February 9th, Melanie Kealey of Bandzoogle alongside Indie Week founder, Darryl Hurs, showed us step by step how to build a professional website for your music. Tens of thousands of artists around the world use Bandzoogle every day to build their website and promote their music online. As we move onto the digital age, your online profile is more important than ever. Serving more than 45,000 clients, Bandzoogle is the go-to resource for website design and hosting for artists and businesses. Showed us how artists can achieve maximum results by creating an impactful website. Melanie Kealey is the Communications Manager at the music website platform Bandzoogle. She regularly writes blog posts with helpful website tips for musicians, as well as manages the company’s social media. Melanie is also an artist manager, managing the career of the singer-songwriter (and husband) Tyler Kealey.

Little tricks were shown to make an effective website that is hassle-free and reminding you to update your site regularly every 3 months, and your short bio should be under 200 words, long bio under 500 words, use quotes, cover, and recognize achievements. Walked us through the 8 items you must include on your website from the home page, images, bio’s, music link, video link, latest news/Blog/Vlog, social media links, and about to the call to action text button, journal list, listen to album/music, store, video, and crowdfunding campaign link. Strolled us through the music page with song samples, to list your discography, lyrics, downloadable tracks, offer music deals for sale, add content about albums, links to stream, to the show page where she suggested a calendar of events, Livestream, selling tickets portion, poster/image and video live, to the photos page where you should show your official profession shots, performance shots, candid photos or combined photos. Then we went on to learn about the video page where she suggested embedding youtube videos, rotate videos regularly to have the most current at the top. We indulged in knowledge regarding the Store portion of your site, where you will fully describe what your selling, post images of your merch, advertise sale items, share with fans your discount codes, and how you don’t have to have boxes of merch laying, learned about and how you can sell print on demand items from company PRINTFUL https://www.printful.com

We ventured onto the press kit portion of your site which should contain a digital version, like an online resume per say. This is where you will include industry highlights, bio, images, shows, music, video, media all in your EPK. Learned more about the contact section so you can distribute that portion to promoters to obtain work, all at the push of 1 button.

Basically, it taught me how to be precise with a clear purpose and to keep it full but simple for easy navigation. I learned to make an all in 1 Bandzoogle platform website and is easy to build, mobile-friendly with no coding, and is the site that’s ready to rock you forward successfully that has support available 7 days a week. It guarantees you will own a little slice of the internet and fans will always be able to search and find you with your domain that you own, that is distraction-free from ads, no design limit and you will always know where your fans are from. You also can earn more money by selling directly to your fans, potential fans, and we touched on industry and Media. You put your best song or video upfront. You can build inside, a blog post, include industry and media news, showing how unique you are, and sharing your best song upfront. They have friendly templates to create from and can mold with 3 major colors and helps you choose the proper Typography or font and reminds you to avoid wacky fonts, keep it clean for a simple easier read. Use centering, caps, and italics as little as possible and is friendly to view creating a mobile experience and Google friendly too.

Darryl Hurs shared, “participate and collaborate that’s what Indie Week is all about.”