Medicines for Malaria Venture Issues Website RFP
MMV works to discover, develop and facilitate access to new, effective and affordable antimalarial drugs. Since its foundation, MMV and partners have brought forward 11 antimalarial medicines, with an additional two transferred to the portfolio post-approval. These medicines are estimated to have saved 2.7 million lives. MMV’s website is critical to the dissemination of its news, publications and project-specific content as well as raising awareness of the burden of malaria and the need for R&D. MMV’s website is key to its visibility amongst partners, stakeholders and the general public. MMV’s current website uses Drupal 7 as its content management system (CMS), which will reach end-of-life in November of 2022. MMV is seeking a company to rebuild the current website on a new or upgraded CMS and refresh its design and functionalities. The project includes the following: 1. Create a fresh, new look in line with the brand and the latest web design trends 2. Ensure ease of editing and flexibility in layout and content placement 3. Refresh the presentation of MMV’s portfolio of medicines to create a simpler and more dynamic user experience 4. Ensure web elements meet high SEO standards, including responsiveness of design, page load speed times and technical foundation 5. Migrate content to the new website and provide long-term maintenance, support and hosting
Background:
MMV has been going strong since 1999. It started as a two-person operation in 2000 and since then has grown into a well-established organization, a model product development partnership (PDP) with active partners in over 150 countries. MMV’s values of passion, innovation and collaboration guide its work. We are committed to reducing the burden of malaria and this passion is at the root of everything we do. We are creative— always learning, always inventing, and our team of experts is uniquely placed to fulfil its mission. We promote knowledge sharing and believe partnerships achieve more than any organization can alone. MMV’s distinctive brand has evolved with our organization and makes us easy to spot in a crowd. The brand conveys to the viewer MMV’s passionate commitment to its target population and its reputation for quality, tenacity, and cutting-edge expertise.
Scope of Work:
Ease of editing and flexibility
We are looking for more flexibility in page editing and content placement than our current website
provides, such as page design which is component-based. Ideally, we would like the ability to add
blocks of content, customize pages when needed and fully view edits before they are published.
2
MMV’s portfolio of medicines
MMV’s antimalarial portfolio is the largest ever assembled and includes all projects from the
beginning of the pipeline (discovery phase) to medicines which are accessible on the market. The
colors used in the portfolio have been carefully selected and the information featured cannot be
modified as it undergoes a rigorous biannual review process.
As the portfolio has grown, it has become necessary to display many projects and a long legend. We
would like to improve the presentation of the contents of the page by creating a more aesthetic and
minimalistic design. One option is to offer the user flexibility to filter projects by stage (i.e.
“Research” or “Translational”), eliminating the need to display the full portfolio as the default. We
are also looking for a fresh and aesthetic way to present the information in the legend at the bottom
of the page.
SEO
The technical foundation of the website should be optimized for SEO. This may require work with
external experts. SEO optimization includes many elements, some of which are listed below:
• ability to change meta titles and descriptions
• ability to edit auto-generated URLs
• ability to add ALT attributes to images
• canonicalization of URLs
• structured data implementation including schema for organization, articles, videos, events,
breadcrumbs and other relevant use cases
• page load speed optimization through minification of scripts, use of latest JavaScript, lean
image formats (WebP or similar)
• SEO plugin such as Yoast or similar to help MMV staff in the optimization of meta tags
• one XML sitemap per language
• robots.txt implementation
• dynamic 301 redirection of all URLs in case URL structure on the new site changes
• implementation of a custom 404 page
• responsive design
The company is also encouraged to make suggestions and propose its own SEO solutions.
Migrate content and provide long-term support
We are looking for help with the migration of content to the new website as well as long-term
maintenance, hosting and technical support. Some examples of ongoing support required include
resolving technical issues, performing design or functionality improvements and ad-hoc projects
such as the creation of digital publications. The company/account manager should be responsive,
friendly (we will be on a lot of calls together), and willing to communicate on a weekly or monthly
basis, depending on needs.
Due Date: 09.00 CET on Friday, 8 October 2021
Address:
Danielle Sessa
Communications Officer
Medicines for Malaria Venture
Agencies to consider for this assignment include MWWPR and Prosek Partners.
