Design excellence directly affects business results, inspires and influences reputation, and showcases an organization’s dynamism. Strong identities have meaning and influence. Any city, state, government agency, or international organization that is keen on improving image, sustainability, and economic development needs to consider the impact of its current identity and evaluate whether or not its brand furthers the organizational mission.

In recent years, this kind of brand evaluation has led to an increase in procurements for place or community branding by cities, brand guideline development by government agencies, and brand revitalization by international organizations.

The procurement process for these services typically requires a proposal from competing firms detailing evidence of approach and work samples. Some organizations opt for multi-stage process—one that includes in-person presentations to get details of the brand design and development approach and to determine personality, chemistry, or best fit with a participating vendor.

This approach, as defined, represents a non-functional, two-legged stool. A valuable, and often overlooked, exercise in the brand procurement process is an in-depth evaluation of the competing firms’ websites.

A True Picture of Brand Capability Requires A Website Evaluation

Any city, company, or organization should not award a brand design project without evaluating the competing firms’ websites to get a true picture of brand capability. Even if the design procurement does not include a website as a deliverable, before choosing a design firm, it is imperative and worth your time to conduct this evaluation.

Websites are an important indicator of the type of work that you can expect to receive from a vendor. A half-baked website typically means the work that you get will be half-baked.

Websites showcase capability, especially for design firms. Evaluating a website for brand excellence, graphic excellence, creativity, usability, and editorial precision is a critical exercise and will provide you with information you need to properly evaluate a firm’s capability.  The brand impression you see should stimulate a defining experience.

If a company scores low on your website evaluation—the important the third leg of the evaluation stool, beware. While a design track record is important and the in-person presentations do have significant bearing in a proposal evaluation process, organizations need to evaluate the design firms’ website to make a fully informed choice.

Evaluation Questions to Consider:

• Is the website evidence of great work?
• Does it showcase professionalism?
• Does it have visual impact or is it visually distinct?
• What is the functional, emotional, and brand value?
• Does the look and feel stimulate confidence or showcase the firm’s commitment to brand excellence?
• Does the site show evidence of quality and credibility?
• Is the usability obvious and explanatory?
• Does the site position the design firm as an authority on brand communications?
• Are there design errors?
• Does the color palette work and appropriately represent the business?
• Is the visual and information hierarchy right and balanced?
• Are the stylesheets consistent?
• Are there any typos or grammatical errors?

For any design work procurement, use the exercise to validate the firm’s capability and give you the confidence that your deliverables will be of similar excellence. If you are not wowed by a design firm’s presentation, you probably won’t be wowed by its work.

Design transforms people, products, and places. Consequently, design procurement is probably one of the most important procurements that an organization, city, or company can make.

Choosing the right design firm for your brand transformations or revitalizations can be transformative. Choosing the wrong one is wasteful, especially if you find out later that if you had done your due diligence and evaluated their website, you could have predicted the outcome in the first place.

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Proposal (evidence of approach and samples)
Presentation (personality, presentation skills, chemistry)
Website (evidence of ability to deliver on brand excellence)

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Evaluating the Proposal – A Check List

Does the proposal:

• Present strong experience in solving diverse business problems?
• Give you confidence that the vendor could customize a solution that would directly address your business issue or problem?
• Define an approach that would tap into the essence and authentic position of your organization and complement your business or strategic plan?
• Incorporate an outstanding research slate coupled with design excellence?
• Present a holistic approach that projected creativity beyond the parameters of the proposal?
• Represent original thinking?
• Showcase unique brand solutions?
• Leverage the power of research?
• Feel like a “cookie-cutter” response?
• Have a distinct and professional look and feel?

Read more posts by Donna Vincent Roa