Writing Web Design Proposals
Well having spent the past 4 days writing between 2 and 4 proposals a day and with another to write tomorrow, I decided to take a break and write a post about proposals and what should go into them.
Generally speaking proposals are sales documents. They are meant to impress your potential client with your professionalism and expertise. They also give you a chance to really think about what it is you are proposing to do for the client as well as figure out an estimate of the time it will take to create the website.
How To Start
I normally start out with a template I built in MS Word but you can use your editor of choice. This template includes headers for each of my proposal sections as an image file in Word. Each section is labeled and includes my logo in the header. Many of the sections like the qualifications and my company descriptions rarely change so I have them already in my template. This is so much easier to handle than copying and pasting from document to document.
Sections
At a minimum you should have a title page, cover letter and a Statement of Work. I normally only do this for the smallest of projects which are few and far between for me these days. I’ll include an Executive Summary which summarizes what the client needs, what their goals are and what I recommend. I like to back this up with a larger Recommendations section followed by a Features section and a Benefits section. It’s important for the reader to see just what the features will do for them. It also helps to have a real example of a site with that benefit. I might also have sections describing my services, methodologies and a base schedule which again can be used in the base template and altered as needed.
A general guideline you can expect from a Formal Request for Proposal:
- · Executive Summary containing a brief description of your project development approach and costs
- · Corporate information including financial details
- · Qualifications including previous clients with contact information and relevant URLs
- · A description of your development process
- · Asset and draft delivery methods
- · Project stages
- · Milestones
- · Quality control
- · Testing
- · The proposed team and their qualifications
- · Proposed schedule
- · Costs and payment details
- · Terms and conditions
The above list is from this excellent article from June 1998 http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/columns/writerfp.html
Mockups
This is an area that I see web designers over the fence. Do you give the potential client mockups before or after you sign a contract with them. When I first started designing websites I certainly did this but it’s somewhat counterproductive to design mockups for a project you haven’t won. One potential problem is if the client doesn’t like your mockups. They may choose someone else based on their mockups although you could be the better choice. What I choose to do these days is just include throwaway layouts I’ve done for others or myself that were not chosen for a particular project. They are identified as samples to display design competency. I follow that statement by indicating that the client will participate in the design by helping choose colors and typography for the site. BTW, great little tool for your clients to experiment with typography : http://typetester.maratz.com/
Length
I’ve written short proposals and long proposals. The key to length is understanding your client. Some clients will appreciate a longer template with lots of content while others will quickly flip through to the cost sheets. Your content needs to be geared toward your client. I find that bullet points and bolded text help call their attention to important points I am making in my documents. It’s close to the way you write for the web. People reading proposals are going to scan them rather than read front to back. Once they narrow their decision down to your work they’ll go back and read the document a little slower. This is why it’s important to include bullets and bolded text. It’s eye catching.
Writing Style
A key to my success has been the ability to maintain a business tone within the documents. This means writing in the third person. While you can start out writing to a specific person using “I” and “you”, a professional business tone doesn’t use “I” and “you”. Go back through the person to person tone and change it to a professional business tone by removing the “I” tone. The proposal is all about them after all.
I hope this gives everyone a few helpful points on writing professional level proposals.
Web Out
Des
Resources
http://technicalbusinesswriting.suite101.com/article.cfm/developing_winning_proposals
The Contents of a Winning Proposal
http://blog.popstalin.com/writing-a-website-design-proposal/
Writing a Web Design Proposal
Sue Kristoff:
Hi! I am the author of the first of your referenced works. I’d like to thank you for reading and referencing my article, and let you know I’ve enjoyed your article as well. Thanks!
-Sue Kristoff
jaininder:
marvellous
im writing a proposal for designing a website and your blogs helps me a lot
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