A Practical Guide to Website Procurement

Here's a sobering statistic to kick things off: 66% of technology projects end in partial or total failure, with only 31% delivered on time and within budget. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology famously turned a website redesign into a $75 million debacle - proof that even the most straightforward-sounding digital projects can spiral into chaos when the groundwork isn't right.

But here's the uncomfortable truth most procurement guides won't tell you: the seeds of project failure are usually planted long before a single line of code is written. They're planted in the requirements document.

If you've ever sent out an RFP for a website redesign and received quotes ranging from £15,000 to £150,000, you're not alone. This isn't because agencies are pulling numbers from thin air (well, most aren't). It's because your requirements document left too much room for interpretation - or worse, it told agencies what to build without explaining why.

As digital strategist Paul Boag puts it: "Most procurement processes focus on commodities. They are inappropriate for commissioning digital services."

This guide is for the digital marketing manager, project manager, or marketing lead who has been handed the task of finding a new web development partner. It will help you put together a brief that generates meaningful, comparable proposals - without requiring you to become a systems analyst overnight or accidentally publishing your business's operational playbook on the internet.