Pulling on the existing look and feel of the brand, develop a fresh site that uses homepage real estate and subpages in a more functional and modern web presence, allowing information to be easily found within the rich content resource. The BID’s website highlights the vibrancy of downtown Albany and specific attributes that make it compelling to visit, shop, live and maintain business in the District. In addition, the site serving to highlight our advocacy efforts and successes will also be important. Upon completion of the development of the site and with acceptance by the organization, the BID will assume full responsibility of the website content, maintenance, and administration. At that time, all content, coding, graphics, software, and architecture will become the sole property of the BID.
Background:
The Downtown Albany Business Improvement District (BID) is accepting proposals for website redesign and development (downtownalbany.org). The purpose of this RFP is to provide a fair evaluation for all candidates and to provide the candidates with the criteria against which they will be judged. After extensive research, the BID launched a redesigned, Drupal-based website in 2015 which continues to be primarily maintained with in-house resources (CMS) with significant formatting changes completed by the current website provider. Today, the BID’s website is a leading resource for Downtown residential referrals, event information, commercial property availability, and more, and the strategic focus of the organization continues to evolve to meet the needs of our Downtown Stakeholders and serving as Albany’s newest neighborhood. A more updated use of the site’s real estate is needed to more effectively present and utilize information and make the user experience modern, productive, and easy regardless of device.
Scope of Work:
The scope of the project is to design a new website for the Downtown Albany BID. We are looking for a firm that can handle all preliminary discovery and planning, design and programming, and existing content migration. The BID will create/provide and implement all copy. Prior to site implementation, in-person and/or online training and training manual will be provided to BID staff.
Development Guidelines
While there are certain criteria listed below, much of the scope will need to be uncovered in the discovery part of the development.
• The chosen candidate will create a design that works dynamically across devices.
• Open-source programming is required; Drupal preferred.
• Once final design is implemented, corresponding templates for our two enewsletters in MailChimp are also requested.
Design and Functionality Objectives The BID’s website redesign objectives include, but are not necessarily limited to:
• A modern, accessible site that employs effective design, graphics, and current development and SEO knowledge.
• Ability to highlight high profile news and events prominently on the homepage.
• Implementation of uniform image size for individual listings and featured content.
• Allows users the ability to share content easily on social media platforms. Allows staff the ability to add this functionality to newly added content.
• A clean and appealing property database for commercial and residential space listings with image galleries.
For both commercial and residential landing pages, dropdown menu or similar functionality allowing users to sort results with options inclusive of:
o Commercial properties: lease/sale, type of office space (coworking, executive suites, etc.), pricing, on-site parking, etc.
o Residential space: number of bedrooms, pet friendly, etc.
• A calendar functionality that has multi-dimensional sorting capability between several variables including dates, range of dates or by venue / location.
• Updated navigation bar; a site map will be agreed upon between BID and chosen vendor to based on functionality and content objectives.
• Ability to add Board Member headshot for each person.
• Ability to feature content on all main landing pages (Events, Live, Lease, etc.)
• ADA and WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant with Section 508 requirements.
• Implementation of chatbot.
• Implementation of Facebook Pixel across site.
• Implementation of e-commerce on site (contingent on cost comparison to currently utilized payment platforms Square and Eventbrite).
• Creation and implementation of branded short link URL
• Implementation of plug-in for language translation Sites the BID has identified for interesting design and functionality:
• https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/
Due Date:
3:00 PM on Friday, April 23, 2021
Address:
e-mail to rhughes@downtownalbany.org, or mailed to Attention Rebecca Hughes, Downtown Albany BID, 21 Lodge Street, Albany NY 12207
Agencies to consider include Porter Noveli and Shift Communications.