Three years ago design marketplace 99designs had just three employees working out of a small space in Melbourne — the company now has 60 staff, managing a global community of more than 200,000 graphic designers.
Jason Aiken has been part of the team since the early days, having joined the company in 2009, after quitting the PR consultancy where he’d been working on the 99designs account. He wanted to be involved from the inside. Aiken is now Community Director at 99designs, helping to create content, manage designer problems and encourage engagement from the vast number of designers who use the platform.
We asked Aiken how the company manages its community, and what lessons he could share with other startups.
Be yourself
When Aiken posts on the 99designs Facebook he does so from his personal account. When an e-newsletter goes out, it’s sent from his company email. He does this so that designers know they have someone to speak to, or raise concerns with.
“The community is quite large, with about 200,000 registered graphic designers around the world,” says Aiken. “It was a very purposeful decision to make it that high-touch. We want it to be as personal a relationship as possible.”
In the early days, 99designs grew the business by focussing on growing the client side, and getting people to post projects. The thinking was the more projects on the site, the greater the number of designers that would pitch for work.
However, the needs of graphic designers are very different to those of clients listing projects, so they are now managed as two separate communities.
“They’re always going to be two sides of the same coin. Usually if there is a customer issue, there’s a problem for the designers too.”
Take online offline
99designs helped launch meetups for graphic designers in cities all over the world, using Meetup.com, starting with Novi Sad in Serbia, in September 2012. That one hasn’t run again, but others are have more regular meetings.
There are a total of 135 meetups listed now. While 99designs kicked off the meetups by reaching out to designers in different cities, it has only played a peripheral role in the events. They were established as a forum for graphic designers to get together with other freelancers in their city.
“In August, I went on a designer tour and went and visited some of the meetups throughout Europe. We helped them organise the meetup, and to find that local dyanmo who is really engaged and can drive it.”
Not only have the meetups provided an indirect promotional tool for 99designs, they’ve also provided some great content for the company to use on its blog and social media channels. Aiken points me to a video made by the Yogyakarta group in Indonesia. The meetup decided to paint a mural for the company.
“You might be a designer in Manila, or a designer in Ohio — but you have the same problems. the meetup posts are some of the most shared and engaged with.”
Dig below the data
Using analytics data to determine user groups hasn’t worked for 99designs. The data shows a number of different user patterns, from the ultra-engaged designers who use the platform all the time, through to those who only drop by the site once in a while.
However, the frequency with which designers use the site isn’t a good indication of how capable a designer they are, and that makes it difficult to target content. Instead, 99designs takes a broad brush approach, providing how-tos on logo designs, letterpress, and website design, on its designer blog.
“While activity might look the same, based on analytics or engagement, what’s actually happening is not the same. There’s this other layer that you can’t necessarily see.”
A designer may be a heavy user of the site, but this could mean they’re a newbie trying to find work, or an experienced professional trying to generate new business. On the flip side, someone may be a less frequent user because they’re experienced and have plenty of work, or inexperienced but dabble in design as a hobby.
In order to distinguish the quality of designers, 99designs has developed a three-tiered rating model — gold, silver, bronze. Only hand-picked designers are able to be rated as gold designers. 99designs then charges a premium to have design work completed by this top group.
“We curated this certain set of designers. Generally these people are professionals — either they’ve finished a design degree and are just starting a career or are extremely talented hobbyists.”