The Online Musician

Today we are going to talk about what not to do when making a website for your band. There's tons of tutorials on what to do, and yes i will write one myself, but sometimes the most important knowledge you can have is knowing what not to do. i won't claim to be a super expert, and my way may not be the best way, but by following the advice that will be spread across these next few columns, you will be unknowingly using the same basic techniques used by internet marketers to make millions over the internet, so if something doesn't make sense now it will when we get further into things, so lets get started shall we?

1. Don't use Flash Movies as forced intro movies.
if you must have one, use a link that will open in a new browser window, roughly about half of online users are on broadband, the other half is on dial-up, so you automatically are losing half your visitors right off the bat, not even accounting for those who don't have the right flash version installed, and in this day of spy ware and virus no one is going to download something like that from a band website. Also the skip movie link rarely works correctly all the time, even on professional done sites, so basically you have to ask yourself if it wasn't about you would you sit thru one? or would you sit thru the same thing to see the band who played at the bar last nite?

2. Don't autoplay music on a page load.
for one its annoying to have music blaring without starting it, its my computer and i want to control when and what's playing over it, also not everyone coming to your site is there to listen, places like this do go to websites to get the data on bands they review, and copying and pasting is the best way to make sure info is correct, and often multiple trips to a site are required, and if i have a song blaring out everytime i have to check for dates or song titles, i can pretty much guarantee that the band lost the review, same as for booking, while interning for a semi major booking agency i know of a few bands that lost good gigs do to this. from your standpoint as the site owner having this actually costs you, each time that page is called by a user, the file starts to load, often it will preload it fully before playing, so you are being charged for the bandwith of a whole song even if the person hears it just for a second, then clicks the page closed...

3.Don't use mousetrails or custom cursors
its just cheesy and annoying, if i wanted words following my cursor, they would be there already.

4.Don't use javascripts to open browser windows.
for one the pop up blocker installed on almost every browser, won't allow it to open and unless the user is savvy enough to know to shut off the browser, they are going to just assume that your site is broken, also the search engine spiders can't read java script, rendering the links to other pages invisible, this will make more sense later when we get into more advanced topics.

5.Don't expect people to buy your music
have at least one song available for free play and download, the publicity you can get from anyone in the world being able to hear your best song and send it to everyone they know, pales to what you will make from cd sales, and to be blunt and honest, by the time you have to worry about free downloads costing you money, the money you are losing won't matter, so put the ego away, and throw up a song.

6.Don't use free hosts with banner ads and pop-ups.
Spend the few bucks a month and get a decent hosting plan and drop the 8 bucks to buy your own domain, if you aren't serious enough to spend 30 bucks for a year on the band you aren't serious about your band. many of those free hosts also install active x spy ware to users, making it look like you infected them...

7.Don't use flash for navigation menus or content
see the reasons for #1 on loading and usability, once again the search engine spiders can't read flash files so all links and text is invisible to them. this will again make sense later on..

8.Don't have personal news on your site
keep your main site as professional looking as possible, no one cares really what you and your drummer did last weekend after the bar closed, that is what forums are for.

9.Don't forget contact info
i know it sounds silly, but you would be surprised at how many bands leave off an email address or contact number from their sites, if there's no way to contact you, how can people contact you?

10.Don't use transitions
yeah those "cool" things that you can to as pages load and unload, like dissolve, fade, etc, are a no-no very very annoying, and i'll admit to using them back when they were first available but even then it got old quick.