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Are you a musician setting up a website?
An artist’s website needs a very specific set of rules, as opposed to one that is selling general services or e-commerce. With live music taking a big hit over the past few years, you need a website to help you make the switch to digital commerce.
The task of building a site is made harder, as not all musician websites serve the same purpose. Below, we give you our website tips for artists and musicians.
Content Is King
There is an old web design adage that content is king, and nowhere does this ring truer than when your website is about music. A site without content is just an address page, and you may as well stick to using social media. Before you even think of building a website, you need high-quality content.
Luckily, as a musician, content should be your day-to-day bread and butter. You should have music, video, and photography on hand.
The trick is to use it wisely, and use only the best content. Busy webpages will confuse people on arrival, so keep it streamlined. You may choose to combine all your best bits into a simple highlight video, and have that as your focus.
Never show anything that is unfinished. You may be tempted to put out works in progress and show demo recordings. However, that will only provide an inferior product you do not want to be associated with your brand or name.
Have Purpose & Direction
Once you have the content, you must consider your direction. Your music website needs to have a reason for its existence.
Is it a website to secure your wedding band more gigs? Is it a website to build a bigger audience for your rock band’s next tour? Is it a portfolio or resume for your classical cello work?
All of these need very different approaches, aesthetics, and website content. The wedding band may need a price list and a booking form, where that may be useless for a rock band signed to a label. The classical violinist may need to list former employment and study, yet this is not applicable for the rock band.
If you find that you wear a lot of hats, it may be better to have separate websites than include them all on one site. This allows you to focus more closely on your target audience for that particular service.
Simplify
While you may want to be inventive and creative with your website, the best components of a good website are simple ones. Simplifying a website stops visitors from becoming confused and lets them easily navigate the page. If they can not do this, they will go elsewhere.
Make sure you have plenty of space. Ideally, white space is the best way to break up sections of text and content, though you may use other colors depending upon your website design.
Once you have done this, try to employ a visual hierarchy. This involves putting larger, bigger items toward the top of the page with smaller ones at the bottom. This draws the eye down across the page, keeping people on your website longer.
Large items make include focus images and larger headers. Smaller items like legal information for the website can be kept at the bottom in the footer, along with smaller texts and headings.
Get Mobile Responsive
It is no longer enough to have a musician website that looks good. You also need one that looks amazing and functions well on mobile. This is because over half of all internet traffic is now done on a mobile device.
A mobile responsive website solves a number of problems. Firstly, it should resize text so that it is the correct size and easy to read. Content should also rearrange, so you can read by scrolling down and not have to go left and right.
Finally, it should resize your images. This is so they fit perfectly on the screen and do not distort the dimensions.
Finally, all of this should have a fast loading time on a mobile device. This comes down to a number of factors, mainly the quality of your hosting. Click here for more information on fast, affordable hosting services.
Build Backlinks
Backlinks are essentially a digital roadsign. They are text links from one website to another. The actual words in the link itself are known as the anchor text.
They let search engines know what your website is about, and how authoritative it is. The more of these backlinks you have, the more other websites are telling search engines to visit it. The anchor text helps tell the search engines what your site is about.
For example, if I had a punk band in Minnesota, I may choose to get backlinks that have the words ‘punk band’ or ‘Minnesota punk band’ in their anchor text. When someone types these words into Google if I have enough backlinks my site will be one of the first to appear.
The best way to build backlinks is to get onto as many reviews and music sites as possible. When you do interviews or get a review, ask them to provide a backlink to your website with the chosen anchor text.
Get Great Images
As a musician, a solid photoshoot should be a top priority. This can show you in the best way, letting people know what you are about before they even hear your music or hire your services.
Photos taken from your iPhone will never look as good as a professional shoot. The equipment and knowledge a professional photographer will have will be far superior. If you invest in anything, make it images.
Get Assistance to Implement Website Tips
While it is perfectly plausible to build a website using our website tips, do not be afraid to get assistance. Problems will occur, or you just may not be able to get the look you want. Consider a professional web design company, or hire freelancers to help you out with smaller jobs.
If you need more technical advice and assistance, then visit the rest of our blog. We have everything to help from online advertising to increasing more leads. Let us get your digital profile off the ground starting today!