My Experience With 99 Designs Plus a Website Makeover
For a decade now, I have relied almost entirely on word of mouth or chance encounters for new website projects. I’ve never had to advertise or network and I’ve always held a healthy dose of skepticism over platforms like UpWork and Fiverr because of their over-saturation of users and their devaluing of talent. I never liked the idea of competing for projects. Something about it did and still does feel demeaning.
A few months ago, however, Squarespace sent me an email announcing that they would be partnering with 99designs. The partnership would grant certified Squarespace designers the ability to create a platform on the site immediately thus bringing them more clients and work. I decided to give it a shot, and I must say, at first I was overwhelmed by the influx of people contacting me. In fact, I had to turn off my availability because I was spending at least an hour every day following up about potential projects. Unfortunately, I must have been continuously outbid because 99 percent of the people I followed up with retracted their design proposal.
Just when I felt like 99designs was a big waste of time, one client accepted my offer. And I’m glad they did!
Aside from the $250 fee 99designs took for client acquisition and platform fees, I would probably use 99designs again - but only if I found myself in a client drought. To be honest, I’d rather spend my time building quality relationships with clients and having conversations with real people than lowballing myself for projects that don’t feel good. Luckily my first and only 99designs experience so far turned out to be a pretty good one, thanks to an easy-going client and a project with meaning. Check it out below:
The client- CureFirst.org, a nonprofit research organization that aims to deliver better cancer treatment.
What they said they wanted - someone to transfer their old website to a new template
What they actually wanted - someone who could make their site make sense so that they would look legit thus attracting the attention (and donations) of important stakeholders.
Oh, How I Love Editing!
Personally, I love editing whether it’s website design, an essay, or a friend’s text response to her sassy co-worker. I love reading what someone wrote or observing what someone designed, and then spending some time talking to them about what they don’t like about it. Once I have the gist of their vision, and I understand why their current design is falling flat, I am able to work my magic. Editing is SO much more fun than just creating from scratch because I already have a visual representation of what the client was going for and I can deliver a result they couldn’t. It’s just so…satisfying!!!
So - for this project, the client wanted a major website makeover and I delivered.
Here’s what I did:
I took a lot of the text from the busy home page and moved it to a separate About page.
I swapped out the boring clinical image on the home page for a literal “hero image” and revamped their tagline.
Instead of keeping the individual pages for each project (which cluttered the dropdown menu on the main navigation), I added each project as a blog post. This allows for greater flexibility in displaying the summary block. I was able to display a summary block of the projects on the home page as well as on the project page. This decision also allows their webmaster greater ease every time they want to add new projects. When the user clicks on the project page they are still able to click on each individual project, thus leading them to a page with more information.
I reorganized their team pages.
I added hyperlinks to other pages on the footer to encourage users to linger on the site.