As a music shop owner, you know an effective website is now more important than ever.
It's been said that first impressions are lasting impressions. It doesn't matter whether most of your music store’s sales are made in person or online, the first impression a customer has of your business is made in a visit to your website.
Customers may be looking for a specific product or your operating hours, but that search begins online.
To be successful and continue to make sales for your music shop, you need to look at your website with a critical eye to see if it’s working for you. You should spend a significant amount of time creating goals for your website, and these goals should be: specific, measurable, achievable, and evaluated regularly.
Let’s look at goals, guidelines, and how we build winning websites.
Goals for Your Music Shop Website Design
The goal for any business’ website is to help it succeed, but there are some specific issues and opportunities that your website can help your music shop with. If you address these, you greatly improve the chances of your website being a success with your customers.
Increase Sales
First and foremost, a website should help you sell more. Generating revenue is how you stay in business. Your website helps you continue to succeed, employ your associates, and serve your customers and community.
Whether your website simply helps you connect with your customers or is a full e-commerce sales engine, evaluating each section of your website helps you increase sales.
Related Read: Improving Inventory Turnover Rate for Music Stores: 5 Ways
Drive Foot Traffic
The lifeblood of any small business is foot traffic. In-person sales can be challenging. However, most successful businesses have learned to move beyond the traditional model and embrace a hybrid model of in-person and online presence in the retail market.
An effective website attracts customers to your music store and lets your customers see what products and services you offer. Your website should always include your locations and operating hours.
Enable Productivity
Your website and integrated systems should empower you and your employees to be more productive each day. When back end business systems tie directly into your website, you can make changes to product information in one place and automatically update your website and point of sale (POS) system.
Plus, your website can help answer some of your most common customer questions. Content like a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section or an “about us” page that answers questions about products you sell or services you provide will save you and your staff time and effort. Think about the most common questions you get by phone that are quickly answered — put that content on your website.
Facilitate Conversation
Today’s online retail environment is more interactive than ever before. Your customers expect to be able to connect with you when and wherever they are. Integrated marketing and communication tools allow you to connect, drive interactions, and enable more sales.
Now, let’s look at some of the principles you should follow when creating your music shop’s website.
Guidelines for Building Winning Music Shop Websites
Once you’ve decided the goals for your website, consider the common principles and features you should include. Here are some of the guidelines and best practices for building your music shop website design.
Simplicity
Keep your website clean and uncluttered. You’re passionate about your music shop and want to tell the whole world about everything you can do or provide. However, most visitors can only hold a small number of ideas top-of-mind. Focus on the most important things that will make the visitors' experience better. Feature what makes your business unique — how you differentiate yourself — and what you do best.
The other benefit of simplicity is that your website will load faster and get the most important information to your customers quickly. With the wide adoption of browsing on mobile devices, it’s also important to consider the experience of mobile visitors to your website. Simple designs and concise information make for a better mobile experience and responsive design.
Responsive design automatically adjusts the layout of your website to accommodate the different devices your visitors view the website on. Each visitor on a phone, tablet, and computer sees a website and navigation that’s dynamically generated for their device.
Remember: The primary goal of your website is to initiate a connection with your customer. On each page, ask yourself the question, “What do I want my customer to do after visiting this page?” This helps you focus on the goal of each page and direct your customers toward your ultimate goal.
Long term, a simple website is much easier to maintain. Your time is valuable and the more efficiently you run your business, the better it is for you. You can spend more time on important tasks and not worry about how much time you spend on website maintenance.
Search Engine Optimization
Optimize your website content to help it appear higher in search results, driving traffic to your website. Optimizing your music shop's website content for search engines is critical for increasing visibility and attracting potential customers.
Today's online shoppers turn to the internet to discover new music, research instruments, and make purchases. By optimizing website content for search, music shop owners can ensure that their website appears higher in search engine results pages, making it more likely to be seen by potential customers.
Additionally, optimizing website content can help establish your music shop as a credible source of information, enhancing its reputation and building trust with customers. By taking the time to optimize website content for search, music shop owners can significantly improve their online presence and drive more traffic to their website — ultimately leading to increased sales and business growth.
Navigation
Another important feature that enables your customers to find what they’re looking for is the navigation of your music shop website. Keep navigation concise and restricted to the most important sections of your website.
Decide what the most important drivers of your shop's business are and put them at the front of your navigation. Prioritize consistency in your navigation by creating commonly used and recognizable labels for your navigation. When you do this, you create clear expectations that visitors have come to look for when they visit your website.
Search Bar
Visitors come to your website because they want to find something. Despite your effort to follow best practices and organize your music shop website design, each visitor comes to your website looking for many different things.
Your website should help them find what they’re looking for. If you provide a search bar in the header of your website, customers can quickly find the information or products they’re looking for — enhancing their overall satisfaction and engagement with your brand.
To ensure a seamless user experience, it's important to understand that visitors come to your website with diverse search intentions. To cater to this, your website should be equipped with an easily accessible search bar prominently placed in the header.
Images
Good images are vital to the impression you make when visitors come to your site. Images catch visitors' attention and sell your products. Photos and images quickly communicate concepts that may take more text than is desirable for your website.
Quality images engage your visitors and keep them on the site longer. Pay close attention to how you name the image files and alt text associated with your photos. If the photos are relevant to your text, it will improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
Color
Color is a fundamental part of the way we perceive the world. It’s a key factor in engaging your visitors or driving them away. The key to the use of color on your website is to keep it simple.
Keep the majority of the website neutral and use colors as an accent. Too much color is distracting. Pick a palette that complements your branding. Your website provider may be a good source for proven color palettes. There are also many online resources for color suggestions.
Call to Action
Perhaps the most important function your website can fulfill is to help customers to take action. You need to create clear and concise calls to action on each page of your website.
Think about what you want the visitor to do after seeing each page on your website. Create a clear call to action for each page and tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do.
These include direct instructions like Shop Now, View All, or Sign Up. These phrases encourage visitors to stay engaged with your website and complete transactions.
Choose a Platform for Your Music Shop Website Design
A solid platform makes it easy to create interactive sites with dynamic content and e-commerce capabilities. There are many options for building a website. As you carefully make decisions about your website design, consider the features you want or need.
When choosing a partner to help create your website, it helps to find a provider with experience and tools that are specific to music shops.
Music Shop 360 has solutions for instrument rentals, beginner student packages, and repairs. Each of these helpful features are integrated into Music Shop 360’s inventory management processes. Plus, tools for adding features to your website like lessons and online school rentals will quickly enable you to increase your shop’s revenue.
Music Shop 360 is a trusted partner to help build your website. We understand the music industry and can help you overcome many of the challenges you face as you redesign or launch your website.
Schedule a live demo of Music Shop 360 to learn how it can help you build a winning website.