Website Development for Automobile Niche

Intro / Project Overview: Thank you for taking time to review this and possibly helping us with building a brand new website for our online venture. We are looking for a professional freelancer to help us with building a beautiful website for automobile sector. We are planning to publish car reviews, round-ups, tips about buying new and used cars, etc. Project Overview: 1. Budget is $2500 - $3000 2. Go live date is set for Wednesday, March 15 3. Looking to either: a). customize a readymade theme, preferably on Genesis platform (Altitude Pro) or b). build new site entirely (first choice) Our Audience: Our audience are males, aged 18-50 (Millennials and GenX); targeting the new car buyer market with car reviews while offering other premium motor related content. Our personas include young students and recent grads (age 18-25), young professionals (single or married with or without kids) with either less or more disposable income, established men with older kids at home (age 45-50+). Various income levels with various disposable incomes. Target market and emphasis is on car buyers who value and enjoy life, are relatively passionate about motors, crave info and technology and what’s good in today’s society and culture. More sophisticated but not necessarily luxury-focused. New Website Objectives (Goals): Primary objective of the website is to introduce our brand as a new, fresh, sophisticated outlet for car reviews and other motor related quality content and features. Objectives include: 1. Build a site that premium & corporate brands will want to stand behind and sponsor 2. Ultimately, increase our UV and organic/search traffic, building our audience 3. Increase user experience and engagement 4. Highly optimized site: speed, structure, SEO More specific objectives and CTA include: 1. Build a strong email list; more subscribers 2. Increase social following: particularly Google+ and Feedly/RSS followers 3. Near future, introduce new video content on YouTube; grow the channel New Website Functionality Requirements: Requirements are broken into two main parts: Site structure/optimization and Website Design/UX A. Site Structure/Silos: 1). as part of a fast, optimized site, would be best is designer/developer is well versed in SEO and site architecture to help us structure our entire content strategy 2). the site will be content heavy (shorter posts); we will need help to best organize the content into smarter silos as we focus on longer and more evergreen content B. Website Design/UX: 1. Blend storytelling and UX with highly optimized site 2. Design guide will be provided: new logo, etc. 3. We like the fullpage design with emphasis on strong imagery; Parallax scrolling ideal, unless there are other options 4. Examples of what we’re thinking: [login to view URL] (or [login to view URL] ) 5. Design custom, optimized landing pages for our main sections: a). Car Reviews b). Adventure c). Gear d). Car Guide e). Auto News 6. Help navigate users through a more logical funnel with better Related or More Reading content following articles; better engagement, TOS, etc. 7. Author Pages: our contributors are important to our site and credibility; would like to have better author pages, and author integration into posts (w/ small bio photo at top of post) Some of the other must-have functionality: 1. Social share buttons: better integration in posts; show total shares, etc. 2. Section labels for posts: posts to show the category they’re in with small label on homepage 3. Email subscribers: integrate better 'sign up' CTA throughout the site 4. Engaging Footer Budget Details: Budget is $2500 - $3000 for theme customization and site structure. Custom website development is our preferable option. RFP & Project Timeline Details: Goal to golive by Wednesday, March 15.