trated and invent a litany of colorful new curse words and phrases. If that sounds like
you, you might be wise to invest in hiring a Web designer and/or developer. Contracting
out your site’s design and development can make your life a lot easier, so you can con-
centrate on your music. But be aware, a good designer or developer doesn’t come too
cheap. Suffice to say the good ones, like so many professions, are not inexpensive.
If you decide to go it alone, there are a few things you’ll need beyond mp3s of your
tunes, some content, images and perhaps some performance videos. First, you’ll need at
least a basic understanding of HTML, the language of Websites. Next, you’ll also need
some artistic ability if you want your site to stand out and engage your audience. Some
marketing savvy is important, as is an understanding of search engine optimization. A
great deal of information, best practices, tools and techniques can readily be found with a
few Web searches.
Whether you choose to do it yourself or hire a professional there’s a common process
for building a site. It may vary slightly from designer to designer, but the broad strokes
are usually the same. A typical process for a Web designer is as follows:
Phase 1 – Research, Content Creation, Design
- Research (audience, competition, design, etc.)
- Asset gathering (existing assets, stock and custom images, mp3s, etc.)
- Content writing & revisions
- Preliminary design and layout
- Revisions