Ancillary: Website Research & Planning

As part of the ancillary tasks in order to try and promote the artist I was focusing on and their upcoming album I had to design and create a website. I had previously made websites in the past which was great as I had a good idea of how to create them and the general things to include on them. However, it was important for me to specifically research band and artist's website in order to try and get an idea of what they look like and what features are available on them as I had only made sport related and educational websites in the past. Some of the websites I researched were quite complex and included features that I wouldn't be able to create with the tools and software I had available. In general though, each website stuck to a similar pattern and the majority of them included a similar set of pages, which were: biography/about the artist, tour, photos, music videos and contact links. In order to find something that was appropriate for me, the websites I tended to focus on were those of singer-song writers and folk artists. These included, the official website for the artist I was focusing on Jake Bugg, Miles Kane & ex-Oasis man Noel Gallagher.

Jake Bugg

Miles Kane

Noel Gallagher

As you can see there are a number of things that each website have in common. Firstly, they all feature the name of the artist in relatively large writing in the top left. I believe this is quite important and plan to include it on my own. Also, typical of websites in general, there is a  navigation bar with a number of page links relative to the artist as I mentioned previously. Another feature I noticed was that each website includes an image of the artist on the homepage as soon as the website is opened, I feel this is important and shall include it on the Jake Bugg website as it's what the fan's would want to see upon opening the website. The main colours used all tend to be dark too (brown, grey, black), I'm unsure whether this is typical of the indie/alternative genre but I can only assume website's of pop artist's and band's wouldn't look similar. As well as this I noticed the websites included links to their Facebook/Twitter/YouTube pages, I plan to do something similar too. 

Before creating my website, I decided to sketch out a rough plan and idea so I had something to work from rather than making it on the spot:

I plan to use a free website called 'www.weebly.com' to create the Jake Bugg website.