It’s been one of the biggest surprises to me in the last 6 months: a lot of musicians who have some good music and are working on their marketing are still living without a decent music website of themselves (apart from MySpace, Facebook, etc)

Listen, if you’re serious about your music and making it a decent career, you need a good music website about you and your work. You need to get people to your website and you need people to interact at your site. It’s what the marketing gurus are calling Web 2.0.

When you do get your site, and for those who already have one, here are ten website improvements you can make to make your site more catchy, user-friendly and more successful at growing your subscriber list and making some sales.

1. Get rid of fancy colors. Make your site look professional. Remove all the mix and amateurish colours. A slick site always gets my attention over a action-packed colored site.

2. Put a good headline on your site. A headline has proven to catch and retain people’s attention by 400%. Use a bigger than usual font and put up a catchy headline on your home.

3. Music players. I’m shocked by music websites that don’t have music on their site. Get a music player, a free one if your designer can’t put one for you, and play some of your music on your site. That’s the best way to entice people to become subscribers on your fans list.

4. Photos connect. Have good pictures of you on your site. They help connect users to who you are and give a visual impression. I’m appalled by sites that don’t have any images of people “talking” to you.

5. Set up a blog. Use Wordpress.com to do this. Write regularly on your blog. Allow fans to comment. Get a community forming over time. The more people interact, the more you retain their attention.

6. Gift-giving support. Allow people to order your music or merchandise as gifts for their friends. This is a low-cost feature to consider adding.

7. Easy Navigation. Make sure users can move around your website easily. Too many or too less pages can sometimes be a nuisance, and so too can be the disorganization of your links. Try not to bunch too much stuff into any one page. If you do, they won’t have that much time to read and will close your site.

8. Spelling and grammar. It’s always the smaller things that catch you out. You’re a good musician - so have a good website. That means check your site for spelling and grammar. These small errors can put people off. Ask a friend to proof-read it for you.

9. Mailing list box. Make sure your fans can sign up to a list from which you’ll send out regular information or updates. Don’t have a sign up box on just one page. Have it on every single page of your website.

10. Be Consistent. Update when you say you’ll update. Send out a newsletter when you say you’ll send one. Don’t compromise quality for quantity. Be true to who you are. That will come true to the reader if you’re lying.

There you have it, my random 10 website improvements you can make for your music website!

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