However, if you live in a small town and the nearest grocery store isn’t that great, is it okay to go out of town to a larger or better store for something like this? Or is it one of those things where you don’t want to burn bridges in your own home town?

Nate

As for 99designs, give them guidance…tell them what problems you have with your site…tell them what you definitely don’t want…and what you definitely do want.

They are web designers though, not web developers…which means they can put together a pretty website, but it’s still up to you to organize the site better. You’ll tell them the tabs you want, and what the “sub tabs” are within each.

They will want example sites that you like the look and functionality of. Explain what you like about the example sites and what you don’t. But DON’T tell them exactly how you want the site to look. Let them bring their own creativity into the project. You’ll get to see a variety of ideas from all of the designers and once you find one you like, you can tell the other designers what you like from the other submissions.

The key is to be active. As soon as someone submits a design or makes changes you recommend to their first draft, give them feedback as soon as possible. I tried to do it immediately since they’re already working on it, they’ll continue working on it. And many designers are overseas, so if you wait until later in the day to comment on their design, it could kill a day of design time since they’re on the other side of the world and sleeping while you’re working..

The grand prize can be a free one year membership or equivalent. I would hold the grand prize at a later date. It wouldn’t benefit you much to hold a live drawing when all the people throughout the weekend who signed up aren’t still waiting at the store. You can call the winner later.

You can give something to everyone. I recommend a gift card. Then you have an excuse to call them to get them to come in and redeem their gift card.

If I go to 99designs and post a project, do you have any tips on on things I need to tell them to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes made in the past with our website?  I was thinking of giving
Them a link to your critique as part of the process but I doubt they need that.

Thanks again for the great resources and coaching.

P.S. Our DM campaign with gymmarketing.com went very well too. Looking forward to the next succesful project.

While you may enjoy April Fools, I have one of the worst days ever on April Fools. Do you know how creative and original 10 year old April Fools jokes are?