I Need a Website: What Should I Do?
This is how I responded to a friend looking for website advice. My friend was at the very beginning stages of getting a website made and wanted to know how to begin. I think my advice is applicable to a lot of websites so I’d like to share it with you.
My friend needed a site to promote a musician and potentially sell music/merchandise. The following is my response, almost verbatim. Names have been changed where appropriate.
The First Thing You Should Do
The first thing I would do is write. Write the message(s) you want to tell people about Fred. The type of web site you are describing is part billboard, part brochure, and part catalog. You need to sell Fred before you can sell his music or tickets to his shows.
If it were me, I would approach it in this order:
- Who is Fred’s audience? Who, demographically speaking, already likes his music? Additionally, are there any other markets I want to reach?
- What are the different purposes of this web site? E.g., “sell Fred to Fox Entertainment,” “sell Fred to a specific band or theatre company,” “sell music and merchandise to his fans,” et cetera. Fewer purposes and a narrower focus are better.
- Are the site’s purposes/audiences similar enough that I can accomplish everything with one web site? Do I need one for his fans and one for Fox Entertainment?
- What other music/musicians/bands do the people I want to reach listen to? How do these musicians/bands market themselves? What do their web sites look like?
- Does Fred’s audience buy stuff online? Are they the type of people who would actually buy an MP3 or a CD from Fred’s web site?
- Among all the different musicians/bands that Fred’s audience listens to, where does Fred fit in? Where do I want to position Fred in the market? Is he edgier than X but softer than Y? He’s got the heart of Jimmy Durante and the soul of Stevie Wonder… et cetera.
- Taking all of that into account, including all of the demographic and psychographic information available to you, write Fred’s message to the world. What does Fred bring to the world that no one else does? What is it about Fred’s voice, character, persona, stage presence, nuance, heart, his song choices, and any other abilities or qualities that people should get excited about? In short, why should people care?
I’ve Written That. Why Am I Writing This?
Okay, so I’ve written all of that. Why? Because web design is just another type of design. You can’t design without something to design around. You can’t write a song without knowing the subject, knowing your audience, and knowing everything you want to communicate to your audience.
(That’s not exactly true, of course. You can meander your way through writing music, jotting down any stream-of-consciousness lyrics that come to mind, but you’ve got to be really good to pull it off. Most people aren’t good, which is why popular music today sounds so shitty. There’s almost no consideration for craft. The same goes for most other creative endeavors.)
The other reason I’m writing first is because sometimes, in the middle of writing the message, I discover that the message is something entirely different than what I thought it would be when I started writing it. Like writing a book.
Web designers take your message and craft it into a digital experience that communicates directly to your specific audience. The best designers find a way to craft a site that feels like home to your audience, as if it was built especially for them, which translates into sales, positive reviews, and word of mouth advertising.
I consider the act of creating the content (in your case, the music) and the message about that content–and doing it first–to be absolutely essential to a successful web site design. If you start with design, you may get something nice but, at best, it will look and feel like every other web site you’ve ever seen about a musician or a band. It ends up looking like the endless rows of tomato sauce in the grocery store.
However, if you start by creating the best content and the best marketing message, you can design a site to fit. It’s a bespoke suit versus something off the rack from The Men’s Wearhouse. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with The Men’s Wearhouse, but a bespoke suit communicates something about the wearer that The Men’s Wearhouse cannot.
Okay, I’m rambling.
I Believe You. What Do We Do Now?
What about getting it done? I think you have lots of options available to you. You can go from free to $10,000+ depending on your needs. If you just want something up now, I would visit any of the popular blogging sites like Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, or Blogger.com. You can be up and running within a day with something very simple with which you can communicate news to his audience. Many of these types of sites also have no fee, which means you can discard it when you outgrow it.
A step above that would be contacting one of Fred’s friends. Does he know anyone with techie skills who’d be willing to set up and/or design something and then keep the software up to date? Once again you can use free website/blogging software and just customize it for your needs. The only hard part is finding someone who knows how to set it all up and is willing to continue maintaining it.
A step above that is hiring a contractor who can either manage the project for you or do most of the work. Most individual contractors are good at one thing: either graphic design or web design1, but usually not both. The ones who are great at both cost more, obviously.
A step above that is hiring a web design firm to do it all for you. This is the bespoke suit level. Costs vary but you can expect to pay anywhere between $50 and $150+ per hour. Sometimes firms will give you a bid on completing the whole job for a set price.
With a simple web site, a good firm can handle the design and creation of the site in about a week or two, depending on their work load. More complexity leads to more time. E-commerce sites (those that sell merchandise) are more complex and expensive than brochure/billboard sites.
If you’re going to go with a design firm, I would also recommend finding a copywriter, assuming the design firm does not have someone in-house. A copywriter specializes in crafting your message into gold. And since the message and the content are the most important things, it’s a service worth paying for at that level of web site. The copywriter will usually work with the design firm since the message should go hand in hand with the visual design.
Unless you have an interest in learning how web sites work and how they’re built, I would highly recommend handing over every part of the design, construction, and maintenance to someone who does. Whether that’s a friend, a contractor, or a firm depends on your needs and your budget.
Again, without any content it’s really hard to know what your needs are. It’s like trying to find the right book publisher before you’ve written your book. Write the book first, then publish it.
I hope that’s helpful.
Cheers, Harry
1. I’m lumping interface design, user experience, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and programming into the generic label of web design rather than splitting them into their typical, jargon-filled job titles.
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