My band's website... any comments or suggestions?

criz p. critter

criz p. critter

Silver Member
Hi folks. Would anyone like to check out my band's website? It's been up for a while, but I just finished some improvements. Sometimes it's hard for me to know what works and what doesn't, I'm too close to it, so I'd welcome and appreciate any feedback you'd like to give.

http://www.bluesandthegoods.com

Thanks in advance for any interest!
--Chris
 
I think it looks great. Fantastic job! I like how you have the first page. A quick glance lets you know the upcoming shows without having to navigate through a bunch of pages.(very nice when using the phone for navigation)
Didn't spend a lot of time on the site, but I went on every page and was able to get around very fast and even listen to the band. All the pictures look good with individual shots on one page as well as group pictures on another. Nice "poster" layouts too. Very well done. Makes me want to come see you guys to see what I've been missing. Too bad I'm in Indiana. I've been looking everywhere for the dog food can mic stand accessory. Nobody has them yet. ;-0 Lol Looks like you guys got it goin' on. Want to do the band I'm playing with? Great job.
 
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Hey, thanks for the positive comments, guys. I really wanted to do something different with the whole sliding panels thing. Glad you both enjoyed it.
 
porter said:
It's actually pretty great. Seems to fit in with the vibe of the band, easy to navigate, well done! I don't really have any specific comments. Surprising.
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I agree.

Good job Chris!
 
I like it!

Two things I'd change;

1/ Enlarge the opening page gig feature window to show more than one gig at a time. They disappear quite quickly. I know visitors can click on more info, but you want to make it easier to see shows for those who don't/won't click.

2/ I'd have your track "Cold Shot" on autoplay as soon as the site opens. Offer the option of switching off audio for those who are annoyed about autoplay. I think your band sounds great, & some good blues in there from the get go will add to the vibe. Just my opinion - of course.

Good luck!
 
Wow, more great comments. Thanks, guys. Makes me feel really good!

KIS... I agree with you about the gig feature window. Thing is, two gigs is all we've got booked right now. As we get more I will expand that window as you suggest, and slow it down a bit.

Re: autoplaying the first track... one of the guys in the band suggested that also. But I happen to be one of those people who hate autoplay! It's something to consider, though. If anyone else reads this thread and wants to contribute, it would be helpful if you gave me your opinion on autoplay: yes or no?

keep it simple said:
Two things I'd change;

1/ Enlarge the opening page gig feature window to show more than one gig at a time. They disappear quite quickly. I know visitors can click on more info, but you want to make it easier to see shows for those who don't/won't click.

2/ I'd have your track "Cold Shot" on autoplay as soon as the site opens. Offer the option of switching off audio for those who are annoyed about autoplay.
Click to expand...
 
I agree with KIS about the dates.

I love the overall design.

My issue is the homepage, I can't tell what it is I'm looking at.
There is no indication this is a webpage for a band.

It could really use a picture, or a line of text, (or both).
 
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Nice codebase! What's that, Bootstrap?

Lovin' the use of Waypoints.js

My only critique is this-
A- Social Media links (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) Make that persistent somewhere on the page.

B- EPK- The "buzzword" that clubowners are so dug into. Put up a link to an Electronic Press Kit page where there's a video playlist, audio player, downloadable hi-res photo, widgets for their club, etc. Even put up performance contracts with links to .pdf files.

C- Validator results show that you're missing some alt tags. Blind folks use these to "see" your page. So drop in some descriptive text in those images because blind folks listen more than we do! :D Also some stray end tags and replace all the ampersands in your content with "&" (w/o quotes).

Also, if you want to go full-on responsive use percentage widths and max-width in your css to constrain the images to their maximum allowed sizes.


Other'n that, page looks awesome! Clean, easy, loads well.
 
Awesome site and nice rendition of "Cold Shot". I agree that the home page is a little empty - in fact I almost think the 'Listen' page would be a good home page with "Cold Shot" starting up when you hit the site as someone else already mentioned - replacing the menu of songs with a picture of the band.

If you did not touch a thing it would be a great website though!

MM
 
DrumEatDrum said:
I agree with KIS about the dates.

I love the overall design. My issue is the homepage, I can't tell what it is I'm looking at. There is no indication this is a webpage for a band. It could really use a picture, or a line of text, (or both).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input! I originally liked the fact that the homepage was super simple. I don't think it NEEDS to indicate anything. People that go there already know it's a band site (having gotten the link from a business card or Facebook or whatever), and then they'll click on whatever looks like a link to proceed.

But then a couple of weeks ago I put the gig info rotator on the home page. Now I think it does need something. I'll probably put a tagline "when it comes to the blues, we got the goods" under the logo.
 
BillRayDrums said:
Nice codebase! What's that, Bootstrap?

Lovin' the use of Waypoints.js

My only critique is this-
A- Social Media links (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) Make that persistent somewhere on the page.

B- EPK- The "buzzword" that clubowners are so dug into. Put up a link to an Electronic Press Kit page where there's a video playlist, audio player, downloadable hi-res photo, widgets for their club, etc. Even put up performance contracts with links to .pdf files.

C- Validator results show that you're missing some alt tags. Blind folks use these to "see" your page. So drop in some descriptive text in those images because blind folks listen more than we do! :D Also some stray end tags and replace all the ampersands in your content with "&" (w/o quotes).

Also, if you want to go full-on responsive use percentage widths and max-width in your css to constrain the images to their maximum allowed sizes.

Other'n that, page looks awesome! Clean, easy, loads well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed post, man. Sounds like you got your feet dirty behind the scenes!
No Bootstrap. I got waypoints.js from GitHub and cloned the demo pages, then I reverse engineered and rewrote everything. I really dig one-page sites. I'm currently working on one for an associate that uses reveal.js. Have you seen that yet? Totally flexible and really cool.

A. Agreed. I recently redid the navigation, and I realized a few days ago that I should put our Facebook link up there too. That's the only social media site we're on at the moment. I'm working on a Reverbnation page and will add that later.

B. A bit ahead of where the band is right now. But good advice if we rise to more "pro" level.

C & D. You even ran it through a validator! Yeah, I'll tidy up those little problems next weekend. I'm pretty bad at adding the alt tags, but I'm aware that that's really horrible of me! I will add those too…

I haven't tackled making it fully responsive yet. Going to be a little tricky due to my limited experience, and so I'm not sure yet how I want to approach it. So I'm ignoring that for the moment, and concentrating on some other sites I'm doing.

Thanks for taking the time to really dig into it, BillRay.
 
Mike_In_KC said:
Awesome site and nice rendition of "Cold Shot". I agree that the home page is a little empty - in fact I almost think the 'Listen' page would be a good home page with "Cold Shot" starting up when you hit the site as someone else already mentioned - replacing the menu of songs with a picture of the band.

If you did not touch a thing it would be a great website though!

MM
Click to expand...

Thank you, thank you! Yes, good points, that I'm considering, and have talked about above.

I'm feeling pretty good about this site. Nobody hates it!
 
criz p. critter said:
Thanks for the detailed post, man. Sounds like you got your feet dirty behind the scenes!
No Bootstrap. I got waypoints.js from GitHub and cloned the demo pages, then I reverse engineered and rewrote everything. I really dig one-page sites. I'm currently working on one for an associate that uses reveal.js. Have you seen that yet? Totally flexible and really cool.

A. Agreed. I recently redid the navigation, and I realized a few days ago that I should put our Facebook link up there too. That's the only social media site we're on at the moment. I'm working on a Reverbnation page and will add that later.

B. A bit ahead of where the band is right now. But good advice if we rise to more "pro" level.

C & D. You even ran it through a validator! Yeah, I'll tidy up those little problems next weekend. I'm pretty bad at adding the alt tags, but I'm aware that that's really horrible of me! I will add those too…

I haven't tackled making it fully responsive yet. Going to be a little tricky due to my limited experience, and so I'm not sure yet how I want to approach it. So I'm ignoring that for the moment, and concentrating on some other sites I'm doing.

Thanks for taking the time to really dig into it, BillRay.
Click to expand...

Yeah the W3 validator can really make life easier when you're trying to figure out why something is broken; when I'm having trouble with something I will validate it and that usually saves me a good amount of time in digging.

I would at least get a "Onesheet" rolling on the site, now that I'm thinking about it more.

Check out http://rdgrocks.com that's our site. I built it.
 
Checked out your site, Bill. Very cool. You guys got so much going on! Great job organizing it so you can find your way around. That's hard to do.

On my band's site, I had exactly the opposite design problem. Since we haven't been together all that long, we had practically zip for content. My job was to make it look like there's more going on than there really is! But it's cool that I was able to do something fluid and arty to start off with. I know somewhere down the line, once we have the content, I'm going to have to break out the site into separate pages and make everything more static.

Awesome playing on your part, btw, and a super tight band! Very impressive.

Re: a "onesheet". I'm a designer of movie and home video stuff by day, and to me a one sheet has always meant a 27x40 poster. But I'm building a site for a music biz professional, for his new company, and he did a onesheet he wanted me to incorporate into the site, basically just a 8.5x11 info sheet. Is that what music biz folks call a one sheet now days?
 
criz p. critter said:
Checked out your site, Bill. Very cool. You guys got so much going on! Great job organizing it so you can find your way around. That's hard to do.

On my band's site, I had exactly the opposite design problem. Since we haven't been together all that long, we had practically zip for content. My job was to make it look like there's more going on than there really is! But it's cool that I was able to do something fluid and arty to start off with. I know somewhere down the line, once we have the content, I'm going to have to break out the site into separate pages and make everything more static.

Awesome playing on your part, btw, and a super tight band! Very impressive.

Re: a "onesheet". I'm a designer of movie and home video stuff by day, and to me a one sheet has always meant a 27x40 poster. But I'm building a site for a music biz professional, for his new company, and he did a onesheet he wanted me to incorporate into the site, basically just a 8.5x11 info sheet. Is that what music biz folks call a one sheet now days?
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Yeah, just all your stuff "on one sheet". Here's some inspiration, the onesheets are obvious:

http://oceansites.net/what-we-do/37-the-music-connection.html


Also, create a band pic 8.5x11 that a clubowner can print out and write a date on; make the bottom 1/3 of the page blank so they can write in. Do one in 11x17 as well.
 
Nice website Chris! Love that song "Train Don't Stop Here Anymore". I really miss a buddy of mine, he moved to Florida. We did an uptempo version of that song that just smoked. I dont even think I've heard the original version, Los Lobos? Anyway, you guys sound really good, I've got to come catch one of your shows.






Greg
 
Mendozart said:
Nice website Chris! Love that song "Train Don't Stop Here Anymore". I really miss a buddy of mine, he moved to Florida. We did an uptempo version of that song that just smoked. I dont even think I've heard the original version, Los Lobos? Anyway, you guys sound really good, I've got to come catch one of your shows. Greg
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Thanks for the kind words, Greg! Yeah, Los Lobos.... I think the studio version is the one we're following. I've heard a live version that's a lot faster. Great song.

We're in Culver City tomorrow night. That's probably the closest we're gonna get to you for a while anyway. If you can make it, great. I'll buy the first round. If not, we'll be back there some time soon.
 
criz p. critter said:
Thanks for the kind words, Greg! Yeah, Los Lobos.... I think the studio version is the one we're following. I've heard a live version that's a lot faster. Great song.

We're in Culver City tomorrow night. That's probably the closest we're gonna get to you for a while anyway. If you can make it, great. I'll buy the first round. If not, we'll be back there some time soon.
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Yeah, I saw your gig list and that would have been an easy one to attend. Unfortunately I have gigs on Friday and Saturday. I'll definitely catch one of your gigs soon though.
 
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