Why the appearance of your artist website is so important

With so much activity taking place on social media, it’s often easy for artists to neglect their website – if they have one at all – but the appearance of you artist site is actually incredibly impactful on your brand and the user experience.

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

It’s easy to take an artist or band website for granted. After all, we’re all pretty well-versed in social media these days, and it’s easy to think that a website is unnecessary. Even worse is that we take it lightly and create something that’s a placeholder at best. Lest you think that it’s not important, here are some findings from the latest OnePoll report that might change your mind.

• The average person has abandoned 24 online purchases this year because a company’s website looked unprofessional. Maybe that’s merch or maybe it’s a physical product like vinyl. Either way, that’s money not in your pocket when it could easily have been.
• In fact, in the past month people have not gone through with an average of $61 worth of purchases because they were unsure about the website. Once again, this could happen on your site and affect your pocketbook as a result.
• 82% of respondents admitted to being less likely to make a purchase if a website appears dated. It’s easy enough to create a website, but styles change and people see the latest and greatest every day. They expect that from you too, so do you best to keep up with the latest design changes and layouts. The feeling is that if you can’t keep your site fresh looking, then your merch might be the same way.
• 6 in 10 people are “disappointed” if an artist or band doesn’t have a website. You can’t simply rely on social media for your online presence to supply all the info that fans or potential fans want to discover about you. A website is the only thing that can deliver that experience to them.
• On the other hand, half of those polled say they’re “disappointed” if you have only a website, but no social media presence. You can’t do one without the other. They both go hand-in-hand to make up your online presence. There are a lot of artists (especially older ones) that hate social media, but you forsake it at your own peril.

It’s not enough to have just a flashy website either. You need the right elements for it to be truly useful to you. Keeping your site fresh can be a pain, but it’s all part of the way the music business is currently conducted.

You can read more about artist websites in my Social Media Promotion For Musicians handbook and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.