Entrepreneurship & Small Business

Any tips on using CrowdSpring to redesign website?

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Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
35 upvotes

Any tips on using CrowdSpring to redesign website?

We're running a design contest on Crowdspring to have the look and feel of our site redesigned: http://www.crowdspring.com/project/2288 ... -and-feel/

Does anyone have any comments on how to properly run this contest? We've already had 3 or 4 designers email us, asking us to make our gallery private, which necessitated calling customer support to make the change.

Any other thoughts, suggestions, comments?

*EDIT* - we've finished the redesign! Original version + link at bottom!
26 replies
Member
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Jul 27, 2010
226 posts
19 upvotes
Detroit
what do you think is wrong with your web site now? Does look like that many people using it (veribook) or am i missing something?
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
35 upvotes
We just find that it's not quite as professional and well-designed as it could be. My partner and I are not artistically inclined, and accordingly, our version of the site just doesn't have the visual "oomph" that we would like it to have. At the end of the day, we recognize that our strengths are in management and technical areas, and that we're deficient when it comes to design.

I would love to show the designs we've already been provided, but unfortunately can't for legal reasons. I can say though, that even after only 48 hours, their first drafts make it clear that we are amateurs when it comes to design. They clearly blow the current version of our site out of the water.
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Apr 30, 2009
2422 posts
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Icedawn wrote: My partner and I are not artistically inclined,

Looking at what you are marketing, I suspected this. I'm sure I'm not the only one. You might want to go back the drawing room (or your bedroom, living room, or whatever you use) and think it over.

There's a big difference between being all "oh, I'm aggressive woo woo I'm deluded" on a product forum and actually selling your product. I feel you are very far from selling your product and even further from actually making sales your source of income and allowing you to quit your day job.

Keep positive, keep realistic and keep posting. Let us know when you actually "SELL SOMETHING" if you do. I believe if what you are doing won't actually sell, you should know it fast so you can try to recover and not waste what capital you may have saved. Remember, there are thousands of people just like you, in cities all over North America. The whole "online booking" thing is crowded and dated. You have a very hard road ahead.

Have you looked at online dating? I'm sure a person with your passion could succeed here.
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
35 upvotes
Beeg wrote: Looking at what you are marketing, I suspected this. I'm sure I'm not the only one. You might want to go back the drawing room (or your bedroom, living room, or whatever you use) and think it over.

There's a big difference between being all "oh, I'm aggressive woo woo I'm deluded" on a product forum and actually selling your product. I feel you are very far from selling your product and even further from actually making sales your source of income and allowing you to quit your day job.

Keep positive, keep realistic and keep posting. Let us know when you actually "SELL SOMETHING" if you do. I believe if what you are doing won't actually sell, you should know it fast so you can try to recover and not waste what capital you may have saved. Remember, there are thousands of people just like you, in cities all over North America. The whole "online booking" thing is crowded and dated. You have a very hard road ahead.

Have you looked at online dating? I'm sure a person with your passion could succeed here.

Didn't we last tango over your site OntarioLandlords back in July? Isn't this a bit long to be holding a grudge?

My partner and I obviously believe in our idea, but we are cognizant of the skills we lack to properly implement it. Spin that into "we're delusional" if you want.

At the end of the day, we like RFD for its helpful comments to date, and not (as we can easily tell by Google Analytics), any marketing benefit that it gives us. Accordingly, comments with regard to how to properly crowdsource design work would be much appreciated. More general comments I'd be happy to address in the main comments thread in my signature.
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Apr 30, 2009
2422 posts
794 upvotes
Icedawn wrote: Didn't we last tango over your site OntarioLandlords back in July? Isn't this a bit long to be holding a grudge?

My partner and I obviously believe in our idea, but we are cognizant of the skills we lack to properly implement it. Spin that into "we're delusional" if you want.

At the end of the day, we like RFD for its helpful comments to date, and not (as we can easily tell by Google Analytics), any marketing benefit that it gives us. Accordingly, comments with regard to how to properly crowdsource design work would be much appreciated. More general comments I'd be happy to address in the main comments thread in my signature.

No grudge, bud. You're not that important. In fact, I'm trying to help you.

I see absolutely NOTHING special in what you have to offer. In fact, compared to other comparable sites, yours seems amateurish. You seem very young and very inexperienced. Business is more than posting on a Deals site when you get home from your minimum wage job with about 10 people reading your threads.

In about a year or so you'll read this and thank me IF you follow my advice. Take your personal rage and frustration out of the business equation and honestly look at your product. Your market is competitive and you have nothing special to offer. I'd use whatever allowance you have left over to look at targeting another market, such as a dating site that seems to allow for 'quirkiness' and amateur developments.

You'll see. It's just a matter of time. It's up to you and your 'partner' to act accordingly. I'm just trying to help you out, as you will one day see.
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
35 upvotes
Yup, we look amateur, I don't disagree there.... isn't that the precise reason I articulated above for why we're running this design contest? We've spent a few months "live" getting feedback from users and stabilizing our code base; now it's time to revamp the UI to give it a more professional face.

In general, you may be right, you may be wrong, but we're happy to give it a shot despite our competitors in this field and your ad hominem attacks.

Returning to the topic at hand, just in case someone has experience - any thoughts on how to handle having multiple separate entries that each have desirable elements? Right now, I almost want to join together the top half of one submission, and the bottom half of another submission.
Member
User avatar
Jul 27, 2010
226 posts
19 upvotes
Detroit
Your web design is not as important as you imagine. Your web site can fixed cheaply by changing the logo and adding a few more features. You should spend $2000 on marketing advice or web promotions not fancy designs.

www.bigcow.ca
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
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malai_kafka2 wrote: Your web design is not as important as you imagine. Your web site can fixed cheaply by changing the logo and adding a few more features. You should spend $2000 on marketing advice or web promotions not fancy designs.

www.bigcow.ca

Fair point - but these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive endeavors. Our partner and I are definitely unhappy with our design, and accordingly, find it worthwhile to spend some money revamping it. We're already doing it a cheaper way via Crowdspring, as we received much more expensive quotes from mainstream/regular design firms. Once this is completed, we'll be investigating marketing options, which, up until this point, we haven't seriously worked on.
malai_kafka2 wrote: veribook means digital books
i think you need better domains
Yeah - it's surprisingly hard to find a good .com domain these days. We spent a long time looking for a name that we didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to buy; ended up settling a bit. Although I do note that people usually think the veri- prefix comes from latin for "true, truth, real, or truthfulness", as opposed to "digital" as you suggested. (http://www.lexfiles.com/basic-latin-l-v.html)
Jr. Member
Aug 22, 2010
106 posts
7 upvotes
Toronto
I don't think you should make your listing private. Obviously there are some selfish designers who want you to limit exposure to your contest. This gives them a better chance to "win". You should make it public to get the most designers to help you.

But I do think a redesign will help your website. Usually it doesn't help that much but with yours, the information architecture, typography, and design needs work. Those AJAX windows are really out of date. When you view a listing, it should just redirect you to a new page instead of a AJAX window. In the new page, you can show ALL the details instead of making the user press the tabs or view availability button. The design simply does not make it seem like it is easy to use which will make people not want to use your website.
Member
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Jul 27, 2010
226 posts
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Detroit
Okay truebooks sounds like it means a web site for or about digital books. Not a booking site as you want. It also sounds good for a valuation site, such as book value cars, boats. Maybe something to do with digital verified books. This all has to do with marketing not web design, your web site should match your marketing not vice versa.

"it's surprisingly hard to find a good .com domain these days. We spent a long time looking for a name that we didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to buy; ended up settling a bit"

It's like any business, location location location. Without a good location your just wasting your time. You know how much Macdonald's spends on research before opening a restaurant? A lot, before google they even flew planes over head to take aerial photos of the surrounding area. So true for the right domain, that's why people pay so much for a domain or hire someone to pick it for them.
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
35 upvotes
Stew13 wrote: I don't think you should make your listing private. Obviously there are some selfish designers who want you to limit exposure to your contest. This gives them a better chance to "win". You should make it public to get the most designers to help you.

But I do think a redesign will help your website. Usually it doesn't help that much but with yours, the information architecture, typography, and design needs work. Those AJAX windows are really out of date. When you view a listing, it should just redirect you to a new page instead of a AJAX window. In the new page, you can show ALL the details instead of making the user press the tabs or view availability button. The design simply does not make it seem like it is easy to use which will make people not want to use your website.
The private listing is actually just for the gallery of submissions. We were informed (and upon reflection agree) that many designers will delay submitting their design until the deadline if they think other designers may copy their ideas for the purposes of this design. By making the submissions private, we've been receiving a steady stream of submissions and updated submission that we can provide feedback upon.

Re. the ajax window - you raise a valid consideration - as part of the redesign we've been considering whether the view listing and view availability popups should be combined together. That being said, we have a "philosphy" for the site which is that it's an application, instead of a website per se, and the modal popup windows are part of that. We're gotten both positive and negative feedback on this point, so we're going to stick with this approach for the time being, and consider removing it as time goes on. We've done some A/B testing on this point and one of the interesting consequences of using these modal popups is that people start to intuitively expect "application" type functionality, and without being told, start to double click and drag and drop (two user interface features that are not typical for websites, but that we support).
malai_kafka2 wrote: Okay truebooks sounds like it means a web site for or about digital books. Not a booking site as you want. It also sounds good for a valuation site, such as book value cars, boats. Maybe something to do with digital verified books. This all has to do with marketing not web design, your web site should match your marketing not vice versa.

"it's surprisingly hard to find a good .com domain these days. We spent a long time looking for a name that we didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to buy; ended up settling a bit"

It's like any business, location location location. Without a good location your just wasting your time. You know how much Macdonald's spends on research before opening a restaurant? A lot, before google they even flew planes over head to take aerial photos of the surrounding area. So true for the right domain, that's why people pay so much for a domain or hire someone to pick it for them.
Re. the name, I found your comments quite interesting, and accordingly conducted an informal study this evening by sitting in my condo lobby. I queried 10 people who had never heard of our site before which of the following things they thought we did. My results were as follows:

- digital books - 1 response
- online bookings - 5 responses
- valuation of products
- digital rights management - 1 response
- no idea - 3 responses

I was quite worried as the first two gave the digital books and DRM answer, but I'm okay with the overall distribution of responses. Thanks for raising this issue for my consideration.
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Dec 2, 2008
828 posts
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for $2000 you shouldn't be using a spec service like crowdspring IMO. not that a large-scale design and development from a capable and knowledgeable team will cost less mind you, but what people seem to often forget is that the adage 'you get what you pay for' was coined for a reason. depending on the size and scope of your project - i would say that your budget should get you something substanital in any case.

i don't know what business you are in - but chances are it is the engine that drives your business or its online presence - think this through.
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
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canadian gal wrote: for $2000 you shouldn't be using a spec service like crowdspring IMO. not that a large-scale design and development from a capable and knowledgeable team will cost less mind you, but what people seem to often forget is that the adage 'you get what you pay for' was coined for a reason. depending on the size and scope of your project - i would say that your budget should get you something substanital in any case.

i don't know what business you are in - but chances are it is the engine that drives your business or its online presence - think this through.

Fair point. We actually investigated a whole bunch of local options, and found that we were getting quotes of approx ~$5,000 for the homepage, and ~$10,000 for the set of four pages that we're asking Crowdspring designers to work on. Thus, when I consider that crowdspring offers a money back guarantee, designers from around the world, and very fast turnaround, it seems worthwhile to give it a shot. From what we can tell, we've been getting a lot of submissions from Asia and Eastern Europe for which I suspect $2,000 USD is comparitively a lot more money. It's sometimes a bit hard to communicate with them, but personally, their design work speaks for itself.
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Dec 2, 2008
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Icedawn wrote: Fair point. We actually investigated a whole bunch of local options, and found that we were getting quotes of approx ~$5,000 for the homepage, and ~$10,000 for the set of four pages that we're asking Crowdspring designers to work on. Thus, when I consider that crowdspring offers a money back guarantee, designers from around the world, and very fast turnaround, it seems worthwhile to give it a shot. From what we can tell, we've been getting a lot of submissions from Asia and Eastern Europe for which I suspect $2,000 USD is comparitively a lot more money. It's sometimes a bit hard to communicate with them, but personally, their design work speaks for itself.

i understand... and $5000 - $10,000 for a design plus 4 pages seems entirely unreasonable a quote IMO. but i would have to know more about your requirements and scope of the development. where are you located? i may be able to recommend someone that can help if i know more about your needs. if you'd like you can shoot me a PM about what and where you are, etc and i can see if i know someone that fits the bill. either way - good luck!
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Oct 27, 2008
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The cost of a freelancer really depends on your specs. $15k for a 5 page site (homepage included) may sound like a lot, but you need to take into a account a number of factors.
1-If the person is designing it, they are charging as a graphic designer would.
2-If they are coding it, they are also doing the job of a coder.
3-If the site requires special coding or development, such as flash, PHP, a database, etc. it requires specialties. These things especially can be time consuming.
4-How many revisions will the person you hire have to go through before you have exactly you want? Presumably they will present you a number of options, you go through phases where you specify more what you life and what you don't so you get exactly what you want, then go through reivisions to ensure everything is exactly as you want it. Depending on how specific you can be, this can be incredibly time consuming. I've personally seen a project drag on a year and a half longer than it should have because of every tiny revision.
5-You are paying for a number of things. These people (presumably) spent a number of years in school learning how to do this. That cost money. They need a decent computer to do the design on. They need software (which if obtained legally, just the latest adobe design suite, not master collection currently runs $1900USD). These are all costs, and are all factored in to the price you are paying, on top of their expertise and time.

I have personally stated my distaste for these design contests and what essentially equates to spec work. If you want a house built do you hold a contest asking contractors to build you houses, and the one you pick you will pay them for, and the others are SOL? Then why do you feel justified that you can effectively ask people to spend their time and effort to design and create something specific for you, then you tell dozens of people you are not going to pay them after they have spent X time on the project.

You will get a better design through hiring a professional than through these design contests if you do your research and find someone with a good portfolio. They will work with you to build exactly what you want, and if you develop of a good relationship with them, they can easily help with future branding, such as business cards, letter heads, flyers, posters, banners, or other promotional material. They will know exactly how they can design something to match your other collateral because they designed it themselves, so they will know what can work with it. They can also easily add updates or make changes because they know how everything was done in the first place. As opposed to these contests where they will take the money and be gone, not giving a crap about future follow ups or projects. And by getting the material through a contest and later hiring someone else to do changes or updates, the person creating it didn't think long term, they already have their money and don't care. They can leave behind an absolute nightmare for whoever comes after them.
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Dec 13, 2007
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angekfire wrote: ****
Don't use latest, pick up Photoshop 6 or 7 from ebay. They have everything designers needed 10 years ago, and they were doing just fine.
Deal Addict
Apr 1, 2004
1582 posts
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angekfire wrote: The cost of a freelancer really depends on your specs. $15k for a 5 page site (homepage included) may sound like a lot, but you need to take into a account a number of factors.
1-If the person is designing it, they are charging as a graphic designer would.
2-If they are coding it, they are also doing the job of a coder.
3-If the site requires special coding or development, such as flash, PHP, a database, etc. it requires specialties. These things especially can be time consuming.
4-How many revisions will the person you hire have to go through before you have exactly you want? Presumably they will present you a number of options, you go through phases where you specify more what you life and what you don't so you get exactly what you want, then go through reivisions to ensure everything is exactly as you want it. Depending on how specific you can be, this can be incredibly time consuming. I've personally seen a project drag on a year and a half longer than it should have because of every tiny revision.
5-You are paying for a number of things. These people (presumably) spent a number of years in school learning how to do this. That cost money. They need a decent computer to do the design on. They need software (which if obtained legally, just the latest adobe design suite, not master collection currently runs $1900USD). These are all costs, and are all factored in to the price you are paying, on top of their expertise and time.

I have personally stated my distaste for these design contests and what essentially equates to spec work. If you want a house built do you hold a contest asking contractors to build you houses, and the one you pick you will pay them for, and the others are SOL? Then why do you feel justified that you can effectively ask people to spend their time and effort to design and create something specific for you, then you tell dozens of people you are not going to pay them after they have spent X time on the project.

You will get a better design through hiring a professional than through these design contests if you do your research and find someone with a good portfolio. They will work with you to build exactly what you want, and if you develop of a good relationship with them, they can easily help with future branding, such as business cards, letter heads, flyers, posters, banners, or other promotional material. They will know exactly how they can design something to match your other collateral because they designed it themselves, so they will know what can work with it. They can also easily add updates or make changes because they know how everything was done in the first place. As opposed to these contests where they will take the money and be gone, not giving a crap about future follow ups or projects. And by getting the material through a contest and later hiring someone else to do changes or updates, the person creating it didn't think long term, they already have their money and don't care. They can leave behind an absolute nightmare for whoever comes after them.

I recognize it's a lot of very detailed and specialized work. It doesn't really change the fact that, if I can, I would prefer to pay less. As a client, I don't really care why something is expensive, but rather, I want the best product for the least cost.

More generally about design contests, you seem to have implied that we're doing something "wrong" by running this contest. Personally, I think that is completely bunk given that designers enter these contests voluntarily and fully cognizant of the conditions under which they would get paid. Moreover, I think you fail to recognize that this type of arrangement is actually much more common than you would think. Just from personal experience, highly educated and experienced professionals such as architects, engineers, lawyers, and consultants will all sometimes do work without any guarantee of payment.

You've also indicated that you think we'll get not as good a design through this process. Obviously, this is our concern as well, and we'll have to evaluate the submissions objectively. But, as noted previously, since there's a money back guarantee, there's really not much of a downside to give it a shot. Similarly, with regard to long term relationships, this is again a concern and simply something that we'll have to evaluate as we go forward. Part of our decision making process definitely turns on the quality of the communication that we've been having with each designer. I do query, however, whether or not there's a substantial difference in this regard as between Canadian freelancers and contest designers, as really, it turns on each individual designer.

Finally, I should probably point out that many of the designers who have been submitting designs actually appear to be professional designers, as evidenced by their portfolio websites and quality of their submissions. It just so happens that they're all mostly overseas and not from North America.

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