Tips for Building Your Online Contest with Strutta

225 x 127. These are the magic numbers for building a great Strutta contest, and you can do it yourself in just minutes if you follow these tips:

Getting Started

Click the "Create A Contest Now" button on any page (it's on this page, at the top right). You'll be taken to the pricing matrix. For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to choose the "Basic" or free option from the grid. You will have to either create an account or sign in at this stage, so follow the prompts and you'll be taken back the first phase of contest creation:

1. Contest Type. Select your chosen media submission types from the pretty icons. Your choice of: video, photo, text, audio or mixed media submissions. For the sake of this demonstration, choose any one of these and click the save button.

2. Now we're into the fun stuff, the "Look and Feel" options. Select one of the available templates, paying special attention to the backgrounds, the location of the sidebars, the color of the voting buttons, etc. If you click the small magnifying glass in the theme thumbnail images, you'll be able to view a larger preview of that template.

We also now have the ability to add some custom images or videos to our contest. Here is where our magic numbers of 225 x 127 come in handy. That's the available size of the "Contest Logo" block, so browse and upload to your 225 x 127 contest image and upload it. Allow a few moments for the progress bar to complete before starting the next step. When that's done, you can choose an option of having an "Intro Photo" or an "Intro Video," and then upload the applicable file.

Tip: For best results, use a widescreen video. Regular non-widescreen videos are ok too though, so no worries there. If you're uploading an image, for best results use a 640 x 360 image to promote your contest in this space.

Click "Save and Continue" when your uploads are completed.

A Contest, By Another Name...

3. Next you're taken to the "Summary" page, where you will select your contest title, summary and description. In the plain-text description field, be sure to share any contest-specific rules and guidelines (ie. Videos no longer than 2 minutes, etc). Enter your name as Contest Organizer and fill out the address field.

With the free option, you can create your contest as a sub-domain of Strutta, for eg. http://AnyDamnNameYouWant.Strutta.com. If you wish, select the custom domain option, and follow the directions given. Just remember that you'll have to pay the $25 domain upgrade before launching the contest.

Strutta will generate a Contest Rules document for your contest for no charge, you just need to select what region you wish. Canada (excluding Quebec) and the US are available. Make your choice and click "Save and Continue."

Taking a Look at Your Work

4. You've come a long way already, baby. You should now be on the "Voting" tab, but before we continue, let's click the "Preview" button on the top right and see what we have so far. A new window will open, and you'll be able to preview your contest. Everything look ok? Are you sure? Because sometimes contest names and summaries are a bit too long. To make everything looks nice, make sure these two fit on one line each in the design (I like it to look that way, anyhow). If you're happy with how things look, let's choose some voting options. For the sake of simplicity, let's choose a basic popular vote option, wither either the 'Vote Count" option (voters can vote once for each entry) or the "5 Star Rating" (voters can rate each entry between 1 and 5 stars). Carefully select the contest start and end dates for your contest, and decide on a number of winners.

Note: For each "Winner" you add, you will be required to enter a prize, and approximate retail value for each in US dollars. The prize images are, you guessed it! 225 x 127.

5. In the "Options" tab, you have the ability to add any number of sponsors and survey questions to your contest.

A note about sponsors: When uploading the sponsor images, we find its best to make them all on uniform size. As you might have already guessed, using 225 x 127 image sizes will make you a nice row of four, eight or 12  sponsors to anchor your contest. If you wish to use just one sponsor image, make it a single banner that spans 950 x 127 for best results.

A note about "Survey" Questions: You can add as many as you like, but too many will scare people off, so be careful! It's a good idea to ask at least one, and here's the one I suggest: "Yes, it's ok to add me to the <Contest Creator's> newsletter." (y) (n).

6. When you're finished with all of that, you're on the final stage, "Launch." You'll be asked to agree to the terms of service, and then you can launch your contest to the world.

More notes: You can preview your site at any time, you need not wait until step 4 as I've suggested. I have it that way because after Step 4, you can view your template design as well as the contest name, etc. You may however preview the work-in-progress at any stage of the process.

Once launched, your contest site has a number of promotional features built in. Namely, the ability for any entry to be shared through a number of services and email (see the "Share" button below each entry) and the ability to embed a submission on another site (yes, that's with the 'Embed" button below entries).

Try it out, see what you think. It costs nothing to follow these instructions to create a free contest to test amongst your friends. See if Strutta has what you're looking for. We offer a number of custom options and upgrades too. If you find that you have questions, don't hesitate to address them to us using our contact form and we'll follow up as soon as we can. Our "Tour" page can be helpful too when you're first getting set up, so have a look there for even more help with setting up your first online contest using user generated content!