Proposal Breakdown: The Textbook Perfect Website Design Proposal

Take a bow, Jigowatt

About as close to a textbook perfect proposal as you're ever going to see, from a web design agency.

Proposal Format

Jigowatt are Better Proposals customers so they sent this proposal to their potential client using our platform and got their proposal signed digitally. Excellent!

Cover

Fantastic photo. Really shows the Founder, Andy, in a position of authority commanding attention in a meeting, looking smart with one of his team. Your cover doesn't always have to be relevant to the client but it does need to have an impact. This really does.

Introduction

This was absolutely spot on. Straight away they've got the value proposition in the first sentence. Nothing more can be said about how good this is.

Specification

They have a lot of information on this page and they've done two things brilliantly. They've kept it in English and avoided tons of techie jargon and they've also bullet pointed all of it. This makes the page longer but so much easier to read. Superb. They have been smart about another page too detailing some SEO efforts. This page has a lot of details on it which if they'd put it in the Spec would have been far too long and too much to take in so they've split it up. Very good decision.

Process

Same as the spec. Very well laid out. Clearly details what is going to happen. I always like seeing nicely designed graphics on these pages to make it visually easy for your client to see what's going to happen. Writing it is one thing but seeing it as a pre-designed image gives it the impression you've done it a million times. I have no data to back that up, it's just something I think.

Case Studies

Great that they've got two relevant examples here with testimonials but they shouldn't be linking off to the website. You want to keep their attention here. The last thing you really want them doing is getting distracted and going website browsing. Get the short version of the case study on the website into the proposal and remove the links.

Investment

Love it being called Investment. They have a testimonial on the price page which is absolutely brilliant. The first thing the person reading this is going to do is read the intro, see the value, then click to the price, next thing they're going to do is see a testimonial saying it's great value. You can't get any better than that. Costs are all clearly laid out. Absolutely superb.

Team

Love the team page. Nice photos, nice little bio. Enough but not too much. Shows they have a decent sized team. Love this.

Contract. Where is it?

The ONLY bad point I have here is there's no proper contract. Everything else is so so tight and brilliant, this really should be addressed. Perhaps there's a reason for it not being included but even so, if proposals are being signed off like this one was - there really should be a contract here. You'd expect it. My suggestion is create a new page with Terms & Conditions on it then have the 'Next Steps' page contain the next steps which they have, and have the Digital Signature box on that page.

Conclusion

This is the strongest proposal I've reviewed. At time of writing this, I've filmed 11 episodes of Proposal Breakdown and been looking at about 10-15 proposals each day for the last 3 years at request of customers giving feedback in places. This is without a doubt in the top 5. If you use anything for inspiration, this should be it.

If you want to get your proposal reviewed like this, send it through to adam [at] betterproposals [dot eye oh] and I'll get yours in the queue.

If you want anything blocked out like company names, and costs, just let me know. :-)