WEBSITE some home pages and banners compared

You have a few fundamental decisions to make early in the construction and design of your site:

• BANNER this should tie in with icons/banners for all social media, and will often change to reflect the latest album release or tour
• TOP LINKS any decent website has clear, specific top-links, accessible on every page for quick navigation through the site. 4 or 5 (sometimes 6) is the norm. Some will include dropdown menus with sub-pages. 'Contact' or 'social media' shouldn't be one of these as those icons should also be on every page AND their content featured heavily throughout
• COLOURSCHEME/OVERALL LOOK there should be a clear feel throughout the site. That doesn't necessarily mean the same background colour/image, but there should some clear feel of consistency

Here are a few homepages/banners to consider:

Sample website banners top links from DB3igs

ADAM ANT
He started out as a late 70s punk, but became one of the biggest selling 80s pop artists, and a key pioneer of the epic MTV music video, and continues to record and tour today. He has TWO official sites, one for the US and one primarily for the UK.
AdamAntNET

The US site has 6 top links, and a poorly designed banner - odd for an artist famed for tightly controlling and self-designing so much of his own artwork over the years. The forum is in heavy use - 0.5m posts, including recent additions. Note the emphasis on merchandise and live dates, a clear reflection of how artists tend to monetise their work these days. 'Features' is an odd mish-mash of many things; this could do with a dropdown sub-menu. There actually is a mouse hover submenu, but its a graphic only, and disappears when you move the mouse or click on Features. I also note that clicking through to merchandise prices appear in euros but there is a separate banner for a US store on the homepage for that separate site.



AdamAntCOM
Its not really clear why there are two official sites, and that nasty NET banner reappears in the forum link. We do get actual dropdown menus though. Note how prominent the social media are (screenshot from school which blocks FB).

A perhaps excessive 7 top links? Note that the contact link on both sites (called booking on the NET version) is for gig promoters wanting to book the artist for live performances, NOT a pointless repeat of the social media links already highlighted (which are of course a means of contact!). The site's plain black look reflects the current tour and the poster for it. The banner is minimalistic, nothing more than the font.

The top links do not include any shortening, informality or slang (bad choice?).

A limited range of fonts are used, vital to maintain a clean look. In this case a mix of sans-serif bubble font, red with a white outline for the artist name (reflecting album cover branding) to help it stand out, with all top links and side frame headings are a golden colour, the clear contrast helping to distinguish them as does the thin font used.

You can clearly see how the TOUR is pushed, as the home page main image and also featured in the Twitter account, a live feed of which (also FB) is embedded in the left-hand frame, reflecting the changing realities of the music industry with albums now just part of a wider mix of monetising strategies.

ALT-J
A great example of what not to do?

THE 1975

YOU ME AT SIX

CHARLIE PUTH

SHAWN MENDES

This uses a variation on the splash page; a part-page that can be closed by clicking outside it or on the X.

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE
This one uses an auto-scrolling gallery for the homepage, previewing the top-link sections.

AC/DC
Note the 'back to top' button.