Customized Web Sites for Bands And Musicians

Posts Tagged ‘Website for band’

In this post we want to look at the power of having your own website.

Unfortunately most people in the music industry do not understand the Internet and so end up spending huge amounts on a website that in the end simply is not effective.

You see search engines and the like only see text and yet what a lot of people do is add a lot of graphics. It is the text that gets you seen and not the graphics or media. The graphics are simply a way to enhance the text.

This site is going to be the calling card, it is going to be the place where people can look and listen to you whenever and wherever they are. This site has to hit them straight in the face and make people think WOW!! I strongly advise putting your music on this site for people to listen to – what sort of message are you sending out if you don’t? “Um – Yeah we are a great band, but we aren’t going to give a sample of any of our music!”, just don’t do it!

This is why we suggest most people let us install Wordpress so they can have great targeted text in pages and posts and also add media and graphics easily. We can then use this to get your site recognized in all sorts of places all over the net. Some question we need to ask:

1. How are people going to find our site once it is online?

By writing targeted text and telling people about your project with relevant headlines you can then leverage this to not only search engines but social bookmarking sites, RSS directories and many other online places where people hang out.

2. Who is going to design, create and maintain our site?

We can design your site and also have some great software that will allow you to partake in the process if you want. This means you get a fully customized website for a fraction of the cost.

3. What is going to be on this site? Gig updates, biography, photos, your music for example.

As part of our consulting package we can help you organize the appropriate content. We have been doing this for over 10 years and so know what works from a marketing point of view.

4. How much is all this going to cost?

Most Website developers create what we call brochure sites which are very graphically rich and hence cost a lot of money however with our system we concentrate a lot more on the text and still make it graphically appealing but only to provide eye candy. A typical start up site can start fro $350.00

5. How are we going to finance this?

You can finance this cost easily and then as you get more exposure add more. We also teach you how to do a lot of it yourself reducing the cost even futher. Because we use Wordpress many of the functionalities that Web Designers charge for are included free.

Make sure you do this correctly though, if you can’t do it correctly – then don’t do it at all. Make sure that the music is really good quality, you dont want some hissing music thats recorded poorly, ok it doesn’t have to be amazing studio quality but it has to sound good. We can organize this for you FREE.

Above anything a website is showing your audience that you have control and professionalism, if you want to be taken seriously – you need a website. Once you have a site, your music is now being played to the world!! Anyone can listen to it.

Dont get a profile page or a MySpace page confused with a website, while these are good and they have their uses, they have their limits. A website on the other hand – it has no limits to what you can do, it can be as big or as small as you want it to be. A well designed, well maintained website will give you an advantage over other bands that maybe only have a MySpace page.

As vital as a press pack is to send to radio stations, promoters and gig organisers – a website is an online press pack, it has everything! You can track the visitors to your website – I do.

Our  Analytics package is ideal for this, it shows you exactly how many visitors you have had in day, how many times each of those visitors have viewed your site. One of the great things you can use with it is that it shows you where those visitors are from, so if you have loads of hits from a particular city, you know you can use that information and set up a few gigs around that area.

Carefully plan what you are going to put on your site, of course you know that your are going to have brief biography of your band with a few sample songs and some cool photos. These are obvious things to include – and while they are good, you should think about a few other things too. Maybe not include these things straight away but definately in the future, always look at how you can improve your website. Lets be honest – your fans want you to have a website.

One of the things that I love most about a website is the potential it brings to earn you money. You can sell merchandise through it for starters. You can generate income through ads if needs be. All these things can go towards helping to finance your band, arranging tours, recording demo’s etc. How can you do this through a web page or your MySpace page? Answer is – you can’t!!

Don’t think this will be expensive to setup, it won’t be.

If you would like a quote and discuss with us your needs send us an email to start the ball rolling.