Informative, Branded Websites

Having an informative, branded website to market your business can only help you in the private and public sectors. The biggest difference between both sectors is how you market to these different demographics.

Many contractors use their main website, which primarily targets the private sector when marketing to the federal government. This can cause problems by not marketing to your target audience, but they may be unable to view your website from their office.

Contracting officers handle contrasting degrees of sensitive data within the same building. This data varies from proprietary data, financial information, and bids to information vital to national security, so there are strict firewalls in place to protect their systems.

These firewalls make it so that some elements on a page, like scripts, are blocked. Most websites use scripts to promote a better aesthetic, but this can also make it so that your website is not viewable the way it should be to contracting officers.

Federal government buyers are also meant to thoroughly research vendors before awarding contracts and one of the ways they do this is by checking your website. Checking a website is a convenient way for them to investigate a company's capabilities.

Vendors should design a website that is visible to contracting officers that is clean and simple, easy to navigate, and contains all the information they would be looking for when trying to award a contract.

What is the Simplified Acquisition Program?

US Federal Contractor Registration (USFCR) created its Simplified Acquisition Program to help owners of small businesses. Simplified Acquisition contracts improve opportunities for small business concerns and also offer large businesses another way of earning federal funds in government contracting.

Within the program, USFCR creates sites that have been verified to pass federal security standards and contain only the data purchasing officers are looking for.

The Simplified Acquisition Program includes the following:

• Online Capabilities Statement.
• Access to their Advanced Procurement Portal which includes training videos.
• System for Award Management (SAM) Registration.
• Up to a seven-page government-formatted website, which can include a Landing Page, Vendor Profile, References, Past Performance, Product/Services, Contact Page, and Photo Gallery.
• Branded Domain Name and Email, Web Hosting, and Secure Templates that allow government buyers the ability to access and view your website.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

For more information about the Simplified Acquisition Program, call the Contractor Hotline at (855) 545-6604 or you can go to their site and learn more there.

To read the applicable sections of the FAR related to the simplified acquisition program, you can go to FAR 13.