The Secret to an Awesome Website.

Most of us fit into one of two camps when it comes to creating a website for your band;

1. You are computer savvy and want to create a website, writing the code yourself giving you maximum control.
2. You want an easy to use but still visually impressive blog based site to give maximum style with minimum effort.

So, I’m going to cover these topics to help you decide which method will reap most rewards.

1.  Building an HTML website from scratch.
   
2.  Creating a FREE blog based site.
3.  Starting a website from an all-in-one provider,at a small cost.
4.  Outsourcing all your website needs.

1.  Building an HTML website from scratch.

The first option, creating an HTML website from scratch is an option only for the brave, well-informed, and probably, HTML qualified. If you are this person then it would be a waste of skills to take any other route. Being able to write the code that determines the size of font, colour, image locations and every other aspect of how a website looks is a long and in-depth process.

So, if you have these skills, crack on, otherwise option two or three is the way to website supremecy.

1.  Creating a FREE blog based site.

Creating a website from a blog site such as Blogger enables you to have a FREE website, primarily based around blog or article posts. You may encounter advertising, and other restrictions such as limited website address options, but this is the price you pay, when you don’t pay financially.

You can have a free and stylish site such as this from Joshua Blankenship, it’s simple, stylish and could be exactly what you are looking for. This will take some development time however, such as moving text boxes and trying different image sizes.

1. Starting a website from an all-in-one provider.

The third and final option is a combination of a ready to go solution that has more design options to really define your style. Website such as Squarespace offer extremely simple website templates that can be tweaked beyond recognition. This does come at a cost, with prices from around £86 per year. This does get you a wealth of features that you don’t get with the free options. Squarespace also features statistics such as number of visitors and how they got to your site, which is highly valuable and I will discuss optimisation and analytics in a later post.

Insidemusicast is a good example of the possibilities for under £8 a month. You get more features, and hopefully therefore more visitors, and maybe more business.

1. Outsourcing all your website needs.
   

If you have the budget, or more accurately can justify the marketing expense then there are plenty of companies that can pimp your band/product.

Prices range from a few hundred pounds into the thousands, and the results can vary just as much. The advantages of this option is that you spend no time on development as someone else does all the work. As most of the companies are very professional and highly skilled, anything is possible with your site.

A very professional and highly intuitive design company called Bulb are a great example of how a creative attitude to design doesn’t need to be expensive or over complicated, the results are very impressive.

Tips.

• If you can write HTML then option one is for you. You must be aware of the labour intensive process however.
• If you want a free site then, Blogger and the like are the way forward. You will be limited however.
• For a balance between enhanced customisation and ease of use, then Squarespace or similar are the way to go. They do carry a price however.
• If you have the budget, or don’t have the time then outsourcing is a fantastic way to go.