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Why We Don’t Respond to RFPs: There’s a Better Way

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Aug 7, 2010; Category: Design/Development; Tags: Business, Design/Development, LinkedIn; One Comment

Recently I got into a discussion on LinkedIn about Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and what makes a “good” RFP for web design and development. My position, basically, is that there is no such thing as a good RFP for web design and development, at least not following current “best practices” RFP models.

Why? Because successful websites are the result of collaborative efforts between clients and web developers. RFPs usually preclude collaboration by treating the process as furnishing a defined set of deliverables in a scope of work, with the vendor bound to furnish the deliverables as defined. Alternative (and often better) approaches are routinely dismissed in the interests of “comparing apples and apples.”

RFPs are a problem for everyone involved.

The problem for people writing RFPs is that few people or organizations are capable of defining deliverables in a scope of work in a way that allows for better solutions than they themselves had imagined, because they are rightly concerned with controlling costs. But defined deliverables usually means defined solutions, sometimes ruling out less expensive or more efficient alternatives. Things change rapidly in web development, and what was a good solution 12 months ago can be a decidedly inferior solution today. Even web developers scramble to stay abreast of changes, with varying degrees of success.

Further, few people and organizations are capable of evaluating proposals to sort out meaningful information from BS or fluff. If the best web developer/designer is selected for the project, it’s almost by accident.

The problem for those of us responding to RFPs is that preparing a proposal can easily consume 30-60 hours, depending on the scope of the project. We put some thought into addressing the specific items in the RFP, rather than making a few quick modifications to a standing proposal, and it takes time. Frankly, it’s time that could be spent more productively.

There’s a better way for both website owners and website developers.

Again, all successful website design/development is the result of collaboration between client and designer/developer. Aside from their ability to do the job, the most important thing you’re looking for in a designer/developer is someone you can collaborate with. I believe the following outlines a better way to find a collaborator and establish a collaborative relationship, one in which both parties work for a successful website within the agreed budget and timeline.

Figure out what you want to accomplish with your website. What are your goals? What are the goals of the people who might visit your website? What kind of functionality is necessary to meet those goals?

Figure out who your “audience” is (substitute “market” or “community” if more appropriate) and why they are interested in what you have to offer. Think about what kinds of online interaction with them would further your and their goals.

Figure out your budget. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but some solutions are precluded by a budget that is inadequate to support them.

Look at websites similar to what you want. Contact the site owners and ask about the designer/developer. Would they recommend working with him/her? Include some local designer/developers in your research; often they will be more invested in your success (if your audience is primarily local, consider restricting your research to local designer/developers). Soon you’ll develop a shortlist of web people you want to talk to.

Call or email each of the designer/developers on your shortlist. Invite them separately to your office or a local coffee shop (or schedule a phone meeting, if they are not local) to discuss your project.

During your meeting, share your goals for your website (and describe functions you believe you need to meet those goals), what you know about your audience, and what your budget is. If they’re not taking notes and asking questions during this part of the meeting, you might want to cut it short. A good collaborator will be engaged and interested in this part of the process, and may even offer suggestions or observations that hadn’t occurred to you.

IF they took notes and asked lots of questions, find out more about them. Ask how they would go about helping you meet your goals within the budget you’ve described. Discuss timeline and try to get a sense of how focused they will be on your website. Ask them to walk you through a couple of websites they’ve launched, describing how they arrived at various solutions or solved design or technical issues. Ask about their business: not just how long they’ve been in business, but who their clients are, how they handle payments, what kind if ongoing support they provide, and what they feel separates their services from their competitors’ services. It wouldn’t hurt for you to take notes for this part.

If you feel you can collaborate with them, invite them to submit a written proposal. The short proposal (no more than two or three pages) should include a description of the project as they understand it, recommendations for a general approach (project phases, technical platform, etc.), an estimate for both time and cost, and contact information for at least three clients who you can call to talk about their experience in working with the designer/developer. Do NOT skip talking with their clients.

When you’re done evaluating proposals (and checking out client references), you should have a pretty clear idea of who you can work with best. Once you make your selection, schedule a project meeting in which you and the developer map out a project plan.

On an ongoing basis during the project, you make decisions together about the best options to help you meet your goals; the developer as trusted advisor, you as final decision-maker. You are now on the path to a great website.

Help from a LinkedIn Group: Ordering WordPress Custom Field Items

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 21, 2010; Category: Design/Development; Tags: LinkedIn, WordPress; No Comments

In general, I’m not as thrilled with LinkedIn as I had hoped I’d be. Like a lot of social media platforms, it draws its share of spammers, shills, and snake-oil salespeople. However, one LinkedIn group I belong to has proven itself to be of benefit time and again: the WordPress group. I’ve gotten useful answers for several WordPress issues I’ve faced over the last several months. There are some really capable and helpful people in the group. I was once given a solution to a problem by Mike Little, who I recognized only later is the guy who, with Matt Mullenweg, started the WordPress project.

Most recently, I needed a way to order WordPress custom fields easily (easily enough that it made sense to clients who would have to maintain their site). By default, custom field items are displayed in the order in which they are created. This is a problem if you want to add a new item and display it at the top of the list.

Mike Schinkel, a web marketing strategist from Atlanta, stepped in with a solution. (How cool is that? I can get coding assistance from someone several hundred miles away!) Mike Schinkel is one of the more active and helpful folks on the LinkedIn WordPress group, and he’s worth connecting with and following. He runs a WordPress business conference (among other conferences) and is Executive Director of Startup Atlanta. I’d guess he’s fairly busy, but he takes time help people like me with limited coding skills.

His solution is so clean and simple I wanted to share it here. One of the beauties of it is that, not only does it organize the custom field items on the page in the order you want, but it also organizes the items in order in the page admin area, taking advantage of WordPress’ default alpha organization.

Essentially, you create custom field items with names like so: item-1, item-2, item-3, etc. As you might guess, item-1 is meant to show first on the custom field listing. Want to make item-1 show second? Change the custom field name to item-2, then rename the other items to complete the reorganization (you can’t have more than one value for each name in this scenario).

On the page template, the code to call the items in order looks like this:

<?php
     for($i=1; true; $i++) {
     $item = get_post_meta($post->ID, "item-$i", true);
     if (empty($item))
     break;
     echo '<div class="itemdiv">'.$item.'</div>';
    }
?>

I used this to display thumbnails and a short description for artwork on a recently launched artist’s website. As she adds new pieces, or if she decides to emphasize different pieces on a category page, she can easily rename the existing custom fields to reorganize items.

One of the caveats of this solution is that the custom field names must start with -1 and be sequential. Going from "item-1" to "item-3", with no "item-2", breaks it.

An Invitation to All New Mexico Business and Professional Bloggers

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 16, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business; Tags: Blogging for Business, LinkedIn, Networking; 2 Comments

I did something out of character a couple of days ago. I started a LinkedIn group: New Mexico Bloggers. For the most part, I’m not a group kind of guy (at least not in an active sort of way), but I want to encourage business and professional blogging in New Mexico, and this is one way of doing it. Ideally, such a group could provide both support and connections for New Mexico bloggers.

A lot of what happens with the group depends on me getting the ball rolling. So I have some work to do. LinkedIn is not quite the platform I had hoped it would be (a lot of spammers and blatant self-promoters), but it’s possible to have meaningful group interaction in a self-policing group.

The group will be platform-agnostic. We really don’t care whether your blog is on WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Drupal, or any other platform. All bloggers have certain things in common, from the "blank screen" to strategic issues about how to grow your audience and how to utilize your blog to reach business and professional goals.

And then of course, there is the issue of blogging in New Mexico, a state that’s often behind the curve in technology and related trends. While I don’t see blogging as primarily a technological activity (the technology aspect is relatively trivial), most of the people I’ve talked to who don’t blog cite technology as one of the barriers for them ("I’m just not a computer person!"). To me that’s like refusing to drive to a restaurant because you’re "not a car person," but that’s another blog post.

So this is an invitation to all business and professional bloggers: meet me (and hopefully a lot of other New Mexico bloggers) on LinkedIn for discussions and other forms of group therapy. I’d like to create some in-person meetups as well, if the interest level supports them.