HCWHA Website Redesign RFP

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP)

Release Date: February 13, 2024

Proposals Due: March 4, 2024 by 5 PM

HCWHA invites proposals from a firm or individual designer/website developer for a professional update and redesign of the organization’s current website, https://www.heartofthecivilwar.org/, to enhance online presence and overall public awareness of HCWHA’s resources as well as HCWHA as an organization.

Answers to questions received about the RFP will be posted to this page.

Objectives:

Position HCWHA as a leading heritage tourism destination.
Present HCWHA’s historical, cultural, environmental, and recreational resources in a dynamic way that educates and informs about the area and encourages visitation to the region.
Implement a design architecture that allows for simple implementation of in-house updates.
Facilitate seamless promotional integration with HCWHA’s three county destination marketing organizations: Carroll County Tourism (in the Carroll County Office of Economic Development), Tourism Council of Frederick Couty (Visit Frederick), and the Hagerstown-Washington County Covention & Visitors Bureau (Visit Hagerstown).
Integrate social media channels into the website to encourage engagement and make up-to-date content accessible.
Collaborate with HCWHA to create an online map for the website- map content and functionality TBD
Accept and display heritage tourism-related event listings on an event calendar. Possibly design to automatically populate calendar with partner listings from their online event calendars.
Improve user experience of the site, especially on mobile phones.
Increase traffic to the website.
Integrate Neon CRM tools into site (donations, forms, newsletter sign-up, and other tools).
Collaborate with HCWHA’s SEO strategist to faciliate updated website SEO, detailed SEO requirements in RFP.

Questions & answers:

Is the project end date flexible?
The RFP's identified project end date of Sept. 30, 2024 is flexible. The project should be completed by the end of 2024.

Do you want to include the Educational Portal as-is on the new website or do you want to add functionality?
We want to reproduce the Portal as-is for now, with the ability to make updates in the future. The defunct Vbulletin section does not need to be fixed or added to the new website.

Can the information for board members, including minutes, and stakeholder information pages be publicly visible?
Currently the Board member page can be accessed with a direct link, at this time we do not want to retrict access further but that page also should not be visible via a web search. The stakeholder information pages should be linked throughout the website and publicly accessible.

Can you describe the interactive map component of this project in more detail?
We're interested in seeing what is possible within the budget for the interactive map- that is a component of the website that we envision creating in cooperation with our chosen vendor. The map will not have to be complicated or highly detailed: the approach to the map will be part of our criteria for evaluation but will not ultimately determine who we choose for this project. The $40,000 includes the map.