Turtlerock Forum

Hi All, after many years I've got a domain name and hope to post a webpage. I wonder if any of you would care to comment on what works for you as a presence on the web, if you have any advice on presentation, and if you could recommend some examples of studio web sites? Personally, I'd like to present as professional, but not corporate, perhaps even bohemian.....

pg

petaipan wrote:Hi All, after many years I've got a domain name and hope to post a webpage. I wonder if any of you would care to comment on what works for you as a presence on the web, if you have any advice on presentation, and if you could recommend some examples of studio web sites? Personally, I'd like to present as professional, but not corporate, perhaps even bohemian.....

pg

.......just cut and paste the pic of ricks studio and pop it on your home page. That should attract a but of attention i reckon:)

( just joking....just in case some OS dweeb takes this advice seriously!)

Hi Petaipan

I do think the Turtlerock main site is a great example of a good website - the important thing to work out is giving the right amount of information at each stage and letting the user then drill down to whatever they want. On the other hand, the JLM Audio page is a real dog's breakfast of text and pics stuck all over the place, but I find I can navigate it pretty well all the same. In both cases, its actually the reputation of the people that draws me, not the website. I know of many really funky sites that front for crappy businesses. All of which is saying don't oversweat the issue. Get a site up that you like and then work on building that reputation - the real point of a commercial site is, after all, to get people to call you or buy your products / services, not to win awards.

.......just cut and paste the pic of ricks studio and pop it on your home page. That should attract a but of attention i reckon:)

yeah, that seemed to work well when I tried it for my last venture (kidding, kidding, Ric)

write out the text you think you need, then get rid of 80% of it.

less words, more pictures.

keep it simple.

the things that shit me the most are

no price.

inadequate contact info.

and not as much as the other 2 but still leaves me asking the simple questions and I need to contact them for that reason.

Don't make a Flash site, whilst it looks groovey and cool, there is nothing worse than waiting for it all to load, most people will give up waiting and just move on.

Have a look at Electric Ave, their site is clean, informative and professional.

http://www.electricave.com.au/

Cheers

Dominic

Their site does look cool, but having all the content as images instead of text is generally considered a no-no. The same content as text would load much faster and could easily be made to look the same. Just as Australia moves to broadband in a big way, now people are using their phones more and more to access the 'net. The images will either be resized and become illegible or need to be scrolled in several directions, depending on the phone. Text will usually just be rearranged and maintain readability.

Keep flash to a minimum as Dominic said, use it for bells and whistles if you like, but not as the only way to access content.

Dominic wrote:Don't make a Flash site, whilst it looks groovey and cool, there is nothing worse than waiting for it all to load, most people will give up waiting and just move on.

Have a look at Electric Ave, their site is clean, informative and professional.

http://www.electricave.com.au/

Cheers

Dominic

Thanks for all the comments so far. I do like the electricavenue site - simple but appealing I think.
I'm sure you're right about the text, Kurt, but I did find your site a bit stark ( to my taste) because of the lack of visuals.
However, I cant see myself trolling the net on my iphone - I like to see it on the big screen :)
pg

Hi Petaipan,

Highly recommend using text for text and images for effect. People are using iPhones to browse the net alot more these days - saw it happen at lunch the other day, and it could be a band sitting in the pub trying to work out where to record :-)

Also means that search engines find more stuff on your site and people with disablities can still find their way around your site. Dont forget your meta tags too.

You can still get pretty close to the EE site mentioned, and get the other benefits too.

Cheers

hey our own Mark Basset did the Turtlerock site AND the Electric ave site

so thats two public compliments to the too often unsung around here in one thread

err berry merry christmas mark :)

You should check out Songzu's site (have the sound up)........

http://www.songzu.com/

Djembe wrote:You should check out Songzu's site (have the sound up)........

http://www.songzu.com/

As cutesy as it is, I found it annoying to navigate. just 2c

You're probably right about my site being a bit plain, but I don't have cool stuff to put up photo's of ;)

Here's a photo of my 20 year old Mackie desk.. Here's my impressive rack of be!@#$%^& compressors.. This is my spare bedroom with some homemade baffles leaning against the wall. No photo's works better for me I reckon.

petaipan wrote:Thanks for all the comments so far. I do like the electricavenue site - simple but appealing I think.
I'm sure you're right about the text, Kurt, but I did find your site a bit stark ( to my taste) because of the lack of visuals.
However, I cant see myself trolling the net on my iphone - I like to see it on the big screen :)
pg

hey kurt, i thought your website was quite serviceable and very matter of fact, tells you what you need to know.... but it just needs some colour. i thought it would look good with some (possibly generic) live gig pics in the background, maybe just pale/opaque behind the text.... something that screams out (well quietly screams out) Live Gigs Is What We Do. even just a PA stack or console shot.

Djembe wrote:You should check out Songzu's site (have the sound up)........

http://www.songzu.com/

Very slow loading..main window out of whack in my browser too (can't maximize)

One of the coolest Recording Studio websites I've seen in the last few years
http://www.kore-studios.com/

Senad wrote:One of the coolest Recording Studio websites I've seen in the last few years
http://www.kore-studios.com/

I gotta admit - that is THE best studio website I've seen in a long time - classy, fast and has all the right stuff (gear included!!)

These cats do some nice work

www.xy-1.com