate.
Some agencies will pitch their own CMS. This is almost always a mistake. Switching agencies later requires a rebuild. Sometimes (rarely) justified for niche industries with no off-the-shelf option. If an agency pitches their own CMS, ask: how many other clients use it, how do I migrate off if I leave, who provides the security patches.
Accessibility is the area of a web project that is most likely to be promised in the pitch and deferred in delivery. WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the practical bar in 2026; the European Accessibility Act enforces it for in-scope products and US public sector procurement increasingly references it. The RFP requirement is not just "we will be accessible" but a specific test plan, audit gate, and remediation commitment.
Reference standard: WCAG 2.2 (W3C). Useful audit tools: axe DevTools by Deque. EU legislative reference: European Accessibility Act.
Google measures Core Web Vitals on real users via the Chrome User Experience Report and uses them as a ranking signal. They are the right RFP performance target because they are measured by independent telemetry rather than synthetic agency-provided lab numbers. The 75th-percentile thresholds are: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1.
| Metric | Good (p75) | What blows it | Agency commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | < 2.5s | Huge hero images, render-blocking CSS, slow hosting | Hosting tier disclosed + image budget per template |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | < 200ms | Heavy JS bundles, third-party scripts blocking main thread | JS budget < 200KB compressed per template |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | < 0.1 | Web fonts without dimensions, late-loading banner ads | Reserved space for all dynamic content |
| Total page weight | < 1MB marketing | Unoptimised media, no image format negotiation | WebP / AVIF + lazy loading on every image |
| TTFB (Time to First Byte) | < 600ms | Server distance, no caching, dynamic rendering everywhere | Edge caching or static rendering for non-personalised pages |
Authoritative reference: web.dev on Core Web Vitals and the Chrome User Experience Report for the dataset Google uses.
The agency built the site. They may not be the right partner to run it. Maintenance and design have different economics: maintenance is steady, low margin, ticket driven; design is project, high margin, creative driven. Many agencies do both poorly because they staff one and contract the other.
Ask in the RFP: who maintains, what hours, what SLAs. Common structures: in house maintenance team for content updates plus the build agency for major releases; a separate maintenance partner specialised in your CMS; or the build agency under a separate retainer with explicit SLAs (typical retainer $1.5K to $5K monthly for a mid market marketing site).
For the master template structure see requestforproposaltemplate.com and for downstream delivery management see actionplantemplate.com.