63: The Importance of a Website
with Andrew Ousley
How important is a website?
A lot, A lot of artists say, Do I need a website because I'm on Facebook and Instagram? And yes, you absolutely need a website. A website is the only place where you completely control your digital presence. Every, every aspect of it from the videos that you choose, the order that they're in, the, the quotes that are used about you, how they're placed, how they're prioritized, the narr-- the written assets of your bio and how it's cut and how it's put out, the photos, everything is completely controlled by you.
So do you need to spend a gajillion dollars on a fancy website? No. At this point people want to come to your website to get something, by and large. And so it's important to have a website that's fast, that's responsive, and that provides the different... that's, that serves the different needs of the different people who will come to it. So if a fan wants to come and look at videos and photos, that needs to be clear.
And if they want it, then find your social media that needs to be easy for them to get to. If a presenter wants high resolution photos and a contact for your management, they need to be able to get those things within two clicks. If a publicist or if a-- media wants to see where you've been interviewed and see what kind of interviews you give, then that needs to be clear as well, and see what news you've had recently.
So you need to have those basic pieces of content: a home page, about with your bio, news, if you can, if you can maintain it and update it a couple of times a year, your schedule, ideally your past performances as well, photos, videos, if you have recordings, your recordings, press features and acclaim, and contact.
Kellogg:
Any quick thoughts on design?
Ousley:
It should look good. If you're going to build your own site, use Squarespace, don't use any of the other ones. Wix, Weebly, they're terrible. Squarespace is highly limited, but it's also highly difficult to break and on the whole it looks good, so do it. But again, do it and get people's opinions of it because I see a lot of terrible websites out there. Or again, you can hire people, but you don't need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars, particularly as a young artist. There are a lot of people who can build your beautiful website quickly and cheaply.