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Why Small Businesses Should Leverage Web Design Crowdsourcing

Trying to start a cost-effective web design revolution for your small business? Look no further than the crowd for inspiration.


Trying to start a cost-effective web design revolution for your small business? Look no further than the crowd for inspiration.

Web design crowdsourcing may be a new driving force behind small business innovation, but its principles have survived the test of time. Modern crowdsourcing allows small firms to take advantage of the services of highly skilled individuals as needed without having to devote their own valuable time or budgets to fields that lie outside their specialties.

Even better, companies that rely on crowdsourced logos, company website design, and product design often discover fresh perspectives that completely redefine the way they approach marketing.

 

Days of Design Outsourcing Past

Many small to mid-sized businesses have long recognized they may not possess the creative capacities to generate all of their marketing content in-house. From the early days of sign-painters to the era of Mad Men-style ad agencies, outsourcing design was always an accepted way to keep one’s options open and still receive high-quality content.

By seeking proposals and campaign ideas from multiple sources, companies were able to try new things. The only problem with the model lay in the fact that high fees and insular business practices made it harder for smaller businesses to take advantage of the same degree of design freedom.

Even if you were able to find an agency to take on your tiny job, the fact that the majority of commercial design was largely limited to mainstream ideas meant that it was much harder to innovate than to follow in another’s footsteps.

 

Modern Crowdsourcing

Today’s digitally connected world may look wildly different from the original model, but the main difference lies in the accessible nature of contemporary technology. You don’t have to attend business meetings with high-priced New York agencies to find new designs any more, and you usually don’t even have to wait around while people come up with ideas.

In a few minutes, you can post a web design crowdsourcing job and wait as a global contingent of designers applies its diverse talents to creating something that meets your requirements.

 

Unique Benefits of the Crowd

Naturally, this new paradigm means the game has changed, significantly. Small businesses on strict budgets can work with designers half a world away, allowing them to draw on new ideas and cultural influences. Instead of limiting your brand to a few logo concepts or website layouts, you can finally do new things and make a unique mark in your industry.

Innovation takes its inspiration from the past, but it requires room to grow. When your access is limited to a narrow range of designers and artists, it’s impossible to produce anything but derivative works, no matter how good they are.

Web design crowdsourcing allows you to discover new ideas that you can incorporate into your branding at a heightened labor efficiency, and because you have even more designer options, you’ll never find yourself locked into an arrangement that doesn’t completely satisfy. True, you may venture out onto a limb with unproven designers, but if that branch doesn’t feel stable, you have way more latitude to jump to another.

 

Clancy Clarke is the Organic Search manager at DesignCrowd, a design crowdsourcing platform making crowdsourcing more accessible for small business. Clancy has over 7 years of online marketing experience ranging from large inhouse roles to agency land. He’s got a passion for analytics and a degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of New South Whales. Connect with @designcrowd on Twitter.

 

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