Quality features of musicians websites is a common question people ask me in my daily job as a digital consultant. For once, there are many resources that tell you what you need to include into a musician website.
For example, having a place where fans can sign up to your newsletter is helpful. Also, having nice pictures and videos are vital in order to reach your fans.
Moreover, doing an SEO biography is important in order to transport your story. What is more, displaying your EPK in a professional way can really help you attract industry personal to work with you.
As an illustration, imagine you did a website having all those features and more. And now? How do you know that the website is actually good?
It might look good, sure, but does it work in terms of search engine optimisation? Fear not, in this blog post you’ll learn about the most prominent quality features for websites.
Of course, this only can be a glimpse into the world of websites and SEO. However, it may be enough to get you started!
What quality features of musicians websites to look out for
Arguably one of the most important things to look out for is page speed. That means how fast your website loads. You can easily check this by using the Google Page Speed Insights.
Of course, this is only one tool for checking the page speed. There is also GTmetrics and many more.
However, don’t get to hung up about it. Choose one or two tools and go for it. The brilliant thing about the Google Page Speed Insights is that it tells you straight forward what you can do better.
This is brilliant, just use this as a guideline what to improve and your page speed will go up.
You might be wondering, why is page speed so important? The answer is simple, the longer it takes for your website to load the more people bounce off.
This is crazy, the attention span of modern internet users declines more and more. That means, that nobody has the patience to wait for a website to load.
What is more, search engines take the page speed as one of the so called ranking factors. Google and co uses factors like page speed to determine the quality of a website.
Of course, they only want to display good websites on the first page of the search results. If your page is simply too slow, it won’t rank well!
How can you increase page speed on your website?
Optimising your website is an ongoing process. Mind that this is never really finished. Search engines constantly work on improving the search experience. The same way you should be working on your website. One of the most common ways for people to build websites is to use the WordPress content management system.
- Compress the size of your pictures:
This is crazy, I see so many musician websites with awesome photos. However, most of the time, they are not compressed at all. That means that they’ve been uploaded onto the website with their original size. By all means, that might be simply too much. Make sure to compress your pictures first before uploading them to your website. There are many tools. TinyPNG is just one of them. Also, you can use Adobe Photoshop and simply save the picture for the web. - Browser Caching:
Another easy way for you to improve your page speed. Browser caching means that you install a plugin like W3 Total Cache. The basic idea is that caching is fetching a version of your site into storage. When someone goes onto your website again, the caching can serve the website out of the storage instead of loading it completely new every time. This can improve page speed enormously.
Minifying your HTML code can help a lot!
- Minify HTML code on your website:
When you start working on your website you hardly ever think about this. However, after a while, the HTML code can become really crowded. However, this is a factor that slows websites down. If you first need to load tonnes of HTML code, then this can take some time. Be mindful and only display HTML code you really need. If you’re not really good with programming yourself, a plugin might be the simplest solution. Again, there are super many plugins. Always look out for ones with positive reviews and make sure that they work with your version of WordPress.
Text length, readability and formatting are surprisingly important quality features of musicians websites!
One thing most musician websites are missing is a long text. This means that the biography might not be long enough. Also, use the space you have on your website.
Perhaps you can write blog posts about your experiences as a musician. Also, you can write tutorials about your best performing tracks so your fans can learn them quicker.
What is more, you can really tell your own story. Where does your inspiration for your music comes from? What was the process of writing the newest tracks?
There is so much you can write about as a musician, make the most out of it!
What is more, take real care about the readability of the text displayed. So often musician biographies got written by a journalist. This might be a good idea from a PR standpoint. However, not all journalist are trained in writing the text for websites.
This is crazy if a text is hard to read it can really influence the quality of your website. Especially search engines are on the lookout for easy to read websites.
Use tools like Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress to improve the readability of your text!
Formatting your text is super underrated!
Another important yet underrated thing on musician websites is proper formatting. For once, this can help the website viewer to digest the content quickly.
What is more, search engines have a real eye for formatting. Don’t forget, search engines are comprised of little bots that crawl the internet for websites.
When a bot comes and visits your site for inspection it needs to be easy to crawl it. One way you can ensure this is to use proper formatting.
Use H1/H2 tags, number lists and bullet points to break down your content. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Use bold and italic to highlight important parts.
*source: Neil Patel
Keep your website fresh, the quality features of musicians websites!
This is crazy, so many musicians only work on their website when they have a new album coming out. This means on average every two to four years.
For you that might not be very long. However, in internet time this sounds more like an eternity. This is why it is so important to continuously work on your website.
Try to display fresh content as often as possible. Having a little blog on site can really help with this.
Also, make sure that your EPK is always updated. What is more, make sure all dates are current. If you can’t tour right now, make sure to highlight live streams and YouTube premieres.
Another idea is to keep a photo diary of your daily life as a musician. Perhaps you also write poems on the side? Perfect for keeping your content fresh yet relevant to your fans!
Engage your fans by using striking call-to-action features!
This is another point I see very often. Musicians are really shy to ask their fans to do something.
They don’t want to appear pushy. Also, there is a common misconception that if you ask your fans to do something is not cool. The music should speak for itself kind of.
However, keep in mind that your fans use the internet all the time. Hence, they are really used to see call-to-action (CAT). Actually, if you miss out of CAT it can be really confusing for fans.
They kind of expect you to tell them what to do. And that is what a call-to-action is all about.
Implement buttons with short and catching phrases like ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Stream Now On Spotify’. Underlay the button with a link to your merch site or streaming platform.
Make sure the CAT stands out and grabs ones attention.
Even informational sites want visitors to read and share articles, follow the company on social media, download toolkits, join mailing lists or learn more about the organization. Include an ask on each page.
*source: Ideas On Purpose
Be professional with your website and show it!
Here you had some quick ways on how to improve the quality of your website. Of course, there are many more factors. However, if you are just starting out then keeping it simply may be the way forward.
Once you are more knowledgeable you can always amp up your actions. However, just being aware that there’s more to a website then just its looks can really help.
For once, being more aware of the quality of your website can really help you make the most out of it. Also, if you work together with a programmer it gives you a toolkit on what to ask for.
Don’t dismiss things like page speed as something for tech nerds. Make sure to have the quality of your musician website always at the back of your mind.
Be a pro and show it!