For musicians, fans fuel their passion to continue creating beautiful music. But it's not just music alone that drives out fans to follow someone. They are also drawn to personality, charisma, and a lot of PR. Maybe you have been observing this from fans of K-pop that shaped the music industry across the world. It's a total package.
However, if you are a musician who is just starting to create a name in the industry, you'll find it challenging to gather a huge following. While it is possible to have that instant fame and fandom through social media, the odds of having that viral story or video is so small. Most of the time, you'll be needing to organically build your way up using the right PR strategies and with the help of technology.
Online presence in the music industry is what most artists are banking on. The online realm is vast, and it can increase your connections exponentially.
And if you want to stay long in the industry, you have to be where your fans are. Meanwhile, you have to keep on honing your craft to have something fresh to bring them.
The digital world could be demanding but the rewards are definitely great out there.
A musician website can provide you with a lot of benefits as you achieve your career objectives. Whether you are a seasoned artist or someone who is simply following his or her dreams, you need a platform to share your music, interact with your fans, and to reach out to clients and producers. And the ideal and fastest way to reach a bigger audience is by building your online presence.
KPIs of a Great Musician Website Experience
I'd like to emphasize that a musician portfolio website alone won't suffice; it has to be packaged to be engaging enough to draw fans and stay loyal to you. But most importantly, it has to embody you as an artist and music creator.
For a band website to gain the traction it needs, it should set high standards in the following elements, as well as achieve them:
Aesthetic Appeal
Yes, music is also a multi-sensory experience, at least for fans nowadays.
Aside from beautiful melody and heartfelt lyrics, fans also feast on what they see. Hence, you'll see that professional bands and musicians have a PR team that prepares them before getting on-stage with wardrobe and makeup that matches their music genre.
When it comes to a musician website, you only have a small window of opportunity to receive that best impression. And it should be engaging enough so that potential fans will continue to know more about you.
The best band and musician website should look easy on the eyes while maintaining an engaging vibe.
Coherence
To have that organized look and collective understanding of the message you want to send across through your website, it has to look and feel coherent.
There are many ways you can achieve coherence in a musician or band website. It could be through a theme, a color scheme, typography, and recurring elements like a logo.
It is a must that you brainstorm about the holistic vibe you want to achieve with your musician website. Meanwhile, you can work with your website designer or look out for musician website templates that fit your music style.
Loading Speed
No one delights in any form of an unnecessary waiting game. In the online world, everything is fast-paced, and opportunities can easily come and go.
Loading speed pertains to how fast your musician website's landing page loads when clicked. It might seem a small detail, but it becomes crucial when the competition is tight or the need is urgent. In fact, multiple studies show that a site's loading speed impacts overall user experience, which can span to sales and conversion rates.
The good news is that loading speeds can be optimized through a good website design. The best musician websites are known to consider this aspect seriously, and you should too.
Interactive Elements
A static webpage is not only boring but also fails the search engines' point system for user-intuitiveness. It is pointless to have a musician website that isn't discoverable on the web.
Call-to-action buttons encourage activity and interaction, which simulates you providing the information to your visitors. See how a musician website can work on your behalf, even when you are resting or on a vacation.
Optimization
One of the most critical aspects of optimization that any website should achieve is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
There are actually many facets comprising an SEO-optimized website design.
For a musician website, content helps provide information about you and what you can offer to your audience. In creating online content, keywords are essential so that search engines can recognize you and display you on relevant search query results.
When a band website is SEO-optimized, it will be displayed on Google's first page if anyone types a relevant keyword like "musician near me", "musician for hire", or more specific ones like "musician in Brooklyn", "musician jazz music in Brooklyn". To achieve this, you should follow the updated SEO guidelines in writing content.
Aside from content, there are other elements you should also put great attention to in your musician website. According to Moz.com, you should also take note of loading speed, snippet features, and mobile optimization.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate pertains to how your website converts page views to sales, or leads to clients, and visitors to fans.
For a musician, a high conversion rate translates to more album sales, bookings, and PR exposures. A musician website, aside from being engaging, must also easily transition the visitor towards the booking page. Thus, all the elements in it must improve the user experience, enough to encourage a booking.
Aside from engaging elements with your music as the highlight, a musician website must include an inquiry and booking page. This centralizes the activities within your website and at the same time, provides a faster way for your visitors to book you.
In the same manner, converting visitors to fans is one of the most rewarding ROI of band websites.
User-friendliness
Aside from visual aesthetics, how user-friendly a website impacts the whole user experience.
The best musicians websites may have tabs and buttons that are placed within the pages where it can be easily accessed by visitors. Making it easily-navigable helps them locate the information they need about you.
There are many ways to promote user-friendliness in a website. Aside from locating the buttons where they can be easily seen, you can also organize your information into sections through tabs.
Communication Channels
A musician website should also encourage interaction to bring-in more fans and improve website traffic and views. You can connect your social media channels to it or have video conferencing apps integrate a live webinar video in your landing page.
Electronic Press Kit
Every musician's must-haves include an Electronic Press Kit, which should contain all the marketing collateral in line with your music and services. Make sure to make it is downloadable so it also serves as a handy file for talent scouts.
An EPK should at least have this basic information. You can add as much relevant information, but make sure everything is easily digestible and will make an impression right away.
- A short bio
- Professional headshots of your band and individual members
- Contact information like links to your social media pages, email address, and office or phone number
Ways to Create a Swoon-worthy Musician Website
By now you realize the importance of having a musician website, much more making it swoon-worthy and remarkable. While it should highlight you as an artist, and your music as your piece of art, it should also help you create that image and name in the industry.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) I mentioned above are only the minimum requirements. What sets you apart from the competition is still how you'll meld all the elements together and harmonize them all to represent your image and music well.
Creating that swoon-worthy musician website is now made easier with website templates musicians. Premade templates are already optimized to meet the minimum standards in achieving a great website experience.
However, these musician website templates are only as good as its content. It should not be the star, but will only complement and put the spotlight on your talent. Every element should empower your music; thus, everything starts in you.
Fans have always been emotional about their idols. With this insight, their whole musician website experience must contain your personal touch. Website musician templates just serve as barebones of the whole experience but are critical to its success. Thus, it is essential to use templates that are optimized.
Here are more tips in creating a musician website that fans will take pride in, and will land you the bookings you dream of having:
- Get inspiration from the best musician websites. They are the "best" for a reason. Go ahead and explore it.
- Use the best musicians website builder. As many aspects are affecting the whole user experience, it pays to invest in reliable website builders.
If you can, use paid website hosting. But if resources are limited, there are also free website hosting pages that can provide the essentials and is good as a head start.
