How to hold a tender for the development of the site

More and more often we are invited to take part in the tender for the development of the site. And the lion's share of requests look like this: “How much is the development of such a site: fb.com. The letter has been sent to 69 web studios. Therefore, I decided to share my experience in tenders. And I have experience. Since 2010 I have been working on the side of the customer: Medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, tourism. Now I am engaged in marketing and development of IT4U Web Studio and Couloirs Tourist Club. I know about tenders and participation in them not by hearsay from different sides. In this article you will read what is really worth paying attention to, and what can be neglected.

Tenders - shit

It is this opinion about them that most site developers. Often this is true, sometimes due to lack of experience of participation and ignorance of the specifics of customers, their procedures.

This opinion is based on the following beliefs:

• Tenders purchased - “it is impossible to win in them, we participated in three and everywhere received a formal reply or silence in response.”
• To prepare a decent commercial offer you need to spend a few dozen hours of specialists. If the amount of the cost of preparation for all tenders, for example, for a quarter divided by the number of won, can be a very decent amount, comparable to the profit of won. Studios need to think whether to participate in the tender.
• The result is unpredictable. So it is, when in the tender it is not clear how many participants, it is not clear who they are and it is not clear by what principle the winner is chosen.
• Not all studios agree to take part in tenders. Someone does not want to spend their resources on this, someone does not pass on the qualification requirements, someone is not profitable financially.
• Often there come really inadequate requests that seem to come from a serious company, and it is formulated as if the site is making a pie.

Nikita Semenov
CEO, SECL Group

We have participated in tenders many times. Most of all, the tender of one large Ukrainian bank was filled, where they gave the order to “their” contractor for rollback, although our offer was many times better and the tender of a large telecommunications company with the same history. In both tenders, we not only made a bare miscalculation, we invested in research, presentations, and even made prototypes.
Of course, after such stories and significant costs, we do not really want to participate in tenders. Now we take part only in really big and interesting projects and we are sure to “punch” a client through acquaintances. If at least someone tells us that there are kickbacks in this company, we are not even trying. And this is a rule that we are not planning to change. And I never gave kickbacks and I will not do that. My moral values ​​do not allow, I do not want to overstep myself for the sake of a filled pocket of some unscrupulous manager.

Types of tenders

Open tenders - the customer announces a tender and everyone can participate in it. The tender is announced on tender platforms, on Facebook or in mass distribution to all web studios. The tool is not important.

Closed tenders - the customer company chooses suitable developers for the portfolio and price in order to develop its website. Usually up to 10 web studios. Such a tender is more effective.

False tenders - when the company announces a tender for which the site will not be developed or the developer has already been selected in advance and the tender needs a formal one.

I will say one thing - in closed tenders with a public list of participants, contractors will express a greater desire to participate.

To ensure that your tender is not considered a fake - invite the company in a personal letter, describe in as much detail as possible what result you want to get and what task you are solving. Before you decide on the criteria for choosing a winner. Give enough time for the preparation of proposals. If there are specific or redundant requirements for the contractor or project - explain why they are.

Who to invite to the tender for the development of the site?

Before announcing a tender, be sure to decide what you want to get at the exit. Choose developers according to the desired result. Each company specializes in something different. Here is the beginning of the list:

• Designers - specialization of the company: creative, design, visual, wow effects.
• Techies - good quality code, complex systems, integration.
• Marketers - strategy, numbers, analytics, product development and packaging.
• SEO - website promotion in organic delivery.
• SMMschiki - brand promotion in social networks.

Write in the comments what specializations you still know, add them to the article.

No need to reduce techies with marketers in one tender and select the best for creativity. If you need a prestigious one-page website - choose companies that are strong in design. If a project with a complex functionality, a variety of functions - techies. Well, you understand

Sometimes, if quality is more important than time and money, strategy, analytics, design are ordered from some, design from others, and development from third. So the quality will really be better. But the timing and coordination efforts are multiplied by 3.

Another filter companies that need to be invited - the quality of the portfolio. You should like their work. Look at the work over the past few months.

Well, where do without the price. Identify 2 digits. The first is the average price of a similar site on the market, the second is the maximum budget you are willing to spend on a project. Add this range to the tender description in order to weed out companies that you cannot afford on the one hand and those who do not reach your level on the other. Also, this range will show companies how much to “accelerate” in commercial offers. Fantasy developers have enough, and it needs to be limited.

Do not hide the list of bidders, invite to tender up to 6 companies with the same specialization and in the same price range. Thus, you will receive a sufficient number of quality offers from which you can make a choice.

Perfect tender

Then I will write a small checklist of what needs to be done to hold a tender for the development of the site.

Mechanics decision criteria are thought out in advance

Sample table for evaluating participants. Decide for yourself what is more important to you and make up criteria based on importance. Such a table will help you choose the ideal contractor not on the basis of emotions but on the basis of facts and figures. And also show the bidders your openness. This will increase the number of people willing to participate.

Table of comparison of bidders

Criteria for evaluation	Maximum amount points	Member 1	Member 2
Creative	five
Strategy, analytics	ten
Price	five
Availability of projects with similar functionality	ten
Project availability for clients in the same industry.	five
Subjective assessment of the proposal Ivanov	five
Subjective assessment of the proposal Sidorov	five
The possibility of personal meetings	five
Total	50

Lyudmila Bogush-Dand
The founder of the training company BogushTime, Kiev

When you work with a contractor, you must use two approaches, emotional and technological. Emotional approach is needed by the owner of the company - to evaluate the contractor from the position of raport, he understands our essence or does not understand. I do not spend time on persuasion, I choose those who want to work with us and love us as a client. And this is enough for a decision.

But then your employees come into the business, and here they need all the Technical Tasks, all the details and rules, so that no one, neither the customer nor the contractor, interferes with each other’s work, does not disrupt each other’s deadlines, etc. Therefore, prepare technical documents in advance with an accurate description of the criteria, results and deadlines is a necessity. And when there is an understanding of the process - the result is always better and predictable.

Data on the project in the form of a brief prepared in advance

Prepare the required minimum in the tender description:

Requirements for the contractor - I would focus on the team. But sometimes there really are requirements for the contractor’s company. Believe me, the company's experience and the level of the portfolio affect the probability of a successful project much more than the presence of a legal entity and the status of a VAT payer.

Project requirements are a very important point. Describe what you want to see as a result. What process is acceptable for you. Write only what really matters to you. Each item potentially increases the time and cost of the project. And just complicates the assessment.

Fork cost - about it already wrote above.

Contact the responsible person for clarifying questions - email is a great way to communicate, it is enough. If you prefer to talk on the phone, you can add it. In any case, ask the participants to summarize the arrangements by mail.

Terms of Reference for the development of the site. This is a separate item. If you are not strong in the technical part, do not write TK. Describe in detail your problems, tasks that you want to solve. From them will be formed a proposal for the development of the site.

Public answers to questions. An interesting item that will allow participants to get the same information. You can make a Google doc with questions from the participants and your answers to them. On the one hand, this will reduce the number of identical questions, on the other - everyone will have the same information.

Most likely, each company will send you a brief. No need to fill everything, they are about the same. Fill out the first one and place it in the question paper. Let other companies read the answers there. And if there is a question for which there is no answer - let it be this question that is asked. Minimum respect for you

Give enough time to prepare the proposal. At least 1-2 weeks. This does not mean that participants will prepare a proposal for 2 weeks. They have ongoing projects and they do not have to leave them to prepare a proposal.

If you want bidders to develop a site to prepare layouts, write terms of reference or requirements, deploy a test site - be prepared that some will be asked to pay for these works. This is normal and occurs more and more often. Some companies do not prepare layouts at all. I think this is the right position because to draw a creative for a tender is one thing and to draw a design based on analytics, product, market, taking into account user behavior scenarios is a big piece of work. At best, the creative that was chosen will go into the trash and it will be replaced by high-quality work. At worst, you will have to get attached to it and try to pull out what really makes the project quality. If you need a visual component to select a contractor - see examples of previous work. Or give a small task by which you can assess the level of design.

Taras Late
Head of the Club for tourists Couloir

Most often we hold tenders for creative tasks such as design or writing texts. I have my own vision of all things and it is very important that the vision of the performer be close to mine. If we talk about examples, the last time a tender was held to draw a new site for climbing the mountains. Here is how it was. First tried without tenders. They chose a designer on freelance and asked to draw the main one. I will not say that they painted it badly, but not at all in the way I saw it. I had to refuse to pay for the work. Further, it was decided to hold a tender. At the first stage, Anton selected about 20 of the best designers with the best ratings. Then I looked through their work and chose 5. They sent the same TZ to draw the main one. Of course, we immediately warned that this is a tender, we will choose one, but we will pay for the work.
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Two designs did not fit me right away, I liked the remaining three. And already among them I chose the best. We paid all the bidders for the work, and the winner painted the entire site.
I think that we spent a little more money, but saved a lot of time and effort.

Full-time presentation of proposals

So you can get acquainted with the key people of the web-studio and understand with whom you will work better. It is better to choose a contractor who speaks less of himself and more delves into your task and project.

Full feedback after each stage

Let's immediately understand the participant goes to the next stage or not, and why. It is important for your image as well as for web studios to understand what to work on. Sooner or later you will want to hold another tender and be able to contact the same companies.

Tips

Specify who will work on the site, for example: designer, designer, developers, project manager, tester. Ask to take a project manager for a meeting. Often, sales and development are done by different people and the sales person’s eloquence does not guarantee the adequacy of the project manager. Therefore, communicate with the team.

Ask to tell in detail about the stages of site development. This will give you an idea of ​​the degree of elaboration of the proposal and you will understand how it suits you.

Specify your participation and when it is required. If the project is more than 2-3 months, it makes sense to share a vacation schedule so that they do not come as a surprise.

State the purpose of the development and the timeline that you have. On this depends on the composition of the team and price.

Plan a tender for the development of the site step by step

Form the task. It is the task, not its solution.

Select up to 6 developers that you like in the portfolio from the same price and professional segment.

Send to selected developers with a price range a tender announcement.

3-5 companies will unsubscribe and will offer you suitable terms / prices. Ask them for a more detailed miscalculation, ask questions that interest you, write the rest of the reasons for the refusal to the others.

Optionally, ask to draw a concept. But be careful, self-respecting companies are not always ready to draw for free.

Evaluate the proposals of companies by the formula and select 2 winners.

Chat with them and select the final winner.

Total

Following the recommendations you will be able to hold a tender for the development of a website with high quality. Choose the best contractor for you and be sure that he understood the task correctly. But nobody cancels common sense and experience.

Nevertheless, I believe that the tender is not the best way to choose a contractor for the development of the site. A web site is not a standard product, like “crushed stone M1200” and comparing it at a price, as is often done, is fundamentally wrong. I hope this article will help restore order.

Successful projects to you!

The original article on the website of the IT4U web studio

Experience of market participants

We asked several market participants to share their experience of participating in tenders and to express their opinion on the article. Three comments you have already seen above, the rest of the opinion below.

Fomin D.A.
Head of IT Service, Eastern Beverage Trading LLC (TM MEDOFF, Longmixer, Arctica, Koktebel, Khutorok).

The last time IT service tender to choose a site developer was 5-7 years ago. It was an honest, but completely ordinary closed tender ie. organized themselves, invited themselves, themselves appreciated. Today, our company has the functions: the formulation of the TOR for the development of sites, the elaboration of its concept, including the choice of the contractor for the development of the site are completely transferred to the Marketing Department - this is their area of ​​responsibility, we only control domains and hosting.

The last time a tender for a developer’s choice was carried out according to the classical scheme: 1) a technical task was formulated for the development of the site, where the main requirements for the structure of the site, its content, administrative tools, supported clients, etc. were formulated. In general, all that affects the correct display of the site on various platforms. TK was distributed to a dozen potential contractors, whose portfolio of works seemed to us the most attractive or closest in design. We collected commercial proposals, those who are interested in our TK. Made their assessment on our scale of values. They chose a contractor and after 2 months got the finished result. Everyone was pleased with the cooperation and the contractor selected at the tender later supported some old sites for our TMok.

Vladislav Rutitskaya
Vice President, SigmaBleyzer Investment Group and Agrogeneration. Member of the National Council Reform.

In order to avoid corruption and create a comfortable working climate, national electronic trading platforms were created to ensure transparent competitive bidding in the agrosphere. Many companies have adapted the system taking into account their features or have ordered similar software from specialists. We actively use tender platforms for transparent, most efficient purchases of material and technical values ​​and services for AgroGeneration - from seeds, plant protection products and fertilizers to spare parts, equipment, IT. The task of all tender procedures of the company is to obtain maximum efficiency. Our tenders are won by contractors who can provide the most advantageous combination of price, quality, delivery criteria and settlement system.

In order to begin to participate in the auction, for example, on the site agrogeneration.aps-tender, the supplier must register for the categories in which he is willing to cooperate. When registering a new supplier at the Agrogeneration.aps-tende site, the holding receives the address of a person or several who will participate in the bidding from the supplier company. The program automatically broadcasts to those companies that are registered for the positions specified in the tender, sometimes the AgroGeneration supply service invites companies in cooperation with whom the agroholding itself is interested. For one and a half years of the electronic system of tender purchases, our company managed to save millions of hryvnias.

Lyudmila Bogush-Dand
Founder of the training company BogushTime, Kiev

I am happy, I have always been lucky with website developers, I managed to find the best ones. And each time my site not only stood out in the market, it set the trend and became a role model. How do I know? And quite often the site developers themselves talk about it: they received an order from the client “make a site like BogushTime”. The last time, for example, was in December 2017, when the guy who once worked in the studio that created the current site for me, and now working in another large company, called and said that he had heard our name again in a new order.

Probably, I know how to choose contractors, so I am ready to share.

Of course, we announce tenders, and then choose. My very first criterion is the attitude of the developer towards me. I still remember my “magic shock” when I chose contractors for my first site: the guys started the presentation with the words “we gathered everything about you on the Internet, found out what you are and what you like, what you like and what you like for people are doing - and this is what we offer you ... ”And then they unfolded before me drawings, decorated with flowers and the globe of the Earth. All this exactly corresponded to my all-planetary aspirations in combination with romanticism and glamor. There was no doubt for a minute - they, as we say, they reproduced me, that is, they completely fit into my reality. And although the site was absolutely business, its glamor incredibly attracted customers and partners.

My second criterion is the youth of developers. In this case, I mean the experience in the market. Strangely enough, but I love beginners - they need to show themselves, and I am a great platform, because my company is not only known in the market, but also known for its innovativeness, so it is easy to involve us in new solutions, in experiment, in uniqueness. . And for beginners, this is a great start for everyone to wipe their nose, and for us it is a great jerk to bring about conversations and interest again.

As a client, my company is very loyal to contractors, so we change the contractor in two cases: either mowing down a lot or leaving the market. We worked with my first developers for a long time, sometimes I had to stand in a queue, because starting from my site gave them a very strong response to their reputation. But then the guys grew up and left the country. And we had to look for new ones, announced a tender and again chose those who first of all showed me a complete understanding of me, as the owner, and the entire company, as a client. And he was able to offer not only full compliance with my expectations, but also a progressive approach in everything from technical to design solutions. I repeat once again that I am easily involved in the idea of ​​innovation, it fascinates me.

The selected contractor proposed a new approach to everything, and when I first discovered the prototype, it hit me like a shock, it was so different, a completely fresh and unusual solution on the market. A year later, by the way, I began to frequently meet with such decisions in the United States, but then it was something completely revolutionary. And having decided on this, I absolutely did not regret it, because this site continues to be relevant now and solve almost all of our requests, so well it was provided for it with a look into the perspective.

Next year we planned to search for a new contractor for the site, and the criteria did not change: understanding me, as the ideologist of the company, understanding the company as a market player, strategic approach to solutions, innovation in implementation.