Why Does My Band Need A Web Site?

A lot of bands put off getting a website - where as others jump straight in and get one as soon as possible. We need happy medium here people, dont rush in, make sure you are going to actually put up quality content. Is there a need for a website if your in a band? Absolutely!! You have to do your research though, answer yourself these simple 5 questions before getting a website:

1. How are people going to find our site once it is online?

2. Who is going to design, create and maintain our site?

3. What is going to be on this site? Gig updates, biography, photos, your music for example.

4. How much is all this going to cost?

5. How are we going to finance this?

This site is going to be the calling card of your band, it is going to be the place where people can look and listen to you whenever and wherever they are. This site has to hit them straight in the face and make people think WOW!! I strongly advise putting your music on this site for people to listen to - what sort of message are you sending out if you don't? "Um - Yeah we are a great band, but we aren't going to give a sample of any of our music!", just don't do it! Make sure you do this correctly though, if you can't do it correctly - then don't do it at all. Make sure that the music is really good quality, you dont want some hissing music thats recorded poorly, ok it doesn't have to be amazing studio quality but it has to sound good.

Above anything a website is showing your audience that you have control and professionalism, if you want to be taken seriously - you need a website. Once you have a site, your music is now being played to the world!! Anyone can listen to it. Dont get a profile page or a MySpace page confused with a website, while these are good and they have their uses, they have their limits. A website on the other hand - it has no limits to what you can do, it can be as big or as small as you want it to be. A well designed, well maintained website will give you an advantage over other bands that maybe only have a MySpace page.

As vital as a press pack is to send to radio stations, promoters and gig organisers - a website is an online press pack, it has everything! You can track the visitors to your website - I do. Google Analytics is ideal for this, it shows you exactly how many visitors you have had in day, how many times each of those visitors have viewed your site. One of the great things you can use with it is that it shows you where those visitors are from, so if you have loads of hits from a particular city, you know you can use that information and set up a few gigs around that area. Promote it well on your site and you know it wil be a success, give them notice of where you are playing. On the flip side to that, set up a mini tour around a city where you have had few hits and see how successful your tour is by looking at your hit rate a week later. You will find you hopefully get more hits after gigging there. Market that information correctly and keep them coming back and you can visibly see your fan base grow, use all this information correctly on your website. If you have finished a mini tour, tell them when you are coming back, tell the local radio stations, give them all this information and people will soon hear about you and spread the word.

Carefully plan what you are going to put on your site, of course you know that your are going to have brief biography of your band with a few sample songs and some cool photos. These are obvious things to include - and while they are good, you should think about a few other things too. Maybe not include these things straight away but definately in the future, always look at how you can improve your website. Lets be honest - your fans want you to have a website.

One of the things that I love most about a website is the potential it brings to earn you money. You can sell merchandise through it for starters. You can generate income through ads if needs be. All these things can go towards helping to finance your band, arranging tours, recording demo's etc. How can you do this through a web page or your MySpace page? Answer is - you can't!!

Don't think this will be expensive to setup, it won't be. Web hosting is very cheap and there are practically no limits to the size you will need your site to be. If you can't afford for someone to design and build you a site at first, then there are loads of free website building packages out there, obviously some better than other. A great one is NVU, this is easy to use if you want to give it a try, it has a great help section and there are support forums available on the net. You can then build one yourself, get it hosted and as your band grows, save up a little money and then pay a professional to give your site a facelift, give it all the technical things you are unable to do. The angle you want to take is up to you, but remember one thing from this post - I need to get a website!!!