One of the beauties of WordPress is that there is virtually no limit to how you can customize it or how it can look to the visitor. Apart from that, there are thousands of “themes†or templates available, both free and paid, with which you can transform your site in seconds.
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This incredible advantage of WordPress is also, potentially, a weakness. It’s not uncommon for people to spend hours, even days, trying out different themes, tweaking them, then discarding them – and so on ad infinitum. And sometimes they’re still unhappy at the end of the whole process.
So, even with the “instant-expertise†that WordPress places in your hands, it is still a good idea to consider hiring a designer. Doing so will additionally ensure that YOUR LOOK is unique. If you’re after a particular “feelâ€, you may also find that it will save you time – and perhaps even money – if you just go straight to someone who really knows what he/she is doing. Outsource.
Keep these things in mind:
- The look and feel of your site in general
- The look, feel and specific function of your landing pages (a commercial site must have multiple “ways inâ€, via dedicated landing and “squeeze†pages)
- Graphic continuity between your main site and your other (social) properties
- Sketch everything out on paper first, then look for themes which are the closest match. Free themes first, then paid ones. And if all else fails, consider hiring a site designer.
But there’s more to your site than just your home page and the accompanying content pages. In fact, if your objective is to create a site which becomes a sales vehicle for your music and any possible products you may promote, you simply have to also develop additional (semi-separate) “landing pagesâ€. Think of these as alternative ways in to your site. They are very useful for promoting specific things, because they don’t contain any distractions, no particular menus or irrelevant links – just the main message and a call to action.
While you can use landing pages for anything you like, you have two basic types which are most commonly used:
- A sales page
- A squeeze page
A sales page may or may not be connected to your “funnel†and thus also your auto-responder. It’s best if it is, but it’s also possible to just set up an affiliate link to a particular offer which your band wants to get behind and promote that directly to your fans.
A squeeze page, on the other hand, is a tool whose purpose is explicitly to build your list. You will typically offer something for free – a special report, recordings, whatever you can think of that has value – in exchange for the visitor’s email address, and his/her permission for you to contact them with any follow-ups. See the attached “Autoresponder Basics†course for more on this.
You can design your landing pages using the same WordPress theme you already have installed (but you’ll usually need special squeeze page plugins in order to be able to achieve that “detached†look), or you can code them separately using HTML or other tools – or tools such as LeadPages.
Once you upload your landers to your site, you can promote them separately to your target audiences.
It is also a good idea to have alternative versions of your landing pages. That’s because you never know which design will convert the best. Is it the one with this photo or that? The one with a brief video or without? The one with the sign-up form on the left or right?
In order for you to know which lander sends you the most signups you need to track it. You can do this for free using Google Analytics, or better still a WordPress plugin called PrettyLink Lite – or you can subscribe to a professional ad tracking program such as Hypertracker.
Once you see which page works the best, you can focus your promotion on it, rather than waste your efforts and money on any others.
Just remember that your landing pages should ALSO have a similar (consistent) look and feel to your home site. Just like all your other web properties including all your social accounts and profiles.
It might help you to avail yourself of some of the pre-made standard graphics elements I’ve provided for you here: Your Graphics Library for all your graphic inspiration, as well as Website Templates if you decide to create additional pages on your site using HTML.
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| Book 3 – Chapter 22What Else Do You Need |
Course Overview | Book 3 – Chapter 24Graphic Design |
Book 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, Overview
Bonuses: templ, lib, tips, kwds, models Link Res: aff, class, cpa, cpv, cpc, write, mob, outs, rss, soc, traff, var, exch, srcs, vid Sub-courses: sens adw, aff, ar, bkm, cpy, cp, fb, fun, goo, lst, loc, mem, opt paid, ppal, sbox, prod, seo, opt, socn, vidm, host, wp, lnch
