LouH needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 43 designs submitted by 14 freelance designers.
TheBootStrapped.com
TheBootStrapped.com has one high-level mission: to help "bootstrapping" start-ups make better decisions to increase their odds of being successful. "Bootstrapping" is a term used for entrepreneurs who are self-funding their companies without outside investor assistance. Since these start-up companies don't typically have the luxury of financing, they must be very targeted in their product development and careful in their spending.
TheBootStrapped.com helps entrepreneurs in several ways:
-We provide a review engine where start-ups can find reviews on other products, companies, or services. Start-up companies have a multitude of provider decisions to make regarding server hosting, designers, financial services, legal services, outsourced code/program development, etc.
-We provide a community for entrepreneurs to advise each other to avoid common mistakes and increase the odds of being successful.
-Our site will contain content useful for entrepreneurs from trusted sources (ie. law firms, designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc) that is curated and organized for easy access.
-Please visit http://www.thebootstrapped.com to view a draft of the website and to get a feel for our purpose.
Our audience consists of individuals who are trying to start companies by "bootstrapping" as well as early stage companies searching for service providers. This audience is time-strapped and looking to tap into the collective intelligence of the community in order to both reduce the drudgery necessary in forming a corporate entity, and to receive advice in selecting amongst the dozens of choices of platform and service providers. Demographically, the initial target audience consists of mostly males, 18-50, in the US (most likely Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area residents)
TheBootStrapped.com is a professional site driven by content, so the site should be clean & simple. Latest trends in web2.0 designs should be represented as our audience is web-savvy and will disregard a dated site design. We intend to keep the logo but are flexible on color schemes. Core offering is the review engine so it should be able to display featured reviews and review categories. Open to including images if necessary or making the site more dynamic.
Characteristics
-Bold, energetic, youthful. We want the design to stand out as much as the content
-Non-corporate; We are boot-strappers too
-Easily navigable & usable. Information on the site must be easily accessible
-Colors: We are using red but we are open to changing the color palette to make the site draw more attention
Other Requirements
-We will primarily be use Facebook Connect as our login mechanism
-Facebook connect functionality must be included on the home page
-We may include (in the future) advertising
-Include the functionality: "Browse by Category", "Calendar", "Latest Reviews", "Search"
Websites we like
http://www.scoreloop.com/ http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.mailchimp.com/ http://www.donortools.com/
http://tastyplanner.com/ http://www.crowdspring.com/
http://www.kontain.com/ http://www.culinaryculture.com/
IMPORTANT: Attachment is a guide only - modify layouts / colors as necessary