The template
Build your website
redesign RFP.
Fill in what you know; leave the rest. Empty fields show as [brackets] in the document so you can see what's still missing. Not sure what to write? Load the example and edit it.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. Close the page and it's gone, so download a copy.
Example · illustrative
Website redesign RFP example:
a filled-in sample.
A sample request for proposal for a family law firm moving its 45-page WordPress site to a new design. Every section is filled in, so you can see the level of detail agencies need to price it. The firm is invented; the same text loads into the builder above. Use this example in the builder ↑
Request for Proposal: Website Redesign
Harbour Legal Group · Example · illustrative
1. About us
A family law firm with four offices in the Boston area.
Who the website is for: People comparing law firms, existing clients checking on their case, and lawyers applying for jobs.
2. Our current website
- Address: example.com
- Platform: WordPress
- Size: about 45 pages and 120 blog posts
- Monthly visitors: about 8,000 (GA4)
- Connected tools: online consultation booking, HubSpot forms
- Platform for the new site: stay on the current platform
3. Goals
Why now: The site is hard for our team to update, slow on phones, and missing our two newest offices.
What should improve: Raise consultation requests from 40 to 70 a month within six months of launch. Load key pages in under 3 seconds on mobile.
4. Scope
The proposal should include:
- New visual design and page templates
- Content migration from the current site
- Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA
- Training for our team on editing the site
- A page for each office with its own booking link; a careers section
5. SEO and migration
Protecting our existing search traffic is a requirement. The proposal must include:
- An inventory of every current URL before work starts
- A 301 redirect map for every URL that changes, reviewed by us before launch
- Page titles, meta descriptions and headings carried over or improved, never dropped
- Google Analytics 4 and Search Console kept running without a gap
- A staging site that search engines cannot index
- A full crawl before and after launch, and 30 days of 404 monitoring
6. After launch
- Hosting: recommend hosting; the account is in our name.
- Maintenance: quote a monthly maintenance plan separately.
- The domain, hosting account, code, design files and every admin login are registered to our organisation.
7. Budget
Our budget is $15,000 to $40,000. Please show what you would include at this level and price any optional extras separately. Preferred payment terms: 30% at start, 40% at design sign-off, 30% at launch.
8. Timeline
- Questions by: one week after this RFP is issued
- Proposals due: four weeks after issue
- Target launch: about 20 weeks after issue
- Flexible, but before our spring campaign starts
9. How we will score proposals
| Approach and understanding of our goals | 30% |
| Relevant past work | 25% |
| Cost and value | 20% |
| Team and who does the work | 15% |
| Support after launch | 10% |
| Total | 100% |
10. What your proposal must include
- Your approach and process, phase by phase
- Two or three comparable projects, with live links
- An itemised cost, with anything optional priced separately
- A timeline with milestones and what you need from us at each one
- The names and roles of the people who will do the work
- Your terms for support, warranty and handover after launch
Send proposals and questions to Maria Lopez, Marketing Manager, at maria@example.com. We will answer all questions in one document shared with every agency.
Before you write one
What a website redesign RFP is,
and when you need one.
A request for proposal (RFP) is a written invitation to several agencies to propose how they'd redesign your site and what it would cost, against the same facts. Its job is to make the answers comparable. A good one saves you weeks of calls; a vague one gets you five quotes for five different websites. Building a new site rather than redesigning one? The same template works as a website design RFP template: leave section 2 short.
Step by step
How to write a website
redesign RFP in 7 steps.
Most of the work is deciding, not writing. Do these in order and the document almost writes itself; each step links to the part of this page that covers it.
What goes in it
The 10 sections of a website
redesign request for proposal.
Each section answers a question an agency has to ask before it can quote. Leave one out and they'll either ask it on a call or, worse, assume.
| Section | What to write | If you leave it out |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Organisation and audience | What you do and who the site is for, in a few sentences. | Design proposals aimed at the wrong reader. |
| 2. Current site facts | Address, platform, page count, traffic and every tool it connects to. | Migration and integration work gets guessed, then billed as a change. |
| 3. Goals | Why now, and what should improve, with a number where you can. | No way to tell later whether the redesign worked. |
| 4. Scope | Design, content, copywriting, accessibility, store, languages, training. | Quotes that differ by thousands because they priced different jobs. |
| 5. SEO and migration | URL inventory, redirect map, metadata, analytics, no-index staging, launch crawl. | A new site that loses the search traffic the old one earned. |
| 6. After launch | Hosting, maintenance, warranty, and that you own every account. | A launch with nobody responsible for updates, and logins you don't hold. |
| 7. Budget | A range, and how you'd like to pay. | Proposals that can't be compared, from a template to a custom build. |
| 8. Timeline | Dates for questions, proposals, decision and launch. | Agencies plan around their schedule instead of yours. |
| 9. Scoring | The criteria and their weights. | The cheapest or the slickest pitch wins by default. |
| 10. Submission requirements | What each proposal must contain, and where to send it. | Five proposals in five formats, none answering the same questions. |
The section most templates miss
Website redesign and SEO:
what to require in writing.
A redesign changes URLs, headings and page structure all at once. If nobody plans for that, pages that ranked for years return "not found" to Google on launch day. None of the four template pages we checked in October 2026 (Urban Insight, Gulo, ClickUp and Flow Ninja) has a section for these steps. Put them in the RFP so they're priced in, not discovered after launch.
Inventory every URL
A crawl of the current site, with the pages that bring in search traffic and links marked so they're kept or redirected first.
Map the redirects
A 301 redirect for every URL that changes, to its closest new page, not to the homepage. You review the map before launch.
Keep what ranks
Titles, meta descriptions and headings carried over or improved. Staging blocked from search engines so it never competes with the live site.
Crawl and watch
A crawl on launch day, Search Console checked for errors, and 404s watched for at least 30 days.
Done well, a redesign can grow search traffic rather than lose it. When we redesigned a stair lift installer's site for older readers, its Google impressions went from 364 to 16,900 over six months. Read the case study → · Website redesign SEO: the full checklist → · How we handle migrations →
The budget section
How much budget to put in
a website redesign RFP.
Give a range. Agencies will design to it, and you'll be comparing proposals for the same money. These are the ranges agencies publish, by size of site:
| Type of site | Published market range | What usually drives the cost |
|---|---|---|
| Small business (about 5–15 pages) | $3,000 to $15,000 | Template or custom design, and who writes the content. |
| Mid-sized (about 15–50 pages) | $15,000 to $40,000 | Number of page templates, integrations and content migration. |
| Online store | $15,000 to $75,000 | Product count, payment and shipping rules, and system integrations. |
| Large or enterprise (100+ pages) | $80,000 and up | User roles, multiple systems, approvals and compliance. |
Market ranges as published by agencies, checked October 2026: small business, mid-sized and enterprise from Tenet's "Website Redesign Cost" (December 2025), which also gives $2,500 to $5,000 for a standard business site; online store from Trio's "How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost". These are other agencies' figures, not our prices.
We take redesigns of every size, from a few pages to a full store. Our website redesign service → Projects are quoted as a fixed price after a free call, and the pricing page shows where they start and what's covered.
The timeline section
A realistic website
redesign timeline.
Two clocks run: the RFP itself, then the build. Most launch dates slip because the first one was never planned.
| Stage | Typical length | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| RFP out to questions deadline | About 1 week | Answer every question in one document sent to all agencies. |
| Questions to proposals due | 2 to 3 weeks | Less than two weeks gets you rushed, generic proposals. |
| Review, calls and decision | 1 to 2 weeks | Score first, then call the top two or three. |
| Build: small business site (10–20 pages) | 8 to 12 weeks | Longer if content isn't ready. |
| Build: mid-sized site (30–75 pages) | 12 to 16 weeks | Integrations and migration add the most time. |
| Build: large site (100+ pages) | 16 to 24 weeks | Enterprise sites with complex integrations: 6 to 12 months. |
RFP stages are our recommendation. Build durations as published by Clique Studios ("Website Redesign Timeline", 2026), checked October 2026. LimeLight Marketing gives 8 to 16 weeks for a typical redesign. Waiting on content and approvals is the most common reason projects run long.
Choosing
How to score website
redesign proposals.
Publish the weights in the RFP, score each proposal on its own before you compare them, and only then talk money. The defaults in the builder are a starting point: approach 30, relevant work 25, cost 20, team 15, support after launch 10.
Score website redesign proposals side by side
Give each proposal 1 to 5 on each criterion. Totals use the weights from section 9 of the builder above, so change them there. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
| Criterion (weight) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach and understanding | ||||
| Relevant past work | ||||
| Cost and value | ||||
| Team and who does the work | ||||
| Support after launch |
Ten questions
Website redesign questionnaire:
answer these before you write.
Go through these with whoever signs off the project. The answers fill most of the RFP.
Who wrote this
From the side of the table
that answers RFPs.
Naveen Kumar
Founder & lead engineer · Based in Chennai, India, working 9am–6pm US Eastern with clients across the US, UK, Europe and Australia
I've built, rebuilt and migrated WordPress, WooCommerce and custom-coded sites for years. The template above asks for what I need to quote a redesign properly, including the things clients rarely think to mention until launch week. Use it with any agency; if you'd like us to be one of them, send it over. More about how I work →
Questions, answered
Website redesign RFPs:
common questions.
What should a website redesign RFP include?
Ten sections: who you are and who the site is for, facts about the current site, measurable goals, scope, SEO and migration requirements, what happens after launch, budget, timeline, how proposals will be scored, and what each proposal must contain. The SEO, after-launch and scoring sections are the ones most templates leave out.
Should I include a budget in a website RFP?
Yes, as a range. Without one, agencies guess, and you get quotes that can't be compared: one prices a template site, another a custom build. A range lets every agency propose the best site for the same money, and you can still ask them to state what they would cut or add.
How many agencies should I send an RFP to?
Three to five well-chosen agencies is usually enough. Each proposal takes real time to read and score properly, and agencies put more effort into a response when they know the shortlist is small.
How long should a website redesign RFP be?
Long enough to price, short enough to read: for most business sites, three to six pages. Agencies need facts (page count, platform, integrations, budget, deadline) more than background. If a section doesn't change what an agency would quote, cut it.
How long does a website redesign take?
Published agency timelines put a small business site (10 to 20 pages) at about 8 to 12 weeks, a mid-sized site (30 to 75 pages) at 12 to 16 weeks, and a large site at 16 to 24 weeks. Add two to five weeks before that for the RFP itself: questions, proposals, shortlist and decision.
How do I protect my SEO in a website redesign RFP?
Make it a requirement, not a hope. Ask for a URL inventory of the current site, a 301 redirect map for every URL that changes, titles and meta descriptions carried over or improved, analytics and Search Console continuity, a staging site that search engines can't index, and a crawl before and after launch.
What's the difference between an RFP, an RFQ and a project brief?
An RFP (request for proposal) asks agencies how they would solve the problem and what it would cost, so you compare approaches. An RFQ (request for quotation) asks only for a price for a fixed specification. A brief is the short, informal version you send one or two agencies when a full RFP would be overkill.
Who should own the code, domain and hosting after the redesign?
You should. Put it in the RFP: the domain, hosting account, code, design files and every admin login are registered to your organisation, and the agency works as a user you can remove. Agencies that object to that clause are telling you how leaving them would go.
What does a website redesign RFP example look like?
It runs three to six pages and covers ten sections: organisation, current site facts, goals, scope, SEO and migration, after launch, budget range, dates, scoring weights and what each proposal must include. The filled-in sample on this page shows each one for a family law firm with a 45-page site.
Is a website design RFP different from a redesign RFP?
Only in section 2. A design RFP for a brand-new site has no current site to describe, so it skips the URL inventory and redirect map. Everything else, from goals to scoring, is the same, so this template works for both.
Can I use this for a website development RFP?
Yes. For a build with custom features or integrations, list each one in the scope section with what it must do, and ask agencies to itemise the cost of each so you can compare them.
Can I use this template for a WordPress or Webflow redesign?
Yes. The builder asks which platform you're on now and lets you say whether you want to stay on it. If you're open to a change of platform, say so in the scope and ask each agency to justify its recommendation, including the migration cost.