The most important question to answer before rebuilding a website is: what is the site’s primary purpose? As tempting as it feels to just dump one’s entire life of work, accolades, writing, biography, store of products, collection of photos and videos, links, and praise from others into a website, it will feel to the visitor like a junk drawer. What they are interested in is probably there, but it’s often difficult for them to sort through the site in order to find it.
My sense is that the purpose of your new site is to 1. offer your works for sale, 2. promote yourself and your musical talent, and 3. to share some of your music with the world. Even if that is not exactly the order of importance, knowing the three (or fewer) primary purposes of your website is an important first step in knowing how best to build it.
That discipline also requires you to make decisions on what NOT to include. While everything seems important and perhaps necessary, the question to keep asking yourself is, does this or that element further the goals of the site?
In the absence of knowing for certain at this early point exactly what is necessary and what isn’t, here is a proposal on how I can build you a much improved site. This is a proposal for creating a new website for you that will upgrade the current sites’ look and function while helping sell more of your music.
In our discussion, we spoke about three main areas in which Jazz Digital Marketing can help you attract more prospective clients.
- Create the new site within Word Press
- Better organize the large amount of music to make it easier for potential buyers to find and sample pieces they wish to purchase
- Reduce the text-heavy and link-heavy content of the current sites to make it quicker and easier for visitors to scan and consume your content
A remake in Word Press
There are several advantages to Word Press over Wix as the foundation to your website. They include:
- Greater flexibility in style. Rather than being locked into the site layout options within Wix, Word Press provides much greater flexibility and components that make for a more attractive and intuitive website.
- More shopping cart design and functional options within WooCommerce. WooCommerce is the leading Word Press eCommerce platform. Through the native functionality and various add-ons for Woo, your store can be styled, operated, and reported on in a better and more flexible way.
- Much better responsiveness for mobile devices. With more than half of your likely visitors looking at your site from their phone, tablet or laptop, it is critical that your site appear equally attractive and intuitive on every device. Word Press allows for pages to be customized specifically for each device.
- Better Search Engine Optimization. If potential buyers cannot find your site, they cannot buy from you. I will install a Word Press plugin called Yoast that will allow each product and page to be optimized for search. You must do the optimization work yourself on all but the main products, pages, and posts, but it is a simple process that is easily facilitated within Word Press.
- Teaching you the basics of site maintenance. I will create for you short tutorial videos that will live on your site outside of navigation so that you can learn how to edit text to your liking; search-optimize products, posts, and pages; and create & publish blog posts.
The Website redesign process
The new website will consist of a Home page; an About page leading to your biography, videos, and recordings; a Works page which will form the primary page for your store (I’m not sure there needs to be separate Works and Store pages), and a Contact/Press page for a contact form and a digital press package of photos and your bio. A blog could also be created that would contain content similar to your Interlude page on your dot net site.
Your new Word Press site will be more graphically attractive that your current sites. Long scrolling pages will be replaced by cleaner and more efficient layouts. The large number of links will be reduced and multicolored text will be consolidated. The tiny photographs will be replaced by larger better-positioned images. I know you are not a fan of the large hero image so we will design a modern hero section to your liking.
Since your sites were built, the web has become flatter with larger text and imagery as well as more generous white space. We will develop that style into your site with everything meeting with your final approval.
Pricing
The most time-consuming aspect of your new site will be the creation of products (music pieces) within WooCommerce. Each individual product must be created including the title, description, image, and downloads for all digital products. Honestly, I am not sure at this moment how much I would charge to create all of that. You can and should release your new site without every last piece of music displayed, but to do all the eventual work would require a good amount of time and effort.
My idea is for you to create most of those products yourself, and by so doing, greatly reduce your cost. It is an easy process, just a long one. We should discuss how many and which products to include with your version 1.0 site, and from there, determine a cost for me to create those initial products.
I am an advocate of having attractive covers for published music. People do judge a book by its cover which relates to how people buy for emotional reasons and justify it intellectually. I would suggest a cover template for different categories of your music. One for choral, one for orchestral, one for chamber, etc. Not unique covers for each piece, but a similar cover template for each category. I believe this would elevate the look over the current generic graphic covering most of your pieces.
- Site redesign and build of the pages listed above (no products): $2,400
- eCommerce set-up for Paypal and Credit Card (Stripe) acceptance: included
- Creation of music products: TBD
- Hosting: your continued cost through your existing host
After the site launch, I will stand by the work and provide any needed fixes or small edits. For additional more substantial work after the launch of the site, I am happy to do that for my standard hourly rate of $50.
Any stock photography needed for the site will be approved by you and charged back at cost. Any AI-generated imagery will be created by me at no cost. You are ultimately responsible for all music and image copyright issues pertaining to the site.
One half of the fee for the initial project is payable upon acceptance of this agreement via a email response, and the balance is due upon mutual agreement of the work being complete and online.
