How To Create A Band Website For Free

Creating a band website: A complete checklist In this age of busy online chatter, a musician truly needs a website to frame their digital space outside of the social media stream. Your website is your online homebase - the headquarters from which you sell your music, promote upcoming shows, and build a community around your fans.

If you're better at creating melodies and putting lyrics down on paper than you are at building a website, you might feel a bit lost on how to get started.

Wondering what a band website should include? This checklist will break down the things you should add to your band website, step by step.

Creating a band website: A complete checklist

▢ Get professional photos

Before thinking about what style of website design suits your music, get some professional photos taken. Band photos should reflect your sound at a glance, and appear crisp and compelling. These photos will form first impressions on your website - make sure they look professional.

▢ Choose a template

Pick a simple website template that suits your music. Upload a photo that conveys your band and your sound. All Bandzoogle templates adapt automatically to mobile and support e-commerce, so you can check those requirements off your list!

▢ Organize your navigation

Decide which pages you'll put in your navigation menu. Besides your Home page, you can add an About, Music, Shows, Photos, Videos, Press Kit, and Contact page. This simple structure will help you know what content to put on each page.

▢ Create an effective homepage

As the gateway to your entire website, your homepage should be well organized, and offer a glimpse into the rest of your pages. Things to add here include a bit of bio text, a powerful image, your music, and recent news or upcoming events.

▢ Add an artist bio

A musician bio is incredibly important to add to your band website for several reasons; it's a way for people interested in your music to learn about you; it's easy for music venues, bloggers, or media to copy and use; it boosts your band website SEO. Write an up-to-date bio and post it in a prominent spot on your website.

▢ Upload music to stream and sell

Whether you're releasing new music soon or want to showcase your most beloved cuts, gather up your music files and add music to your Homepage. To provide access to your full span of work, create a dedicated Music page where all your tracks can be played or purchased.

▢ Add an events calendar

Whether you're playing a cross-country tour, shows at the local pub, or hosting livestream events, be sure you add a gig calendar and keep it updated with your upcoming shows.

▢ Add photos and videos

Videos are easy to add and are adored by fans - look up your best YouTube clips and place them on your Home and EPK pages. Next, add a gallery of your professional images on a Photos page. Be sure to add a few hi-resolution images on your EPK page as well - this makes it easy for media and venues to find the content they need to promote your work.

▢ Create an EPK

Depending on your goal for your music, select from Bandzoogle's preset EPK page options, then fill in the content. For this page you'll need: a quote, a short bio with an image of you, a few press photos, a sample track, and a sample video. Done!

▢ Add an online store to sell merch

Get your CDs, vinyl, t-shirts, and more set up in a store. To do this you'll need images of your products (cover art for albums). You can also connect your Printful account to sell print-on-demand items from your website quickly and easily. Then you'll be ready to start selling merch with zero commission!

▢ Add an email sign-up form to build your mailing list

Email remains an essential way to communicate with your most invested fans. Grow your list of contacts by adding a sign-up form to your Home and Contact pages. Make sure to collect those emails as a concrete way to reach people with your newsletters.

▢ Provide a way for fans to support you

A great reason to build a band website is to cultivate a connection with your fans, and to give them a way to support you! You could add a Tip Jar to your website if you don't have products available for sale. Consider crowdfunding or selling fan subscriptions as other ways to allow fans to encourage you.

▢ Customize your design with colors and fonts

Creating a custom look for your band website is easier to do once you've got your pages built, with content in place. Choose a music website template that aligns with the size of your site, and your sound. Then customize the colors, fonts, sections, and backgrounds to reflect your style.

▢ Choose a domain name

Once you've added your content and customized your design, you'll want to choose a custom domain name for your music website. This becomes the custom URL where you can always be found online.

▢ Set up custom email

Once your domain name is in place, set up a custom domain-based email address where people can reach you. This adds a layer of professionalism to your communications (plus you can check email from your phone on the go).

▢ Optimize your website for SEO

Google states clearly that it will recognize your official website as being the most authoritative source of information available about you. Once you've got content in place, optimize your website for SEO to rank better in search results. Use this SEO checklist for musicians to get started.

And that's it!

We hope that working through this list of items will help you build a website that you're excited to share with the world!. Work through the list of tasks, check each one off as you're done, and in no time you'll have a beautiful band website to be proud of.

Build a professional band website and EPK in just a few clicks where you can sell music and merch commission-free! Try Bandzoogle today.