Table of Contents
From time to time, I will do music website reviews on my social media channels as a way to give some customized website advice to various music brands.
These music website reviews showcase some of my best recommendations for standing out from the crowd and modernizing your website design.
Narrow down your brand colors & use them strategically
I typically recommend that brands get 2-3 primary colors in place, 2-3 secondary colors in place, as well as neutrals that will help to balance out their designs.
In Amoeba Music’s case (in the above music website review) – there are too many bold competing colors on the page. This is causing the human eye to jump around the page a bit because we aren’t sure where to look.
Instead – I would suggest using their brightest brand color as their call to action color throughout the pages. This will help them to draw attention to the most important components of their pages (where the audience can buy their merchandise).
Additionally, you want to try to train your website visitors on what to look for when something is clickable. Because of this – I always suggest to my website design clients that we use a singular color for all of the links and buttons throughout the page.
With this website design strategy, the visitor starts to associate that specific color with something that they can take action on. This helps to create a better website browsing experience and can build more trust within your music brand.
Create a focal point for your main call to action
In this music website review, you can see that many offers are being presented at the same time. This can cause the website visitor to become overwhelmed because all of the offers are competing for attention.
If your goal is to drive more sales in your music business, I would suggest creating a focal point on the homepage for your most important offer instead. This will help to guide your website visitors on what piece of website content is most important, second most important, etc.
This website strategy can help to alleviate some of the visual overwhelm on the page, create some breathing room within the design, and make the content more easily digestible.
Amoeba is doing a much better job of this within the mobile version of their website design. I would suggest updating the desktop version of their design to be more aligned with what is seen on mobile.
Modernize the look & feel of your website design
The site shown in the music website review video above has a ton of beveled buttons – which make the website feel quite dated.
Instead, I would suggest going with a flat color for the backgrounds of the buttons for a much more modern look.
These types of design details subtly signal to the website visitor that the business has not modernized its website – which can ultimately impact how trustworthy the business will seem.
Make it abundantly clear what you offer on your homepage
Before you even start scrolling on your homepage, the website visitor should be able to understand what you offer, who you work with, and how they can take action on that offer.
The website shown in this music website review video gives us some hints on what it is that they do, but it’s not completely clear.
I would suggest reorganizing this page to feature one of the brand’s most important offers at the very top of the page and include a striking image, catchy headline, supporting text, and a call to action button.
Update product images to create consistency and build trust
In this music website review, we see a jagged line of products that jump around in varying heights.
Instead – I would suggest updating these product images to all have the same dimensions. For example, you could make them all 1000×1000 pixels in size on your website.
Not only will this create great visual consistency when your products are shown alongside one another, but it also brings a level of attention to detail and professionalism to your website design.
Correct any broken links on your website
This may seem straightforward, but so many music brands still make the mistake of not checking for broken links on their website.
You can use a tool like this Broken Link Checker to search your website for any links that may no longer be working.
Broken links are one of the fastest ways to break trust with your website visitors and can cause them to bounce off of your website.
Spot-check your search engine optimization (SEO)
I love using the free Detailed SEO Chrome extension to spot-check each page during a music website review to see if any updates are needed within the meta title, meta description, etc.
This tool is awesome because it gives you the best practices alongside each search engine optimization component – so it makes it extremely easy to see if there are any missed opportunities or if SEO components are missing altogether.
For example – in the music website review in this video, we see that the meta description is far too long, and will likely be clipped when shown within search engine results.
Shortening this text and including the brand’s target keywords more toward the beginning of the description will help improve the website’s SEO.
Ready to get your music website review?
I’d love to help you! I’ve been in the design and marketing fields for 17+ years, and have worked with some of the most well-known names in the entertainment industry (Netflix, Spaceland Presents, The Echo, Echoplex, Regent Theater, KCRW Radio, and Live Nation).
I am very passionate about what I do, take great pride in my work, and am very detail-oriented. I go to great lengths to make sure that my clients are happy with the work that they commission. With me, you get a responsive, highly skilled designer that also knows the marketing side of things – which is critical for any business that is trying to increase their revenue and brand awareness.
You can book a music website review with me by tapping the button below.
In this 60-minute Zoom call, I conduct the music website review and give you my best suggestions for optimizing it for more leads and sales. We will cover:
Technical suggestions for website improvements that will optimize for:
- SEO – search engine optimization
- User experience design
- Marketing strategies and positioning
Creative and design suggestions for website improvements that will help infuse personality into the site, as well as make for a consistent and aesthetically pleasing user experience.
Review of organization of content, and overall flow of the website.
If the website has an e-commerce element:
- Review of the flow of the checkout process
- Review of the product visuals / presentation
- Recommendations for design updates that will encourage customer action
If the website has a blog element:
- Technical suggestions for blog post improvements that will help broaden the post reach, so that you can get in front of more of the RIGHT people.
- Creative suggestions for blog post improvements so that the posts look consistent within the feed.
- Review of the blog collection page, and technical/creative suggestions on improvement.
Looking forward to chatting with you!