In this article
A website redesign RFP (request for proposal) for a small business fits on one page. It covers what you have now, what the new site must do, and five rows that ask every vendor to price the same job. Send it to three vendors and the quotes are easier to set side by side.
Quotes are hard to compare because each vendor prices a different job: one writes the text for every page, another expects you to; one moves your old content, another starts with empty pages. Redirects often go unmentioned until after launch.
Most RFP templates in search are built for corporate procurement; a small business needs one page and a short list of rows that quotes tend to leave out.
What to Put in a Website Redesign RFP
Copy the brief into an email or a document and replace the bracketed hints with your own answers.
Website redesign brief: [your company]
About you
- What you sell and to whom: [one sentence]
- Why you are redesigning now: [e.g. “the site looks dated and breaks on phones”]
- The one result that counts: [e.g. “quote requests per month”]
Your current site
- Address and platform: [WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or “don’t know”]
- Number of pages, and which ones bring visitors: [top pages from Google Search Console, a free Google tool, if you have it]
- Who holds the logins: [domain, hosting, admin]
- Numbers from before the redesign: [leads per month; search clicks over the last 3 months; “none” is an answer]
What the new site must do
- Pages wanted: [Home, four services, About, Contact]
- Features: [contact form, booking, store with 40 products, second language]
- Sites you like, and why: [two addresses]
- Out of scope: [logo, ads, email setup]
Answer each row: included / extra (price) / not offered
- Redirect map: old addresses matched to new ones, tested after launch (“none needed” if no address changes)
- Text: who writes every page, and who rewrites the old text
- Content move: who moves existing text, photos, and posts, and how many
- Ownership: who owns the domain, hosting account, files, and text, and what you receive if you leave
- After launch: what is covered, for how long, at what price
Timeline and budget
- Launch date and the reason for it: [e.g. “before the spring rush”]
- Budget range: [a range, not “as low as possible”]
- Who approves, and how fast: [name; reply within 2 business days]
- Quotes due by: [date]
What the quote must show
- A price per line, not one total
- What you must supply, and by when
- Payment schedule
- The price of an extra page or a change after sign-off
- Recurring costs as separate lines (yearly or monthly): hosting, domain renewal, ongoing care
- Two live sites the vendor built
Why Quotes Differ: The Five Rows Most RFPs Skip
Redirect map. A redirect sends visitors and Google from an old address to its new one. Google’s site-move guide asks for a list of old addresses and a decision about “where each one should redirect to,” with permanent redirects (301 or 308) kept “generally at least 1 year.”
The shortcut to ask about is sending every old address to the home page: Google warns this “might be treated as a soft 404 error,” meaning Google may read the redirect as a missing page. Ask the vendor how pages without an equivalent will be handled. Why this row matters for search is in our guide to website redesign SEO.
Text. Some quotes leave the writing to you or price it on top, so the cheapest-looking one can hand you the biggest job: writing every page while your launch date waits.
Content move. Silence in a quote can mean the new site starts empty. Ask for a count of pages and posts, and who checks that nothing was lost.
Ownership and exit. Ask whose name is on the domain and the hosting account, whether you get admin logins and files at handover, and what you take with you if you part ways in a year.
After launch. Fixes in the first weeks, updates, backups: ask what is covered and for how long. What routine care usually covers is laid out in our guide to what website maintenance includes.
How to Compare Website Redesign Quotes
Build one grid: vendors across the top, the brief’s five rows down the side, and one of three answers in every cell: included, extra (with a price), or not offered. A blank cell is a question to send back. A quote that is lower because it leaves out text and redirects is not cheaper, only shorter.
Here is what a quote with the inclusions listed looks like. This is our package for a new business site:
- Up to 8 pages, with the structure planned by us
- Copy for every page, written by us
- Images and meta titles
- SEO for the home page and landing pages: keyword research, page texts, meta tags, internal links
- The domain in your name, even when we buy it; hosting on your own account or ours; if you leave for another vendor, you take what you paid for
- First month after launch included; ongoing care quoted separately
- Price: $1,900 for the package, one language; a second language is quoted extra
That package is a new site. For a redesign, the price depends on what your current site needs, and that varies a lot: some sites need a few fixes, others need everything redone, so we quote after a free audit. If the structure, copy and images all have to be redone, the job is priced like a new site, from $1,900 and sometimes more, and whatever still works is credited.
What a redesign costs, and when it lands near the price of a new site, is in our guide to website redesign cost. With no site yet, start with our guide on how much a website costs.
Redirect map and content move are not on the package list above, so our answer for those two rows is “quoted after the audit”: what your current site needs there is clear only once someone has looked at it; after the audit, both get a price. Our free audit shows which pages Google currently shows, what is broken (speed, mobile layout, indexing, competing pages), and what to fix first. We also say what in your site is worth keeping.
Website Redesign Checklist: Lines Every Quote Should Show
- The five rows: redirect map, text, content move, ownership, after launch
- Pages and images: how many pages, what counts as one, who supplies the images
- SEO: which pages, and what is actually done to them
- Launch check: if the test copy was hidden from Google with `noindex`, who removes that setting at launch. Google’s site-move guide tells you to list every address that carries noindex, so none is missed
- Rankings: no promised positions. Google notes that “the visibility of your content in Search may fluctuate temporarily during the move”
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do I need a formal RFP to redesign a small business website?
No. A formal RFP is a procurement process. What you need is one page that asks every vendor the same questions, and the brief above is that page.
2. Should the brief include my budget?
Yes, as a range. A vendor who knows it can say what fits, instead of pricing against a guess. A quote far below the range may have left lines out, so run it through the checklist.
3. What if I have no analytics or Search Console on my current site?
Set up Google Analytics and Search Console (both free) now, before anything changes; until they have data, write “none” in the brief. Without a starting point, nobody can say afterwards whether the redesign helped.
Send the Brief, Start With a Free Audit
Send us the address of your site, and the brief if you have filled one in. We start with a free audit; after it, we quote, and you decide whether to refresh, redesign, or rebuild.
