If you’re ready to go pro, you’ll want your music website to look the part. Here’s what you need to do:
Every musician wants to look professional, right? It’s so important to present yourself in the best possible light. After all, if you don’t look professional, who will hire you as a performer? Who will come to see you perform? Who will buy your album?
But there are just so many ways to build a professional look! It can be hard to know where to start. This is where we come in. We know how hard you work, and we want to help you make the most of your professional endeavours. That’s why we’ve put together this guide on how to build a professional look for your music website. Let’s get started!
In order to succeed as a musician, your website should serve as a hub for all your promotional needs. It should serve as a direct, up-to-date and reliable source of information about the latest music, upcoming shows, merchandise and more – all of that nice stuff.
Additionally, it puts you in full control of how your brand is perceived online.
What are the benefits of creating a website for your music?
Musicians that have their own websites have some advantages not available through social media alone.
An artist’s website is a great way to make a great first impression when fans search for you online (and they will), as well as showing promoters, booking agents, the press and media that they are serious about their work.
Also, you can achieve this goal with the help of your own website:
- Become more aware of your audience
You can identify your visitors through website analytics and data tracking tools, allowing you to better understand your target market and optimize your website to meet their needs.
- Make your fans’ experience customisable
We let you choose your website design, navigation, and content; so your fans are not interrupted by ads or other irrelevant content as they are with social media.
- Maximize your earning potential
You should consider using your website to sell your merchandise and allow fans to donate to you through crowdfunding and subscription services.
- Develop a robust mailing list
Fans can subscribe to your regular newsletters by signing up on your website. Direct communication via email is a valuable form of music promotion.
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As a musician, your online presence is your lifeline. Not only do you need to be able to book gigs and sell tickets, but you also need to connect with fans and share your music.
How can you make sure that potential fans who land on your website are excited by what they see?
We’ve got a few tips for how to build a professional look for your music website that will showcase your talent, help grow your brand, and keep listeners coming back for more.
1. Decide which platform to use to build your website
Chances are you’ll want to take advantage of a ready-made website builder tool unless you’re extremely proficient in HTML, CMS, CSS, or any other similar scary acronyms.
You will have a lot of options to choose from!
Your choice depends on your budget and what you want your music website to accomplish.
Since there are a lot of options out there, we’ve compiled a shortlist of the 8 best ones currently available on the web.
A website builder allows you to build your own site without knowing how to code.
2. Artistic Identity
When you’re a musician, your website is a crucial tool for building your brand and connecting with your audience. To stand out in the crowded online space, you need to create an artistic identity that’s unique to your music and personality. But where do you even begin?
There’s probably nothing better than customizing the appearance and design of your website so that it exactly matches what you want it to be!
There are hundreds of free website builders available online, so you can use one to get started, but it’s up to you to customize the layout, colour scheme, fonts, and more so it feels uniquely yours. As opposed to being a fixed entity, these templates can serve as a springboard.
You are the one who decides how your website looks. It needs to visually reflect who you are and what you care about.
Make sure that you take into consideration factors such as:
- How readable is the font in terms of its size and style?
- Will your brand be reflected in it?
- When it comes to colour schemes if you are a heavy metal band, will a pink colour scheme really portray the image that you want to convey? You might prefer dark red or black.
- It is best to use no more than two or three colours – a primary colour, a secondary colour and maybe a third accent colour.
3. Adding an image to the header of your website
You should upload a header image for your site, as it will be the first thing visitors will see on your web page when they click on it. Your header image will be at the top of the homepage, meaning it will be likely the first thing that catches their eye upon arriving.
- Your first impression is crucial. The opening header image should blow people away instead of being a crop, out of focus image that gives them an impression of your band or you as a whole.
- The header image should aesthetically convey your music brand, just like your theme.
- A well-shot video should also look professional and be of high quality (even if it wasn’t).
- An example of a header image you could use is one of your most recent press pictures, artwork from your latest album.
- Taking great press shots isn’t as hard as you think.
4. Don’t forget to add content that you think is amazing
An artist’s website should provide all of the most relevant and up-to-date information about them as well as things they’d find hard to find anywhere else, such as a music player and show tickets, as well as things that won’t be found anywhere else like an email sign-up and a press kit.
It is up to you to decide what to include in terms of content. There are a few important items you need to keep in mind that include the following.
- There should be a section on the artist’s bio or about the artist
- Featured the best images in a photo gallery
- You can embed a music player or provide links to streaming platforms where it is possible to listen to music
- The possibility of signing up for an email newsletter
- Information on how to contact you
- Links to your Electronic Press Kit
- Post videos detailing the behind-the-scenes of the shooting of your music videos as well as links to your music videos on video streaming services
- Make sure you include links to all of your social networking profiles
- Create an online store where you can sell merchandise
- Tour dates and tickets must be published as soon as they are available
5. Keeping a close eye on your audience
You should not forget to take a stab at data, metrics, and analytics after you dive into the world of data.
The likes, comments, and shares from your fans and followers on social media provide immediate gratification. Every one of those small pieces of data indicates whether people are loving your content or not. The situation is different with websites.
Tools such as Google Analytics can help you learn which parts of your website are working and which parts aren’t. Plus, if you don’t know how many new Instagram followers you gained this month compared to last month, you can get much more in-depth and high-level data from a website.
Analytics can be used to gain insight into factors like these, so you can understand what’s going on with your website.
- In effect, the bounce rate of your website is the average number of days spent on your page
- In order to find out who your audience is, you need to know their ages, location, gender, etc.
- The right numbers represent the largest indicator of how many people are searching you through Google off their own backs
- Check your best-performing pages: the pages that are generating the most engagement or impressions
The process of creating and owning your very own website doesn’t have to be a daunting one, instead, it can be a cool way for you to own online real estate for storing your most precious stuff. Your own little slice of the web that you’ve created, your identity.
You are now ready to discover how to distribute your music worldwide as an independent artist without a big investment, and how to find your first gig on the best platforms.