18 August 2023
We are seeking tenders for the development of a new website for Future Humber and Bondholders.
The requirement is a website or websites with specific requirements in terms of functionality, hosting, and ongoing maintenance/support.
Please submit an expression of interest to communications@futurehumber.com with the subject line "Future Humber website tender" and we will send the tender brief and outline of requirements to you
We are looking to work with the right partner in the most cost-effective way possible. This is an open tender; however, preference will be given to current Bondholder members if all scored criteria are equivalent. Minimum requirement will include development and hosting of one website. Any additional proposed elements will be considered on a value-adding basis that may be introduced in a phased timeline.
Aim:
To develop our website(s) to provide a modern, fit-for-purpose website for both the internal and external audiences. We are looking to develop a new website for Future Humber with either a separate area for Bondholders, or a separate website or subsite for Bondholders.
Questions and answers
Q - Just confirming that as you are not a majority public funded organisation, the website will only need to meet WCAG accessibility guidelines to 2.1 A and not AA? This affects the entire approach and costing!
A - We would like the site to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible regardless of guidelines. Please state the accessibility features you deem feasible when submitting your tender.
Q - If each job opportunity has a dedicated page, would it also benefit from an application form with CV and cover letter upload function?
A - No. We are not the job agent, we are only listing them for others. We do not need any further functionality in this respect
Q - Bondholder login - a link which takes you to the Bondholder subsite, logged in or otherwise. Just to check that all of the subsite is visible to non logged-in users, except resources?
A - some of the site will inevitably be publicly visible but resources, Bondholder contact details, and the forum will only be visible to logged in users
Q - Presumably the Bondholder subsite will need a request to join form?
A - We need a form for a company to join as a Bondholder, yes. This can be in the background but set to public. We are open to ideas of how to achieve this. The information from this completed form will need to be sent to our engagement manager by email on submission. This part actually needs to be on the main site as it will need to be access by businesses who are not yet Bondholders.
For the subsite, each individual user will need to be able to request a login, which we will need to approve on an individual basis depending on the current status of their business/employer. We are open to ways in which we can minimise the time spent approving new requests and removing rights once the business is no longer a Bondholder.
Q - Bondholder subsite forum – will the posts need moderating by you before being published?
Q - In-built Bondholder forum. Is this a comment function on news, events etc. or is this the ability for logged in users to ‘create’ a post that then other users can comment on? If the later, would all post need ‘approval’ by a Future Humber member of staff before appearing live to the public to avoid any spam postings.
A - The forum would be like Slack - a place for Bondholders to talk to each other over local business matters that they are happy leading on themselves. No, we don't want comments on the news items on our main news page. Members would log in themselves, and start threads or reply to other threads as themselves.
Ideally some level of moderation will be required. If some of this can be automated, this would be great. Happy for most things to be published as the only people using the forum should be individuals who are employees or representatives of Bondholder companies. We would need full control over being able to remove posts and comments not appropriate for the forum.
Q - How to you envisage the bondholder network/forum to be managed from a user permissions perspective. For example, would you allocate one login per bondholder business, or would you see the bondholder businesses being able to request multiple logins to the site for a range of their staff, or we could even enable bondholder businesses to manage their own users on the site?
Q - On the existing Bondholder site, is there already a forum? and if so, what software does it run on?
A - The forum is a new feature which does not yet exist and we open to ideas about the right platform for this. We would manage the Bondholder businesses profiles from the CRM; i.e. Bondholders would not be able to update their own information and would instead need to ask one of the Future Humber team to implement this. However, if the Bondholders could manage their own users, that would be good
Individual users working for Bondholder organisations would each need their own login on request. The Future Humber team would also each have their own logins and be able to act as moderators, delete threads and comments, and add new categories.
We would like to minimise the time spent in approving new account requests and deleting their account/removing rights once their business is no longer a Bondholder. We are open to ideas about how to achieve this
Q - Could you clarify if this is a function to restrict content to users who are Bondholder members and membership payment is not handled through the site or is the requirement for a direct ability to ‘purchase’ and pay for membership (or other products) through the site?
Q - Bondholder login function and ‘paywall’ functionality, does this just mean username and password, or will it need a payment gateway?
A - The 'paywall' is to restrict access to the Bondholders subsite to only those who work for current paid-up Bondholders members. We invoice the company directly and don't manage payments through the site. We might introduce this feature in the future. We do have Stripe.
Yes just username and password which we can approve or delete as appropriate
Q - Image library - what's the scale of this, how many images and roughly what filesize (2mb, 10mb)? This affect the required server capacity
A - The current image library has 840 images and we need capacity to expand this. Some images are up to 10mb but most sit around the 2-3mb size. We are open to ideas about how best to administer the storage and downloading of images.
Q - Same with the video library, assuming these are server-hosted videos rather than just links?
A - We currently host the majority of our videos on Vimeo and they are publicly accessible. We would need a situation where anyone can view the videos but Bondholders need to contact us to obtain the original for their own use. Unless there is a better way? We are again open to ideas about how we could achieve this.
Q - APls are available from The One Point. Can you point us in the right direction to get the documentation for the API? Integrating an API can be incredibly easy or incredibly complex, so this needs scoping and costing.
Q - We have assumed that API documentation would be available for any systems we need to link to (CRM etc)?
Q - Incorporation of CRM to support Bondholders information / The One Point API integration. Could you please clarify what this functionality is to provide? Does your CRM ‘house’ all of the members and if the user is in the CRM, they should then feed through to the website as a user who has access to specific sections? Any additional information on what this functionality would like to achieve would be helpful.
A - We are in the process of obtaining the documentation from The One Point. Please bear with us.
*** we have obtained information about the API. Please contact us to obtain the link to the documentation ***
Yes, our CRM houses all information about all companies on our radar, including current and past Bondholder members. The current set up is that the site looks at the CRM and pulls through specific information about the Bondholder company - such as bio, logo, current contact information. We are trying to achieve an easy way of Bondholders being able to find out information about each other while minimising the time we spend on updating this information; for the sake of accuracy, we don't want to have to update changes in Bondholder information in multiple places. We do not want all of the information to be publicly available, hence putting it behind a login wall.
Q - Project delivery date is 30th November 2023? Did you get the wrong year! I suspect this is a 4 month project from start to finish.
Q - The project award date is w/c 1st November 2023, but the delivery date is at the end of the same month which is a very short turnaround time.
Q - Are both the award and delivery dates accurate? If they are accurate, is there a reason for such a short turnaround time?
Q - Delivery schedule. Although we would do our upmost to deliver within your timeframes, the 4-week production period between start and finish seems very ambitious. Is this a fixed deadline?
Q - The timescales outline a project that would take 30 days, while this is technically possible we find that projects of this size and complexity often take in the region of 8-12 weeks depending feedback and approval at key project stages. Is the deadline of the 30th November a final deadline or can additional timescales be provided?
A - We need this site up and running as soon as is feasible. Please add an idea of your expected timescales to the tender. For our preferred supplier, timescales longer than we have stated on the tender would not be a deal breaker for us.
We don't have any urgency to get rid of the current website and can work with whatever timescales the preferred supplier proposes as feasible
Q - Is your budget potentially over £25k?
A - potentially yes, certainly over the period including any maintenance contract. One of our requirements is value for money. The weighting for the cost element is 15%.
Q - Do you currently receive a monthly SEO campaign?
If yes, please can you confirm what you receive in output e.g. number of backlinks and content? If not, do you have a competitor's domain that you would like to emulate or dethrone?
Q - Are you able to provide any more detail about the level of SEO support required or current SEO practices?
a) Do you have any recent analytics or targets that you are working to, that you can share b) Do you have anyone internal responsible for reporting or implementing SEO or and website performance? Are you looking for consultation support, or a more hands-on approach? c) Do you have a current SEO keyword list? If so, can you share it? d) What SEO tools do you currently use?
A - No, we don't do much SEO beyond the initial optimisation of the content. We don't have a backlinks campaign happening though we do share most of the news items on our own social media feeds and in our email newsletter we send through our CRM. We don't have any competitors we wish to dethrone or specific keywords we want to rank for. There are similar organisations operating in different areas of the UK from which we can take inspiration in terms of design and UX. We don't need to rank above these organisations specifically.
Our current strategy is minimal. We don't have any targets we are working to. The current digital marketing executive Joanne Brady looks after SEO. We are looking for the site to be built with SEO optimisation at source in mind but also would like a quote for consultancy going forward. We don't have a list of target keywords, and the tools we use are Google Search Console alongside Google Analytics and sometimes AnswerThePublic. We don't have Google Adwords account.
Q - Can you share details of current analytics so we can see how people are using the site at the moment?
A - please email Joanne.brady@futurehumber.com with details of your Google Anaytics account and you can be added as a read only user
Q - Are there any aspects of the website that have been already designed? Or do you require the chosen agency to design the full website?
A - the current website was designed while we were Marketing Humber and has been updated to include the new Future Humber brand. We are open to having the full site redesigned, though there are essential features which it will need to include as per the spec sheets and we are conscious of the balance between flashy features and page load speeds. We are open to ideas about what new things we could do with the look and usability of the site. Yes, we would need both design and development.
Q - Do you have a preference on the content management system? E.g WordPress?
Q - Would you be open to using WordPress for the CMS as it would meet all your requirements, or do you have a preference to stick with your current CMS?
Q - Do you have a preference on the platform the site is built in, for example Wordpress?
Q - What CRM are you using, and does it have the ability to build forms?
A - We don't have a preference. The platform needs to be reasonably easy to use for the team, comprising people who are IT literate and quick learners. The most important aspect of the platform is that it can provide a site that is attractive and user friendly and be reliable.
The current system is an aged/archived version of Umbraco, which is reasonably good but doesn't provide a lot of flexibility. It does have the ability to build forms but we have to ask the developer to do this. We would like to be able to at least edit the forms ourselves.
Q - Images and content - Please can you confirm how this will be supplied? E.g. is it accessible via a Google Drive or Dropbox link?
We can use whatever you need to make this happen. We use both Google Drive and Dropbox.
The majority of the text content is already published on the current website and full download/back up of this content should be done prior to development. This content may change as we go along, but the current content will provide a good starting point.
Q - Do you currently receive technical support?
If yes, please could you provide some examples of a typical request?
If not, please can you provide an idea of how many hours you may need?
A - Yes, we currently receive 18 hours each quarter but don't tend to use this. We used a lot of the time we hadn't used already in bulk when we did the latest site rebrand.
A typical request currently is to add a new landing page for a specific purpose, or create a new category for the news feed. We are hoping that a more flexible and user friendly platform will reduce the need for these type of requests
Going forward, a typical request may be to help a team member reset their login, add a new carousel, or to investigate why the site is down. The digital marketing executive is experienced and skilled in web management but may need help from time to time with the more technical aspects of hosting, such as setting up redirects.
Q - Will the winning bidder receive a backup of the current site and database?
A - this can be arranged, yes
Q - How much of your existing content do you see coming across to the new site – specifically for case studies etc. Also, would you like to manage the new content on the site or have {Business name} upload it for you. For example when we build the site we can build a template for case studies and then allow you to populate as many case studies as you like, or we can migrate all existing content to the new site.
A lot of the content can come over from the existing site, even if just for placeholders while we make any edits. We would then like to be able to edit this text, and develop it as we go along. News items, we would probably want to import around 3 months worth, and any older 'Investment' articles which also populate the news page of the Investhumber.com website through an API/RSS feed.
The 3 main things we upload on a daily basis are news items, job listings, and events. Yes please to templates.
We need to be able to add standard/landing pages relatively easily. At the moment, we need to ask our developers to add new pages which we can then edit. We would like to be able to do this ourselves and if we can choose from a range of templates, this would help.
It would be also useful if we could easily add any new landing pages to the home page menus and other navigation without having to use developer support time
Q - Foreign language integration. Google recently removed their traditional translate 'widget’ that would appear as a dropdown on websites, as standard if a website browser detects a website appearing in a different language to the user’s browser/computer language. For example, if your device’s default language is German and you visit a website in English the option below appears within your browser. Would this suffice to fulfil the translate functionality?
Q - What languages you would like the site translated into?
A - Yes, Google's new translation function probably would be sufficient. Our concern is that some designs would lend themselves better to this than others, for example, where text is part of an image rather than presented separately. We are erring on the side of full accessibility and would prefer to see something functional than flashy.
We would like the site to be able to handle as many foreign languages as possible. Full translation for every specific language is not necessary.
Q - Multiple team logins for Future Humber team. Are different levels of permissions needed for Future Humber team members? Or would all Future Humber Team Members have access to all website pages/sections.
A - Having different levels would be handy but not essential. All team members are reasonably IT literate and there is no harm in giving them all the same access if this has to be the option.
Q - Newsletter Build option. As standard we would integrate newsletter and contact forms into a mail sending platform, so users are automatically added to lists. We would then create an email template to match the website style. This allows the email platform to provide specific email features, rather then been within the website CMS. Would this be a suitable option?
A - probably not, no. We need to retain use of the CMS to send out email newsletters. We currently use BeePro to design the newsletter and pull through using HTML to an email campaign builder in the CMS. If we could build the newsletter on the site and then export the HTML to the CMS campaign builder, that would be our preferred option. We can replace BeePro with the site, but not the CMS.
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