How to design a Kickstarter and Indiegogo page with free tools
If you want to make your crowdfunding page stand out, you've got to think out of the box. Now, doing that with little to no expertise can be tough. With these free tools suggestions from Nalin, founder of Crush Crowdfunding, you can try and make the job easier without losing out on perfection. Nalin helps people bring products to the market using Kickstarter and Indiegogo.,
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have made the process of launching a new product a lot easier. However, launching a product and getting successfully funded isn’t always easy.
For one, your crowdfunding page design counts and this alone can be incredibly difficult. Pages that look professional and inspire trust can lead to more backers. But guess what? Any design costs money. And let’s be honest here, if you had the money, you wouldn’t even need to be running a crowdfunding campaign (it’s a Catch-22, isn’t it?).
If you’re not sure how to hack together a beautiful crowdfunding page with a minimal budget, here are all the free tools you need and how to use them.
Google Slides For Your First Kickstarter and Indiegogo Draft
Yes, Google Slides!
This underutilized tool needs more love when it comes to its benefits related to design. When used the right way, Google Slides can be an incredibly handy canvas for you to let your creativity flow.
As a newbie, you might be hurrying to Kickstarter or Indiegogo to start your campaign page. We strongly recommend holding your horses on that front. Head first to Google Slides and begin by creating a running draft of your campaign page. Start it early and frequently come back to the draft throughout your pre-launch campaign to tweak and perfect your final crowdfunding page.
Screenshot of Google Slides
By initially rolling out all of your ideas into Google Slides, you’ll be able to see how your ideas all fit together before investing time and energy into design. In this step, you will want to make sure that your ideas flow in a coherent manner, your content is fully explanatory yet concise and the associated graphics best illustrate your point.
By doing this, you’ll be able to notice where you might be missing information or where you might be repeating yourself. You’ll also notice how your ideas are organized and if they flow in a coherent way or not. Introduce this to close ones and your crowdfunding team to see where you might be able to optimize the flow of information.
Free Image Sites To Boost Your On-Page Visuals
When you’re on a shoestring budget, it’s sometimes difficult to acquire images beyond those of the product.
For example, if you’re trying to launch a new hiking backpack, you might have easily taken product shots of your bag. However, when it comes to more epic lifestyle shots, you might not have the budget to fly someone to Kilimanjaro, get them to hike to the top, and snap a picture.
With free image sites, you can still express your idea by grabbing a related image, while making sure that it stays well within your budget.
Man on Top of a Mountain
Here is a list of sites where you can find free images to use:
Canva To Create Every Graphic You Need
The ultimate design tool for beginners and professionals alike. Canva, founded in 2012, has seriously raised the bar in terms of design. They’ve rolled out a design platform that is as powerful as Photoshop and as easy as one-two-three.
Design possibilities are truly endless with Canva. Here, you can do everything from grabbing pre-made templates to creating wild designs for your own project.
As a creator, you need to keep in mind that there is no exact template for a successful crowdfunding campaign page. However, as the years have gone on, crowdfunding pages have now developed a list of “must-haves”. When going through your page design, make sure that your page includes all the elements you need for success.
At this point, you’re ready to throw up your text and graphics onto Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Head over there to create your account and start populating your page!
Facebook Group For Detailed Feedback
At this point, you should already be interacting with your audience on your Facebook Group daily. Once your Preview Page is to be shown off, be sure to also share it with your core audience in your Facebook Group!
Your core audience is the group of people who have been with you since the beginning. They’re the ones who will be flooding the gates on launch day to get your earliest rewards and quickly boost up your funding amount. If you’re completely confused at this point (“huh? Core audience?”) or don’t have a passionate crowd, be sure to build this up before moving forward!
Move Insiders Facebook Group Page Screenshot
Here, you’ll need to open yourself up to even more feedback. Do all the graphics on the page clearly illustrate your point in each section? Is everything that’s written on your page clear? Are your rewards appropriate?
Think about it this way, if your diehard fans are confused by your Kickstarter and Indiegogo project page, how else will anyone understand it?
Page Analyzer (Kickstarter Only) For Page Optimization
Now that you have some feedback from your audience, it’s time to further optimize your page. Jellop, one of the crowdfunding industry titans, has developed a nifty tool to help you optimize your existing page.
By running your project link through their Page Analyzer, you’ll receive actionable tips on how to best optimize your page.
Jellop Page Screenshot
By aggregating data from the most successful Kickstarter campaigns, the tool sets a benchmark for what successful pages look like. The Page Analyzer will then compare you to that benchmark and tell you exactly what to do to get closer to that benchmark.
In practice, what that means is that Page Analyzer will tell you exactly how many words on a page the most successful campaigns have, and tell you exactly how many words to cut (or add) to your page.
Page Analyzer will tell you information in the following categories:
- Rewards
- Page Structure
- FAQ
- Community
- General Tips
Time To Get Started With Your Campaign Page
Now that you know about all these free tools, the next step is to begin implementing them!
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that every creator should allocate a certain amount of budget for someone to beautifully design their campaign page. This is especially true since your page is where people will be making that final purchase decision for your product.
However, I’m a practical person and know that sometimes it’s almost impossible to squeeze out a budget for this. As an entrepreneur myself, I know that sometimes you need to really use your ingenuity to hack something together. So get out there and start creating!
For more help with your crowdfunding launch, check out the blog at https://www.crushcrowdfunding.com
