Effective websites for unsigned bands or acts

Effective websites for unsigned bands or acts: Welcome to the second installment of Hot Tip Tuesday, this week we’ll be giving you our tips on the importance of your website and how it should be used.

The essential point for any act after they’ve performed is to impress the audience and drive potential new fans to their all important website, and here is some handy advice on what to include and how to design a website effectively.

Why you need an effective website as an unsigned band or act

I know what you’re thinking...‘Why does my band need to know how to use a website, when Facebook is free?!’ Simply put: promotion is all about professionalism! Record labels and promoters want to see that your unsigned band or act is the real article; anyone can have a Facebook page, but a crisp/clear website will show the industry that you mean business!

Don’t get me wrong, your social media platforms are all essential tools, but a website is where you as an artist should be represented concisely with a range of pictures, events and music all clearly labelled and easily navigated.

The underlying, paramount principle that you should always carry with you when promoting yourself is that EVERYTHING needs to drive traffic to your website. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not soundcloud...all of your social media should engage people to click the link to your website. It’s the only place that people can get a clear snapshot of what you do and encourage them to see you live, buy your music/merchandise and get a different vibe of what you are about: music can be visual too!

So every post you do on Twitter/Facebook, every song you have on Soundcloud, every gig you promote, should where possible include a  link to your website. The idea is that you have all these social networks in place so people can find out about you, and then when they like what they see/hear, they’ll go to your website. At that point the hard work is done, you’ve achieved what you wanted – people are on a site dedicated entirely to you and your act!

Make sure your profile picture on Facebook and Twitter is the same as the main picture used on your website to create a working synergy across all of your platforms. The same applies to colour themes and logos, you want to make sure that your style and imagery is demonstrated clearly to increase brand awareness. This all follows onto physical marketing and promotion which we will come on to in coming weeks.

How to make the most of your website

Go surf the bands on the internet yourself for a while, you’ll notice that your subconscious will decide whether you like them within about 10 seconds. That means you have about 10 seconds to keep people on your website before they click the X, carry on surfing the internet and forget about you instantly.

Therefore, make sure that you’re directing people to the correct place on your website. End game goals are: you want people to buy your music, and/or; you want people to come see you live. So when you do a post about your new single on Soundcloud, make sure the one link you include is www.youramazingwebsite.com/buy-our-new-hit-single, alternatively if you’re advertising an upcoming gig on Facebook, make sure anyone that’s potentially interested gets directed easily and directly to www.youramazingwebsite.com/buy-tickets etc...

We think the artist Fugative has a great website, this is the model we like to use when we design artist’s websites: http://www.fugative.co.uk/ You will also notice that there is the easily accessible option to join his mailing list at the very top of the page – it’s a two step process, enter your name and email address, click submit – done! Data capture is very important in terms of keeping fans up-to-date with newsletters etc so this is another hot tip for how to use your website effectively.

The Fugative website also works quite well as all of the information on the site is populated from his social networks, so there is no need to content manage the site and he can simply update his Facebook events/pictures or do a tweet and it goes straight to the correct place on his website. This is a very useful way to manage content when under time constraints, as well as ensuring all his bases are covered uniformly. 

How do you use your website effectively as a promotional tool?

To summarise: you need to start with a clean and concise website that features the best of what you do – quality over quantity; you want to make sure it syndicates the same themes as your social networks and keep uniformity across all your online presence; it should be easy to navigate; and it should set the foundation and basis of what your act is about; and it should have data capture options so you can start to build a mailing database.

If you have any other tips, we want to hear them! Post your comments in the box below to help others and see if you can find your band or act some good tips too:  please feel free to post below!

In the coming months we will use Hot Tip Tuesday to give unsigned bands and acts tips on Facebook, SEO, gigs, as well as other aspects of the unsigned life - so come back next Tuesday for part three of Hot Tip Tuesday. 

Click here for Hot Tip Tuesday #1 on How To Use Twitter Effectively.