This is the latest in a series of posts explaining the decisions we make that affect our users as well as the results of those decisions (positive or negative).
Dribbble’s mission is to help professional designers earn a living doing work they take pride in.
In practical terms, we help designers generate and convert leads.
To that end, the primary objective of everything we do — every new feature, policy, and campaign — is to maximize the number of users searching, interacting, and transacting through our platform. That’s the context for today’s release.
This morning, we introduced new features that allow designers to transact with clients through Dribbble:
- Clients can send Project Requests.
- Designers can send Project Proposals.
- Clients can accept proposals and pay through Dribbble.
- Designers can deliver work and get paid through Dribbble.
While these features were in development, we began improving other aspects of our user experience (covered to some extent in previous posts) in order to spur more interaction between users. As a result, lead flow to designers has increased by 242% Y/Y since June.
In terms of the number of leads, we just had the best July in Dribbble’s history, followed by the best August.
Of course, lead generation is nothing new for us. Over the past fifteen years, millions of leads — billions of dollars in projects — have been generated through our platform. However, we never offered designers the functionality to actually close those leads on Dribbble. Yet, in a survey we conducted this past April, 81% of designers said they would, in fact, be “interested in getting hired and paid for freelance projects directly through Dribbble.”
Now they can.
Today’s release also aligns our business model with our company mission. We generate revenue by collecting a fee on successful transactions (meaning the designer has received payment for the completed work). In other words, we don’t make money unless our designers make money.
Here’s how fees work:
- Designers pay a 3.5% platform fee (for example, a $3,000 project pays out $2,895).
- Designers with an annual Pro subscription pay 0% in fees (so a $3,000 project pays out $3,000). To be clear, we’re NOT raising the price of the annual Pro subscription, it’s still $96/year (which is less than the platform fee on the project cost in this particular example) and includes all the other features it currently does.
- Clients will pay a 7.5% platform fee and a payment processing fee of 2.9% and $0.30 (so a $3,000 project costs them $3,319).
- For more detail on project fees, see this Help Center article.
To be clear, we don’t require designers to transact through our platform (we understand some have established workflows they prefer to follow) but there are compelling reasons for a designer to do so, including:
- Peace of mind - Dribbble takes payment in full before work begins and holds it in project funding until work has been completed which eliminates the risk of non-payment or late payment.
- More leads - the more projects a designer completes, the higher they’ll rank in Designer Search, and the more clients they’ll attract as a result.
- Fees as low as 0% - Pros don’t pay any fees, non-Pros pay 3.5%.
- Account support - we can mediate issues between users transacting through our platform but we can’t help resolve issues that arise outside of Dribbble.
- Higher conversion - lead attrition increases with each additional step required to convert (for example, transitioning the potential client from Dribbble to another website).
Another reason lead conversion will be much higher for designers transacting through Dribbble is that it’s also in the client’s interest to do so:
- Peace of mind - Dribbble holds their payment in project funding until the work has been completed which eliminates the risk of being ghosted.
- Safe and secure - their payments, data, and intellectual property are safe and secure.
- Freelance relationship - there’s no employer-employee relationship between the client and designer — or Dribbble and either party — when transacting through the platform but we can’t help clients manage the risk of worker misclassification if they transact elsewhere.
- Account support - we can mediate issues between users transacting through our platform but we can’t help resolve issues that arise outside of Dribbble.
We expect most transactions to result from a client finding a designer in one of the following ways:
1) The client discovers the designer’s work in their search results and/or feeds and sends them a Project Request. By default, all designers can receive Project Requests (unless they’ve disabled the feature in their account settings).
2) The client uses Designer Search to find a designer with a specific expertise, views their profile and design work, then sends them a Project Request. By default, all designers will appear in Designer Search (unless they’ve disabled the feature in their account settings).
FYI, it’s also possible for designers to bring the clients they connect with elsewhere to Dribbble to transact (for the reasons shared earlier). The client would just have to create a (free) Dribbble account and send a Project Request.
To improve their chances of receiving and converting a Project Request from a client, designers should do the following:
1) Review/update their work preferences.
- They should take the time to add all the specialities and skills that apply to them. There are no right or wrong answers but the more thorough and accurate they are, the more likely they are to generate leads that they can convert.
- If they need help setting their minimum project rate budget and/or hourly rate, they should refer to this Help Center article.
2) Review/update their profile.
- They should share compelling, original design work with thoughtful and accurate metadata (titles, descriptions, and tags).
- They should add a profile picture and complete the biography, work history, and education sections of their profile.
- Pro subscribers are encouraged to use the additional features they have access to (including Pitch Video, masthead image, and headline) to make their profiles more visually appealing.
Here’s a good example of a Pro account making use of these features:
It’s more important than ever for clients to truly care about the designer behind the work. We recommend all designers share their personal stories, experiences, inspirations, awards and accolades, and anything else that makes them – and, by extension, their work – more compelling to clients.
There’s also much more Dribbble can (and will) do to help designers be successful. Work is underway now to improve our search UI/UX (both Shot Search and Designer Search) which is critical to stimulating the interactions between users that will lead to transactions. By the end of this year, we’ll have also further developed the payments functionality we released today and introduced new ways for designers to offer their services.
Of course, designers also come to Dribbble for reasons besides lead generation. They come to find inspiration, share feedback, and demonstrate their ability to their peers. It’s a one-of-a-kind community that draws talented and accomplished designers from around the world (and, in turn, the companies that want to work with them). The work we have planned will make it more rewarding than ever for designers to participate in this community.
We can’t wait for you to see what comes next!
