Idea's or fix's on my website...... needing some input from fresh eyes

Keira-WitherKay

hiya all, till now i been using a generic website on showcaseyourmusic.com but now have my own site at keirawitherkay.com

right the site was ready last week and now i need some input from fresh eye's to help adjust some things or make some changes....... i know a lot of you guys and gals are in the IT game and might have some helpful input ........

so far the goals were to make the site easy to negotiate....... and have all the info for live performances and teaching and even a mailing list

right so what i wanna change right now is the event list is set up that the event coming up the soonest ...will be at the bottom........... i want the order reversed so the "next " gig i play will top the list.............. not be at the bottom as it is now............. ok thats 1 fix

then i want a media/mp3 player on the site for audio.... this i spoke to the developer and he said no prob, just needs done.so thats a feature that will be there soon ........... ok so 2 fix's

and i need to update the video's but thats my prob not the developers the video's work well and easily ........

a question on this front does anyone in jhb have a vid camera that has an audio in.......... meaning i can take a line from mixer straight into cam......... cos if you do and in jhb contact me and i may want to hire your services to shoot some live video at a gig ............. i'm not looking for a video production just simple live footage.............

right so i can see 3 things to fix.........any more i should think about .............

and a question if i wanna sell tracks online..... how would i set that up...cos i see FNB makes paypal available to me if i want ........ but does anyone know how the download system would work..????

so any idea's??????

Bob-Dubery

I'd change "Events" to "live dates" or something similar.

I'm never sure about putting a cell phone number on a web site - but your call on that.

The Mp3 is a cool idea, but let the visitor decide if they want to hear the music or not. These sites that start playing automatically are not smiled upon by people with bandwidth caps (IE most of us).

Ray

Contratulations, it's lekker. Ditto what Bob said about events and all. In that list you dont tell people nearly as much about what you do at Carnival as you have told us. They will head off to one of the showbars to look for you maybe. Dunno. Also, you list each week's performance at Carnival. When you look at that list it pretty much says you are the trusted standing act so why not say that and list it once to cover every saturday and wednesday because if you have something like 4 weeks down the page the oke is going to get gatvol before he gets down there and he wont see it. Hey I have just seen now that your events are future working down to present on the page. Is that the way it's done?

PeteM

I think your site is great. There is one thing though. On the 'Lessons' page, I would get straight to the point and remove the reference to performance, since this is covered more than adequately elsewhere. I would also change your heading from 'Services' to 'Tutoring'.
The page would read thus:

Tutoring Services
In addition to performing live, Keira teaches music full-time
and has built up a substantial teaching practice covering
the Johannesburg and Pretoria area's.

She teaches students of all ages from beginners to professional
musicians across a variety of styles.

Understanding that travelling to lessons can be time-consuming,
Keira offers a service where she will travel to students within the
Johannesburg and Pretoria areas.

P.S. I have taken the liberty of editing your copy - just my 2c worth. (Damn these advertising copywriter types - they always want to make changes to the client's copy ?)

Ray

A 'links' in the menu might be lekker hey? And 'testimonials' if the site is for marketing your services.

Bob-Dubery

PeteM wrote: I think your site is great. There is one thing though. On the 'Lessons' page, I would get straight to the point and remove the reference to performance, since this is covered more than adequately elsewhere. I would also change your heading from 'Services' to 'Tutoring'.

Or even "Tuition". "Tutoring" conjures up images of a victorian school marm, or perhaps one of those ladies who wears lots of leather and has a whip and provides a very different kind of service.

PeteM

X-rated Bob wrote:
PeteM wrote: I think your site is great. There is one thing though. On the 'Lessons' page, I would get straight to the point and remove the reference to performance, since this is covered more than adequately elsewhere. I would also change your heading from 'Services' to 'Tutoring'.

Or even "Tuition". "Tutoring" conjures up images of a victorian school marm, or perhaps one of those ladies who wears lots of leather and has a whip and provides a very different kind of service.

You're right Bob.

Keira-WitherKay

X-rated Bob wrote:
PeteM wrote:
Or even "Tuition". "Tutoring" conjures up images one of those ladies who wears lots of leather and has a whip and provides a very different kind of service.

? well some students do need to get whipped into shape.......... but maybe if i changed thge title of the website to "Mistress Kayla's music tutition" it would be way more effective........... ? nah maybe when i was younger ............. heheheheheh

and jokes aside .........yeah Bob, Ray, and pete thanks all those changes will be made............. this is great and pete thanks i know you in the ad game so your input is gonna be used for that changed paragraph........

Bob-Dubery

Keira WitherKay wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote:
PeteM wrote:
Or even "Tuition". "Tutoring" conjures up images one of those ladies who wears lots of leather and has a whip and provides a very different kind of service.
? well some students do need to get whipped into shape..........

Where do I sign up?

AlanRatcliffe

Something I didn't see mentioned above: remove all references to your email address ASAP - you have a contact form on the site and email addys on sites get harvested by spambots. You'll find your spam count in your inbox starts climbing rapidly.

Other than that, there are just a few small typos that need correcting.

killafo

Hi Keira

The one thing i would change is the events page.

You have a bunch of dates in the same location (Keira Witherkay solo at Carnival City Casino ), which i'm going to take a wild guess and say you regularly perform there, as well as other places. So i would name the venue once and group the dates with the event. its easier to read then.

Something like this.....

Keira Witherkay solo at Carnival City Casino 31 July 2010 at 17:00
28 July 2010 at 17:00
24 July 2010 at 17:00
21 July 2010 at 17:00

Gabrielle Le Roux fundraising concert 10 June 2010 at 12:00
......and so on

Another suggestion is that your web developer could make a script to highlight the date closest to the date that someone at your site is looking at.

For example your next performance is on 29 May 2010 at 18:00 . That could be in bold or different colour, so it draws the eye to that date for easy viewing. I think it could work nicely with the above layout.

PS in (Gabrielle Le Roux fundfaising concert) fundraising is spelled wrong.

Other than that looks great.

Bob-Dubery

I just punched http://keirawitherkay.com/ into my browser.....

... and I got a lovely page about the Tembisa Love Trust.

I have nothing against that trust, but that site doesn't tell me much about Keira Witherkay

Bob-Dubery

OK... if you include the wubbleyews then it works OK.

I'm thinking that the home page is a bit too wordy. Some of that detail should be moved to the "about" section.

Maybe the live shows should be ordered so that the top gig is the next gig.

PeteM

PeteM wrote:
Tuition
In addition to performing live, Keira teaches music full-time
and has built up a substantial teaching practice covering
the Johannesburg and Pretoria area's.

My bad - remove the apostrophe in area's to read areas.
Also change the heading to 'Tuition' as per Bob's suggestion. Maybe you should use Tuition on the home page rather than Lessons for continuity.

Attila

Mistress Kayla

I have always taken the approach that a website must be functional, I guess its horses for courses.

What many Tutors have done is build their own community of paying subscribers, and the website becomes resource where they logon and get "stuff" to further their learning, I am sure you know what I am talking about.

We know that selling ones time has a finite revenue stream, and the only way to grow this is to time slice your time. So in a nut shell the website should execute your marketing strategy so that you can offer a service to many people at the same time 24/7

This will obviously expand your catchment area potential to the world too.

We also know that 1 on 1 tuition is the best way to learn, so this is where the dilemma sits, and begs two questions

1) what it is we are chasing ?
2) define a strategy with tools to achieve this

Just a comment on the services side and this is something I would buy into and that is “Band practice”

I have never played in a band however my ex-girlfriend and a friend used to get together and play acoustics, learning songs, strum picking techniques, some music theory etc ,….. in hindsight we would have had a lot more fun if there was someone who could facilitate something like a band practice, where we could learn how to jam together and make real music.

Peace

attila

IceCreamMan

musical palate = musical palette

Tutoring Services In = Tutoring services in

she teachs - She teaches

also teach's = also teaches

Apart from the above and i apologise for being anal on the spelling.

I like the site , it loads easy , easy to navigate and is not bandwidth intensive ...i would make the tabs a lil bigger to atteact attention.

All in all a nice uncluttered site whcih gets to the point.

its exactly what is needed

Keira-WitherKay

X-rated Bob wrote: I just punched http://keirawitherkay.com/ into my browser.....

... and I got a lovely page about the Tembisa Love Trust.

I have nothing against that trust, but that site doesn't tell me much about Keira Witherkay

hi Bob ... try www.keirawitherkay.com i also hit that till i included the www....

and to the other guys thanks for the replies yeah this is just what i wanted...... you guys are awesome, and i appreciate all the help ......and should be seeing my "web" developer man on thurs and sort out some more of these issues........

thanks for the input everyone

tonerider

Keira WitherKay wrote:
right so what i wanna change right now is the event list is set up that the event coming up the soonest ...will be at the bottom........... i want the order reversed so the "next " gig i play will top the list.............. not be at the bottom as it is now............. ok thats 1 fix

then i want a media/mp3 player on the site for audio.... this i spoke to the developer and he said no prob, just needs done.so thats a feature that will be there soon ........... ok so 2 fix's

and i need to update the video's but thats my prob not the developers the video's work well and easily ........

a question on this front does anyone in jhb have a vid camera that has an audio in.......... meaning i can take a line from mixer straight into cam......... cos if you do and in jhb contact me and i may want to hire your services to shoot some live video at a gig ............. i'm not looking for a video production just simple live footage.............

right so i can see 3 things to fix.........any more i should think about .............

and a question if i wanna sell tracks online..... how would i set that up...cos i see FNB makes paypal available to me if i want ........ but does anyone know how the download system would work..????

Hi Keira,

Just thought I'd chip in with some ideas since I've been "playing" with websites for years now.

I don't want to be the prophet of doom here but, although your website features a Javascript menu, it has been designed using the antiquated and outdated "table" method. Tables (originally used for tabular data like numbers, hence the word table) has been replaced by modern "cascading style sheet" design or CSS as its popularly known today which by nature allows search engines to search, find and index your site much quicker and makes the entire site less bloated with code, and also much easier to update. So that's something to consider before the site grows too large.
If you want to change the current gigs around in order for the latest one to be displayed at the top you're going to have to physically sit with an HTML editor (Dreamweaver?) and hard code the information into the tables yourself. Then in future, as you add new gigs, you'll have to use the HTML editor again to add a new row (and/or cells) to the top of the table into which you will type the next new gig information. Thus the existing rows will automatically move down the page as you add new ones to the top of the table. You will also require an FTP client to upload and download the updated pages to and from your web server.
Videos - The latest thing is just to add your movies to YouTube and then to embed the link code into your "videos" page.
A great free MP3 player that's easy to embed into a website is this one here http://www.premiumbeat.com/flash_resources/free_flash_music_player/ See it in action here on my band's website at http://www.latefinal.co.za/
If you want to sell anything online you will have to go the way of content management systems (CMS) and add a shopping basket plugin to it. You might have to register as an online merchant with the bank of your choice and/or use a payment gateway and so forth. This is where it can become incredibly complex and expensive and I won't waste anyone's time even trying to explain any of it.
The easiest way to sell your stuff online is to use a form (and/or telephone number) and have people formally email you with a request to purchase something specific that you're featuring on your sales page (with or without price). You can then reply with a quote and your banking details. A potential customer will then be able to buy and deposit money into your bank account using standard EFT or deposits over the bank counter and finally email or fax the payment confirmation back to you. Then you just post the item to them using any one of a variety of shipping methods. Simple, without any hidden costs and with the added bonus that you make a personal connection with a fan!
Selling your music online (including single tracks) is probably best done through digital places like CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/ who will make it available through iTunes. However, originals will have to be accompanied with registration codes and proof of ownership (don't know TOO much about this stuff) before they will be accepted for re-selling. Also take note that, as soon as someone can listen to music directly from your website there will be those clever enough to download it. Thus if you want to guard your originals always only feature snippets of music and not the whole song.

Hope this helps a bit.

Feel free to add your bits or crits! ?

Fingerpicker

Keira,
I will look at the website shortly but three things first:

1) There is a brilliant little book at CNA Cresta called "How to make music on the Web" for R99. Cover most all things from recoding to websites and selling your music.

2) Martin Taylor has a full page ad in the May 2010 edition of Guitar Techniques where he advertises a course called "Master the art of solo guitar". He uses videa exchange lessons. This would widen your net of students and cut out some travelling.
It costs $60 for 3 months. Check it out on www.MartinTaylorGuitar.com

3) Have a look at Martin Tallstroms website where he has a mixture of free music notation/TAB and music for sale. Giving some music away immediately make people warm to him, judging by the comments.

Keira-WitherKay

thanks guys. yes if you visit the site now some if not all of the suggested changes have been made...... so your suggestions were taken to heart and implemented.......... thanks for the input .........

another plus is i just bought the Zoom Q3 video camera which is aimed at live music with a stereo studio quality condenser mic fitted to the camera...... so in next few weeks my video;'s will finally be upgraded..

i got too frustrated on waiting for people to be available to shoot some footage ...so splurged out on the camera and accesories ... not cheap however ....but now i'm set up to shoot video at will ...... yay i shoulda done it ages ago........ and this camera in the tests i done so far offers supperb sound quality and being specifically designed for music /bands is looking promising ....... you'll see the results shortly in next week or so...........

but thanks again for input ...all noted and already changed in most cases.........