Musician Website Quick Fix #2: Lose The Intro Page
This quick fix is a matter of opinion, but in my opinion – I don’t think Intro pages add much to a website’s value and can actually work against you.
Top 3 reasons why you should use an Intro page on your site:
1. You are promoting something in the short term, like a CD which is being released very soon. Adding a single call to action (Buy my CD here!) can focus your visitors attention to one thing.
2. Your website is under construction, and you want your visitors know that you are still there even though your site isn't accessible.
3. You have more than one website (one for your band, and one for your sound engineer business) and want your user to choose between these two website options right away when they land on your page.
Top 3 reasons NOT to have an Intro page:
1. It's annoying to your returning visitors – clicking "Enter Site" or "Skip Intro" is one extra click every single time they visit your website, before they can get to get to the good stuff (your blog, your music, your merch…and so on!) Extra clicks can mean people might not bother returning to the content.
2. It can hurt your rank with the search engines. Google picks up text content on your page and if the first page of your website is an Intro page, there isn’t much to tell Google if and how your site is relevant to search queries.
3. Confusing Navigation. Intro pages don’t have a menu like the inner website pages and this can be confusing to visitors landing on your page, especially if your “Enter Site” link is hard to see, or below the fold (meaning they would have to scroll down the page to even see it).
So tell me – do you use an Intro page for your website? If you do, is there a reason or a focus to it? I'd like to hear your thoughts!
More: Musician Website Quick Fix #1: Turn Off Auto-start
This guest post comes from Melanie Kealey, Support Technician at musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle.
While artists are at it (this goes for everyone actually) ax the automated music. Literally no one likes that!
Heh that was Quick Fix #1 https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/10/musician-website-quick-fix-1-turn-off-auto-start-music.html
Ideas for the next ones?
I heartily support both quick fixes to date!
Here’s a tip. Instead of just having one intro page, why not create a few different ones and use Google Website Optimizer or Kissmetrics to A/B test between each to see which one gives you the best outcome.
Not a bad idea, Jay, but usually a band website isn’t focused on only one main goal (ie, in our – Bandzoogle – case, user sign up).
The site needs to work for both a first time visitor who wants to check out a track or 2, an old fan that wants to see the latest tour dates, someone who wants to buy the new EP, a blogger that needs to “borrow” a bio and high-res picture, etc. you get my drift.
Since the goals of the site are very diverse, a/b testing isn’t as effective. You could always test against your main call-to-action (topic of an upcoming Quick Fix post), but unless your traffic volume is very high, I would be careful in interpreting the results.
One quick thing to look at, though, is the effect of having an intro page (vs. removing it) on your bounce rate in Analytics.