Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make

Mr. Merlin over at 43Folders drops a lovely piece entitled Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make. Most of the mistakes apply to any type of site. A few short quotes below, but read the whole thing anyway…

1. Too much Flash

“Okay, I get it. You’re creative. Awesome. But you’re totally wasting my morning…. Use Flash like you would cilantro–sparingly and for a single high-impact effect. Nobody wants to eat a whole bowl of cilantro, and nobody wants an animated death march when they have a “passionate taskâ€Â? to complete.”

2. Crappy or non existent mp3 metadata

“Remember: people often download dozens or hundreds of songs at once, so it’s really unlikely they’ll remember where Track_07.mp3 came from. "

3. Too artsy, too fartsy

“People are visiting your site because they want to learn more about bands and music–not to have a guided tour of your designer/brother-in-law’s Photoshop brush collection.”

4. No search

“If your site contains more than a handful of pages, provide a clearly labeled search box (or link to a search) on every page, and test it.”

5. One-way communication (served one way)

“Read your email, and answer it.”