Many bands/artists look on their website as a sort of glossy online brochure that the web surfer will come and look at, read and listen to and go away fully satisfied. But this ‘brochure-ware’ view is missing out on the full potential and power of the web, your website has the potential to be much more than a glossy online brochure and more than one-way communication. A well designed and richly featured website can serve as a very powerful communication tool for any musician, band or artist and be a key part of a bands strategy for world domination. In the first part of this series, First Impressions, we looked at the brochure-like aspects of a band website - the look/design of the site and the ’static’ content and how these shape the new visitor’s initial impressions and whether they linger on your site or abandon you before the first page even loads. Now let’s take a look at some other ways a website can be used to communicate with the visitor and give that fan or potential fan a reason to keep coming back and keep up-to-date with your latest developments, develop a deeper connection with you or your band and become more active in supporting you (buy your music, attend your shows and spread the word to friends).

Message board / Guest-book

A message board or guestbook is a good first step in getting your fans and site visitors to interact with your site and add a new dimension of communication. It also adds some good content to your site as people like to read what others have to say about or to you. You can also post replies to comments to get a bit of a two-way dialog going. One thing you will need to watch out for and keep under control is for abuse and spam as this can choke and kill your guestbook. So you will need to monitor it fairly regularly and delete any spam or abusive messages. If spam becomes a problem that’s hard to keep on top of, an option it to have it set up as a moderated guestbook so that comments only appear in the guestbook once you have approved them.

Forum

Although it is possible to have a back and forth conversation using a guestbook, a forum allows for organisation of these conversations. This can work well once you have a decent number of visitors to your site. As well as having dialog with your or the band, your fans can also chat among themselves. For larger forums you can organise the conversations into sub-forums based on particular topics. Usually forums require the user to register whereas guestbooks generally don’t so the casual visitor to the site may be more likely to post a message in a guestbook whereas those who register for a forum will tend to be more serious fans or repeat visitors to the site. A forum can be a bit of a chicken and egg game because a site visitor will generally be more interested in posting to a forum if it already has a good deal of interesting conversations going on. So if you want a forum that is a worthwhile feature on your website you need to get active in encouraging people to use it, especially at the beginning to get it kick-started. It may be a good idea to wait until your site is getting a fair bit of traffic and you have a significant number of fans signed up to your message list that you can invite along to get it started.

Mailing list signup / Newsletter

Once music fans have visited your website and expressed interest in your music, the next trick is to get them to keep coming back. A regular email update or newsletter is a great way to keep you on your fans radar. If you offer some incentive for signing up, e.g. free music download, you will have more success at getting people to sign up. You can send out your email update regularly such as every month or just whenever you have special announcements such as a new album, upcoming tour etc. It is a good idea to include plenty of links back to the website in your email.

Blog/News

Regular updates to your website are key to making your website a success and one great way to provide a continuous stream of fresh content on your site is to maintain a blog (online diary or news section). Once you have a blog set up on your website you simply log in and write a message like the way you would write an email and it appears at the top of your blog page (or news page or whatever you call it). The great thing about a regularly updated blog is that it lets visitors to the site know that the site is that you or your band are active, your site is alive and not something that’s out of date and long forgotten about (as many band websites are). It also gives the fan a reason to bookmark your site and come back to it later since they know there will be something new to read about. For these very same reasons, search engines like Google and Yahoo are programmed to like blogs too so a blog will do wonders for your search engine rankings. It doesn’t even have to be very much, just a regular posting about what’s going on with you band or whatever rantings you have that you think people might be interested in. The important thing is to just do it, have fun with it and do it as regularly as you can.

Web forms

Web forms allow a visitor to your site to send you a message, which usually goes to your email, directly from your website without having to go into their email application. If you provide a web form on a contact page you will be likely to get more messages sent to you than if you simply provide an email address. This is because the box to type in the message is there staring the visitor in the face and they don’t have to open their email application and copy in your email address so it encourages more spontaneity.

Gig Listings / Tour dates

Gig listings or tour dates are an essential component of any band website and a prime reason why an interested fan would bookmark your web site and return to it later. So it goes without saying that it is important to get the information about your gigs up on your website as soon as it becomes available. One aspect of gig listings that sometimes gets ignored is removing the listings once the event has passed. This is important because old listings in your gigs section right away make your site look unmaintained, ignored and irrelevant. A very easy way to prevent this from ever happening is to use a purpose built event listing manager that automatically removes the listing once the date has passed. Of course a record of your past gigs is interesting information to have on your website so it’s a good idea to not delete the listing entirely once the date has passed but instead move it from upcoming gigs into an archive listing of past shows.

Comments (blog postings, photos, etc.)

It can be a great addition to your site to have a way for visitors to have multiple opportunities to leave comments on your website. Firstly it allows the visitor to interact with your site and secondly the comments left provide a source of fresh content for your site that others will linger to read. Pretty much all blogging systems come with a comments feature built in. Another area that’s ideal for adding a comments feature to is your photo section as often people will have comments to make on your pictures and the comments added can provide good content to go along with the pictures.

Audio/Video

Pretty much every band or artist will want to put a sample of their music on their website, the music is what it’s all about after all. You can choose to put short samples, full tracks for streaming or full tracks for free download for free or for a cost (we’ll have a whole article on selling your music from your website coming soon). As with the written content on your site, it’s important to keep providing fresh audio and video content. Good sources of fresh audio or video content are live recordings, remixes, demos and interviews.

Stay tuned for Part 3 (Profit by selling your music on your website)

A visitor’s first impression will be created the instant they first set eyes on your website. He/she will form an opinion about you from the overall look of the site - does it look nice, professional?, does the image fit the band or a potential fan’s tastes?, is it obvious to the visitor how to find what he/she is looking for? Make sure the site is reasonably fast loading or you may loose some visitors before they even get a good glimpse of your site. Flash based websites can often be slow to load and a percentage of visitors will give up and surf to a different website once they have looked at a ‘Loading, please wait…’ message for a few seconds, so in general it is better to stick with a standard HTML based website.

Once new visitors have landed on your site and their initial impression did not cause them to abort their mission of checking you out, they will continue shaping their initial impression of you from the information presented on the web pages - the static content, the information that is more or less permanent (at least until the next website update). This is you communicating to the world about who you are, what you do and why people should like you. Web surfers have notoriously short attention spans, so make this content easy and enjoyable to read. Use photos and images to keep it visually stimulating. Present it in a concise format suitable for skimming - use high impact headings and keep text blocks short. If you have a lot of textual information that you really want to put on the site, break it up into sub pages suitable for the visitor that is in no hurry and wants to delve deeper but get your point across concisely on the top level pages. When you are creating the content for these pages, keep in mind your primary audience - your fans and potential fans. Music industry professionals may be among the audience too but consider them secondary. They will be the primary audience when you create your press kit or electronic press kit.

Continue to Part 2: Turn your band website into your online communication center

more professional image, shows you are serious - Most artists that do not have their own website and rely on MySpace or similar service for their sole web presence are usually very minor artists that are just starting out. If you have your own dedicated website it shows to both your potential fans and music industry scouts that you are taking a more professional approach to your music career.

establish your own identity - Although you can customise MySpace to a certain extent, the prime branding and identity associated with a MySpace page is that of MySpace itself. Although you can customise the look of you page you are limited to the ‘cookie-cutter’ format that MySpace provides you with. Most bands will want to have a uniquely designed website to reflect the unique nature of their music.

you are in full control - When using MySpace or similar service you are adding your content to a big corporation’s website and they are the ones calling the shots. You can never be sure how your content will be displayed or used in the future. In fact until recently the fine print in the MySpace user agreement read “You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services” (MySpace did revise this clause after Billy Brag brought it to public attention in 2006 and caused a bit of a stir). Having your own website puts you in full control of your content. Also, it is more reliable for the long term since your own site will be around for as long as you want whereas there are no guarantees with sites owned by another party.

you can sell your music from your own website - Although it is possible to sell your music in MP3 format on MySpace you are limited to the one channel that MySpace provides and to its terms and conditions including hefty commissions. If you have your own website you can sell your digital music and/or physical CDs and other merchandise by any method you choose including providing an integration with some other online retailer of your own choosing. You control how and what you sell.

low cost, high value - The initial expense of putting up a website might be off-putting to some artists that are not exactly flush with funds. However the cost of putting up a website may actually be much lower than you might have imagined, especially if you use a low cost service provider like MusicianSites.net, and the resulting value of having a website makes it a really small investment that pays off big time.

command a fuller attention - when someone visits your MySpace page they come with very divided attention, after all it is a social networking site and the whole point is connecting with and adding to their long list of ‘friends’. When someone visits your own official website, all the focus is on you and your music and the visitor has more opportunity and incentive to linger and explore and develop a deeper connection to you and your music.

not everyone is a registered MySpace user or likes MySpace - although MySpace is extremely popular, there are a lot of people who, for various reasons, have not registered for MySpace. Sure, they can still find and access your MySpace profile but will be unlikely to connect with you through MySpace. There are even some people who have a dislike for MySpace, perhaps for such reasons as it being part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, and will not have any interest in viewing your MySpace page. Having your own website that belongs to no one but you provides a neutral ground for everyone.

free from banner advertising distractions - MySpace is free to advertise whatever they want on your profile - that’s the main way they make their money. Your own website can be free of such distractions so that the entire focus is on you and your music.

a more personal experience for your fans - Having your own website designed to suit your image will give your site visitors a much more personal experience than a MySpace page could. You can create communication channels with your fans of your own choosing rather than relying on the generic ones provided by a social networking site.

MySpace is a great tool to help you reach new fans and is a must-have for every aspiring artist these days. But for artists that are serious about building their music careers it should be used as a complement to a dedicated website rather than a substitute for one.

• Home page - every website has a home page but you will need to consider what you want to display it. The first page that your visitors land on should encourage them to continue exploring your site. You will probably have some important things to promote such as a new record release, upcoming gigs, etc. and may want to feature them on the home page. But be carefull not to overload the home page and make it confusing for site visitors.
• Biography (About Us, Bio, Background, Band History, Artist Profile, etc.) - Most likely you will want to tell the world a little bit about yourself or your band. Bands may also want to include separate biographies for the individual band members. Some photos are also a good idea on these pages.
• Contact Information - you can provide email addresses, telephone numbers and your other preferred means of being contacted. You may choose to provide separate contact information for bookings, management etc. It is a good idea to protect email addresses from the robots that harvest email addresses for spamming purposes. An effective way to do this is to use an image instead of text to display the email address. You may also consider contact forms where someone can send you a message straight from your website.
• News and/or Blog - a great way to keep your site fresh and interesting and keep your fans coming back is to have a news section or blog that you update regularly. Musicians usually have lots of interesting things going on that fans would be very interested in reading about - e.g. recording sessions, shows that were particularly notable, charting successes, lineup changes, etc. You can also make your site interesting by covering topics unrelated to your musical act that happen to be of special interest to you. You fans can add their contributions in the form of comments or you can even invite some of your fans to write blogs of their own on your site.
• Mailing List Signup - Most music fans like to be kept informed when anything new is going on with their favorite bands and mailing lists are an ideal way to do this. You can develop a special relationship with your fans and allow them to feel more connected with you. Music fans are more likely to purchase records or go to gigs of artists that they feel a special connection to.
• Gig/Tour Listings - An up to date listing of upcoming shows is a must for any performing artist and is a prime reason why someone will visit your site. It is best to have listings automatically removed once that date has past so that your site looks well maintained. You may also want to keep an archive of past shows.
• Press and/or Reviews - If other people are writing favorable things about your musical act you will want to include them on your web site. It is a good idea to have a copy of the articles on your own website instead of just linking to the external websites because the articles may not always be present on the other websites.
• Press pack (Electronic press kit) - As a compliment to your physical press pack, you may want to provide an online package of information designed for journalists, bookers and promoters so that they can ’self-service’ themselves and access the information and materials they need when evaluating or writing about your band. If you do not already have a press pack you should find it easy to prepare after putting your website together since you can re-use some of the same content that is used on your website. But keep in mind when using existing website content as a basis for your press kit that your target audience is music industry professionals (prospective business partners) not your existing fan-base or potential new fans.
• Photo Gallery - Things you will need to consider if you are planning an area on your site for photos are: how you want to organise the photos (all photos together on a single page or a number of different photo albums), should the photos have titles and captions/descriptions?, do you want site visitors to be able to comment on the photos?
• Guest Book (message board) - A guest book is a great way to allow your fans and site visitors to interact with the site. The comments they leave make interesting reading for other site visitors and add a point of interest to your site that grows all by itself. One thing you have to watch out for is spam. You should monitor the guestbook regularly and delete any spam message you find. If spam becomes a problem you can make the guestbook a moderated one, i.e. comments only appear once you approve them.
• Discussion Forum (discussion group) - An online discussion forum goes beyond a simple guest book or message board and allows you to organize conversations (or discussion threads) by different categories. It is a good alternative to a guest book if you expect the site to have a reasonable number of repeat visitors that are inclined to interact with the site and each other and provides a platform for band members to communicate with their fans.
• Online Shop (online store, e-commerce, music sales) - Using your website as a virtual shop for selling your music and merchandise is a great idea and can be very profitable. If you are dealing with hard goods such as physical CDs, tee-shirts etc., you will need to have a plan in place for shipping the orders and providing customer service. One option is to do it by yourself, use a friend or have paid professional fulfill your orders. If there is already an online store that sells your records you might be able to make a deal with them whereby you get a commission for sales made from your website. Alternatively you can use one of the online web businesses, such as CD Baby.com or Bathtubmusic.com, that sell music recordings for independent artists. If you are selling digital copies of your music you can use your website to automatically handle your orders.
• Music player and/or downloads (music jukebox, streaming music, mp3s) - You have many options for putting your music on your website. A good option is to have a music player on your site that allows site visitors to listen to your music directly from the website. You will need to consider which of your songs you want to make available and whether they should be complete tracks or just samples. Also consider if you want to have your music play automatically when a visitor opens your website. It is debatable whether or not this is a good idea since some users might not be expecting it and may be startled and annoyed by it (especially if they are browsing your website from work!). A better option might be to have a very obvious ‘play’ button that the visitor can choose to click on if they want to hear your music. In addition to or instead of providing streaming music from a website jukebox you can provide downloads of your tracks/samples.
• Video - a great option for providing video on your site is to host your videos at a video website such as YouTube and simply embed them on your own web pages. You can also host the videos directly on your own site. Videos use a lot of bandwidth and you can use up your hosting plan’s bandwidth allowance very fast if you have a lot of visitors accessing videos hosted on your site. This is not an issue if you are hosting your videos on another site such as YouTube.
• Links - many websites include a links page but that does not mean you need to do it too. If you have a links page, make sure you have a good reason for having it. A well purposeful and organised links page can be a useful resource to site visitors. It can be beneficial to provide links to other related websites in exchange for them linking to you for the purpose of getting traffic to your website and boosting your search engine rankings.