The vendor is required to provide from a web development partner to help maintain and develop grcc.edu and to serve as a trusted consultant for larger strategic challenges as they arise.
- Goals:
• Improve user experience including theme and component refinement.
• Improve content structures.
• Improve web editor experience with expanded component access, maintaining editorial workflow.
- About the team:
• Our web and digital strategy team consists of three people: an associate director, a web support technician and content specialist, and a web systems architect.
• We report to the executive director of marketing and communications and are part of the marketing and communications department.
• Our partner will work closely with this team, collaborating on development with the web systems architect.
• We work with a team of roughly 90 department-specific editors to maintain content and build out the site.
- About the site:
• Runs on Drupal 10, upgrading to 11 soon.
• Site was built 2019-2020.
• 500,000 average monthly pageviews.
• Hosted on pantheon, recently implemented integrated composer.
• Codebase in Github.
• Our audiences are (in order of priority) prospective students, current students, staff and faculty, and community members.
- About our college:
• 12,000 students
• Average class size: 25
• Over 140 programs.
• Classes offered in-person and online.
• Our two campuses are grand rapids, our primary location in the heart of the city, and the lakeshore, which is 30 minutes away in holland.
• We are the oldest state, established in 1914.
- Beyond collaborating on maintenance and ongoing basic development of the site, there are several possible projects we may reach out to our partner for assistance or consultation. collaborations may include:
• Audit our site structures and governance to find ways we can streamline and improve.
• Help with integrating new systems including an events management platform (element 451), a CRM (element 451), an intranet (platform TBD).
• Improve people pages and the directory.
• Restructure and redesigning program and department content.
• Support with implementing new search, moving away from google custom search.
• Evaluate cookie consent and laying a path to GDPR compliance.
• Evaluate whether we should maintain and develop the current theme and custom components or plan to redevelop the theme and utilize a component library.
- A good proposal will be less than 26 pages and include information about a vendor’s:
• Significant higher education experience. please provide three examples of work and accompanying references.
• Experience architecting large, structurally complex sites, while maintaining clean content governance and elegant content architecture.
• Ability to build everything with search engine optimization and accessibility at the core.
• Drupal-certified development team.
• Ability to provide backup support 24/7 when staff is out and requests fall outside pantheon support capacities.
• Ability to collaborate well with an internal web team.
• Project management capacities.
• Continual improvement of the overall user experience.
• Pricing:
o Provide a clear, transparent pricing model.
o Include any options for minimums, hourly rates and retainer-based services.
o Detailed breakdown of maintenance and development costs.
o Any optional service packages.
• Brief history and staff makeup.
- Technical and operational capabilities and ease of implementation
• Drupal proficiency: experienced in and passionate about Drupal site development.
• Forward-facing: has an eye for helping clients understand and wisely apply new web technologies.
• Accessibility: ability to build ADA and WCAG compliant sites.
• Content-focused: deep understanding of effective content structure and governance.
• Adaptability: ability to work with and improve a mature site.
• DevOps: ease of collaboratively developing the site with the agency team.
• Integration: ability to seamlessly integrate external systems with an existing website.
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: May 20, 2025