HOW TO BUILD AN ARTIST WEBSITE Standing out from all the rest!
Are you taking your music career to the next level? Building a GREAT website is your first step. Having a professional website is of the utmost important in the music industry. Having a GREAT website is much like having a nice, professional business card . . . it’s the first impact you’ll have on industry professionals and your fanbase. Would you walk into the most important business meeting in your music career with business cards printed at home off your less than adequate printer? Of course not. So why would you not have a fantastically designed website where potentially tens of thousands of visitors land to review you and your on-goings in your music career? Don’t answer that. .we know the answer.
Why should every artist/band have a website?
You may ask yourself why artists, musicians or bands need a website. It’s your home, your base, your business place where you can control every aspect of your music career. Sure there are Social Media pages, which are great for extra visibility. We’ll cover that later. Meanwhile, think of Social Media pages as a vacation home, not your main residence. Your website will, by far, offer you much more visibility, search engine optimization, control and a “one stop” shop to everything your music career has to offer. Your music website makes a much better impression rather than a social media profile. Furthermore, a professional website shows you are serious about your music
You own it!
You have complete control over your design, your branding, your business. That’s right you are a business and like with any successful company, BRANDING is extremely important.
Unlike social media platforms, you won’t have any design limits, no advertising distractions or external links encouraging your visitors to click away. Your website visitors are there because they want to be there. It’s then up to you with what you want to do with them.
GENERATE $$$!
If you are selling music and/or merchandise than creating your own professional website is even more critical. All artist (big and small) would much rather sell directly to their fans. They keep more money! Pretty basic business 101 practices. Your fans and industry contacts can join your mailing list, engage with you and much more. Additionally, this makes is much easier for you to directly market your new music, tour dates, crowdfunding , new merchandise, and more.
you own YOUR INFORMATION
As with all successful business throughout the entire world. .they “data-mine”. Data-Mining when you create your own contact database of people/contacts who are interested in what you have to offer with your music career. These are “hot targets” . . . the most receptive people you have within your music career and the easiest point of sale chances. Creating a professional music website allows you to collect that data, and maintain direct communication with your fans and industry contacts. Furthermore, you have access to detailed analytics on your website, its visitors and traffic. This will help you understand your target market and get a better idea of what kind of content drives visitors to your site.
A great website template is a perfect first step for a music website. It’s already “responsive” meaning mobile-friendly, and you can customize the look as much as heart content. When choosing a template to create your music website, consider a few things:
Your artist/band header image
Before you jump into designing your music website, you will need a great image. You’ll use this as a first step to branding your music imaging. It should represent what you are about musically.
Tip: Find an image that is high-resolution and landscape-style. Make adjustments to the image so that it flows properly within your site.
Your menu layout
Put some thought into how many pages you’ll need. Keep it simple . . a good rule of thumb is three to seven pages. If you want to add more pages later, this can easily be done, but first keep it simple.
You content layout
You should include bios for your band, catalogue of music, tour dates, merchandise, etc. Remember, don’t overly stuff your pages just because you feeling you can. Keeping it simply, easy to read, and fluid for the visitor is EXTREMLY important.
Responsive (Mobile-friendly) website!
In the world of the internet we cannot express to you enough on the importance of having a Responsive website. A responsive website is a website which automatically adjusts to the visitors depending upon if they view your website on a PC, MAC, Photo or Tablet. This is so important that even Google search engines now give top priority to responsive websites.