Objective

All businesses need a mobile friendly or tablet friendly site. Especially a premium consultancy like RISC, who have highly influential, time poor customers.

Challenge

Having already built the website for Risc, and selecting a theme that didn’t have responsive style sheets built in, we’d have to consider either

a) creating a redirect site for mobile/tablet use or

b) changing the style sheets using media queries (i.e if site is between 200px and 500px make the menu look like this…)

We chose the latter because we felt maintaining two sites would be overkill, and we also wanted the ability for the site to resize according to the screen size.  In some instances going with a redirect might be advisable if you wanted to reduce load times by uploading smaller images.

Solution

There were 3 main considerations in developing new style sheets:

1) All widths had to be fluid, so that as the

2) The homepage had to be completely redone, as a two column approach wouldn’t work on a mobile

3) The menu system would ultimately take up the majority of the viewing space so we utilised what is called a toggle menu, that appears and disappears on click.

We created rules for style sheets such as, if device is x size, then make the site look like x. The most important piece was the menu, which we decided on a toggle menu, click and it drops down, click and it dissapears.

Try it

Open www.riscpl.com on your mobile or simply resize your browser to see it in action.

iTunes is the king of retail music, with more than 70% market share at the time of writing this post.  And let’s face it it’s the first destination for many when they look to buy music.  But for independent musicians, who rely on word of mouth and social sharing to gather an audience, why would you send them to iTunes when you could send them to your own store to collect the full profits?

I asked the digital director at Universal that very question some 2 years ago, and they said they’d prefer to send people to iTunes.  My jaw smashed through the floor.

Let’s dissect iTunes and get you thinking about your own direct strategy.

1) iTunes takes 30% of your profit

Apple makes a fortune on doing very little.  An independent musician loses 30% of their profit to the retailer iTunes, but you also have to deal with a digital distributor in order to get your music into iTunes in the first place. These digital distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore will charge you a yearly fee and in most cases charge you a % of your profit also.  You could be losing up to 50% of your potential profit just by directing people to iTunes to buy.  For a comparison of digital distributor’s you might want to check out my ebook (for the price of a coffee).

2) Sell Merchandise, packages, digital downloads, physical CD’s

iTunes sets the prices and has a limited range in terms of product variety. Your store on the other hand is completely open to your imagination.  Just yesterday I went onto Jenny Biddle’s e-store to see the products she had on offer, and already she had bundled CD’s for a special price, discounted other CD’s, and included T-shirts.  That was 1 day after the store was completed!

3) Thanks for purchasing let’s keep in touch

When your fans buy from iTunes, you lose the ability to get in touch with them.  Personally I love knowing what people think of my music, and I often follow up after a sale to ask ‘do you like it?’  Building this relationship with your fans helps differentiate you as an artist, but most importantly it allows you to market to them directly when you are touring or have a new release.  With iTunes a sale is just a number.

4) Why record in HD and sell in SD?

You’ve just spent hours perfecting your recordings, using the best microphones you can get, and painstakingly reviewed every single sound byte and then you let iTunes sell it to your fans in crap quality?  Why not sell the music in the highest format possible and preserve those sound bytes for those that adore quality sound.  Don’t believe me?  See what Neil Young had to say about it.

5) Warm Fuzzies

I always check if I can buy from an artist directly before going to iTunes.  It gives me warm fuzzies when I buy directly from an independent musician.  I feel good that most of the money is going to them, and I feel like I’m supporting their cause.  More warm fuzzies I say.

Let’s build an e-store

For those that already have a website, putting an e-store in to sell your music and merchandise is now relatively simple thanks to WordPress and a few nifty shopping carts.  The average user would struggle to get this installed, however we’ve being putting shopping carts into musicians sites recently for as little as $150.  You’d only have to sell 8 CD’s at $20 to be in front.

Most of these e-stores link back to Paypal, who take a very small margin. Now that Paypal has gone mainstream (thanks Ebay), most consumers are more than happy to purchase via Paypal, direct from the artist.

The functionality of the stores is superb with the ability to:
- Bundle products together
- Sell Digital Downloads
- Add shipping to an order, or to the individual product
- Offer sales and upsells

Here are some examples of e-stores we’ve recently built:
- http://www.david-harris.com.au/?product_cat=music
- http://www.jennybiddle.com/shop/

Can’t afford an e-store?

I highly recommend Bandcamp for those that can’t afford an e-store.  For more information on Bandcamp check this post out.

Here’s my top 5, but I’d love to learn what you use, so please share your favourites as well!

1. Zite

Have you found yourself reading the newspaper recently and wondering who on earth they are trying to target with their content?  You might like to try Zite.  Zite is a personalised newspaper which finds relevant content from all over the web, and serves it up to you in a dynamic application on your phone or tablet.  I logged in using my twitter account and it automatically served up interest categories like Social Media, Web Design, Technology, Melbourne, and Wine which I could customise even further.  Available in Apple’s app store as well as on my HP Touchpad, it’s fair to say there is not a single wasted article.

Use it to:  Stay up to date with the late news and trends or for design or blogging inspiration.

2. Google Alerts

There’s a running joke in some large companies  that you hear announcements faster externally via Google Alerts than you do via internal channels.  Type in a search query into Google Alerts, let it know what sort of content you want, and from what source like blogs, discussion forums, video’s, or news, and how often you want the summary sent to you, and you’ll be served up with a neat summary of top content based on that search query.

Use it to: Get daily email alerts with the top content based on a search query.

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of my favourite applications for managing my various social profiles.  Available on mobile, tablet as well as via a browser on your laptop or computer, Hootsuite allows you to:

- Post content to various profiles in one hit
- Search through your various social profiles without having to open up multiple applications
- Create lists and search terms to find conversations that are relevant to you
- Schedule posts / updates for hours, days or months in advance

Hootsuite is a great time saver, with many other advanced features, but it’s well worth including in your daily social usage.

Use it to: Manage your social profiles.

4. RSS

RSS – Real simple syndication is a probably for the more technical user.  When trying to explain what it is, I often tell people that websites are like radio stations, and emit a frequency which others can tune into.  In this instance the radio signal being emitted from a website is called RSS, and if you want to tune into that websites RSS, you use an RSS reader.  Programs like Outlook have an RSS reader built in, alternatively you can use other programs like Feedburner which turns an RSS signal into an email update.  So if you have a favourite website you can have their latest content delivered to you as and when it happens.

Use it to: Get website updates as they happen

5. Facebook and Twitter

When writing this post I nearly left Facebook and Twitter off the list, but it still remains a highly relevant source of news for me (and I’m not just talking about hearing how friends got drunk last night).  You just need to find the right people to follow or pages to like, that serve the content that suits you.   For instance my Facebook news feed is dominated by updates from websites like Mashable.

Use it to: Surely I don’t need to explain this one : )

Last but not least of course chat to your friends and find out what they use.

Thankfully I was able to pin point the issue was an old version of  ‘Picasa Express x 2′ which I use to pull images in from Picasa.  Great plugin by the way!  Turns out I had updated a few client sites and hadn’t updated the Picasa plugin.

A simple click and all was fixed.

In my experience I always do the following:

1) Upload a completely new version of  WordPress making sure you back everything up first.  You only really need to update the root folder (minus the config file), plus wp-admin and wp-includes.

2) Be sure not to over right your wp-content file!  This has all your themes and plugins in it!

3) Once you’ve updated and if you still have issues, try updating all the plugins you use.

4) If you still have issues, try turning of plugins one by one until you find the culprit.

99% of the time I follow this formula and it works. I hope that helps anybody else who has the same issue.

All pages will convert to brand timelines by March 30th.  This has some major implications for some of the nifty work we did in the past.  I’ve always been vocal about investing in your website first, and then Facebook. It’s these sort of changes that reaffirms my belief.

So let’s take a look under the bonnet:

Cover Photo

Just like profiles, brands will now have a cover photo.  This is similar to the banner you’d place on top of your website.  It’s a chance to communicate who you are, and what you do, as it’s the most prominent piece.  I’d love to see the ability to scroll through a few different banners, but time will tell.  Personally I like this move.

Smaller Profile Avatar

In the past you could put a tall picture as your profile pic, and then make a smaller version for your thumbnail.  Sorry not anymore. All you can really fit in there is a logo, or maybe a small avatar.  It’s not a big deal considering the new banner.

Tabs are gone

Crap that’s right, the tabs are gone and with is the wonderful welcome tabs we used to make.  You’re gutted I know, but spare a thought for us.  We spent hours upon hours nutting out how to do it, and then spent hours implementing them all.  And just like that…poof…gone.   Now there is room for 12 apps with only 4 of them being showcased at the top of your page.   You can only view all of them by clicking ‘view all’.

The good news is that your tabs will be converted into apps so hopefully nothing more for us to do there.  The welcome tabs we did will no longer work so sadly we say farewell, hit delete.   The good new is the app pages are full width so more room for creative and content.

Pinned Posts

If you have an important post that you don’t want to get lost in the shuffle of new posts, you can ‘pin it’ to the top of your page.  If you post something new, this post will still remain at the top.  It’s a good way to maybe pin something about a new service offering, or album.

Milestones

This allows your brand to tell a story about where you have come from.  I don’t know about you but I couldn’t give two hoots as to the history of most of the brands.  I only really want to know what they can do for me now.

Analytics

The analytics are now front and centre at the top of the page for admins to view.  Nothing ground breaking there but I guess it’s always a good reminder to see how you are tracking.

So what do you think?

Take a look at our new Timeline www.facebook.com/florenceroad  Post your comments here, or post them there.

Google product manager Kavi Goel said in a blog post: “To me, music is best heard live, so it’s always exciting to find out that a band I love is coming to town.”

“If they aren’t touring near you, the new results for concerts won’t appear, but if the band happens to be coming to your town within the next few months, you can see the concert dates listed under the band’s official website.

Here’s a screen shot taken from the official blog which shows the relevant gig listed under the official website listing.

Get your gigs listed in Google Search.

So having done a little bit of research we’ve discovered how to gig your gig listings included in search results.

Do you want the good new or the bad news first?

Let’s get pessimistic first

The type of coding that Google requires is relatively new, and unfortunately our preferred Gig Listing application Gigpress does not offer it.  We’ve posted a note on their support to see if they can possibly code it in future.  Please feel free to head over there and give a ‘here here’.  If your interested in seeing just how nerd infested this is take a look at the recommendations.  It even scares us but we’re up for the challenge.

Some good news

We’ll be looking into how hard it might be to alter Gigpress ourselves to include this feature.  This is likely to be a late Friday night, so if and when we can pull this off (and assuming Gigpress don’t come through sooner) we’d love your support to donate a few dollars to our dedication.

This might be the equivalent of learning french in 3 months, but we’ll give it a shot.

[ninja_display_form id=1]

It’s Boom Time

You’ve worked out that mobile usage has gone up quicker than Australian house prices right?   Here’s a graph we found, but a quick Google Search will provide further evidence.

The Basics – Apps vs Mobile Sites

We don’t need to explain what an app is surely.  What you probably don’t know is the costs to produce one, getting it into the 3 or 4 different stores, producing updates, and of course being found.  We feel time is better spent optimising a mobile site, and relying on the fact that most people will probably find you on google search, not searching the iTunes app store.  Besides is it really worth spending a few thousand dollars, just to tell people your opening hours, contact details, next gig, and a bio?

Put simply, a mobile site is optimised to be viewed on a small screen. Most websites have a style sheet, which dictates the size, colour, font, and layout of your site.  With some nifty little code we can serve up a different style sheet for mobile phones.  Unfortunately we think it’s not that simple, hence we’re opposed to the plugin that does the quick visual fix, and instead believe you should design a site with a mobile user in mind.

Mobile Style Sheet Or Mobile Site

Having explained above, we feel quite strongly that it’s better to provide a custom experience for a mobile user.  The following two reasons should be enough to convince you:

1. Mobile phones typically access 3G data, and resultantly they render slower than a computer on broadband or wifi.  This means the full size images you loaded into your gallery aren’t going to load quickly on the phone, and no amount of style sheet tweaking is going to alleviate this. Once 4g comes out, then perhaps we rule this out, however the clincher is below.
2. Have you ever gone to ikea and got jacked off that you have to walk through everything just to get a rug.  What about your mobile users?  Do they just want to get in and get out.  If your a dentist, doctor, physio, restaurant, it’s highly likely that a mobile phone user is simply chasing your phone number, opening hours, and address.  If your a muso maybe they just want to know where they can get your music from, when your next gig is, maybe read some of your blog/news and perhaps find out what social networks they can connect with you on.

We think the above two reasons are enough to consider serving up completely different pages for mobile phone users that use an optimised style sheet.  Good news is WordPress makes posting content so simple, you can easily update the content yourself and utilise drag and drop menu systems.

How do Mobile Sites work?

Basically you can stick some nifty little code in the header of your page, which acts like a traffic controller.  If a mobile user arrives at the website, the code will redirect them to a new landing page.   Try it out.   Have a look at http://www.worldsfestival.com.au or www.laserhair.com.au and then try opening it on your phone.  If your a muso maybe try www.daveandersononline.com on your computer and then on your phone.

Saving a Mobile Site to your Home Screen

Most people aren’t aware that you can actually save a mobile site to your home screen, so in the future it sits there next to the all the cool kids (other apps).  I guess it like getting into a prestigious university and only paying 5% of the tuition.  Anyway to save a mobile site, or any site for that matter to your home screen, for iphone users, just click the arrow at the bottom of safari, and you’ll see a save to home screen option.  If the site is designed correctly it will have an icon already loaded.

Try http://www.worldsfestival.com.au and save it to your home screen.

How Much

We are currently developing mobile optimised landing pages for clients for $95, which includes all that we discussed above.  Get in touch with us and let us know if you are keen to launch one.

Footnote:  Yes our mobile site is not deployed yet!  Unfortunately in are endless pursuit to put our customers first, we’ve been entrenched developing solutions for them.  Needless to say we’ll be on board as soon as we catch our breath!  Practice what you preach…I hear you.

Further reading:

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/08/12/mobile-sites-vs-mobile-apps-how-html5-changes-the-math/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2011/09/27/mobile-web-app-vs-native-app-its-complicated/
• http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/mobile-app-dev-cost/

I have to commend him not just on his creativity but also his patience as a teacher.  He has helped me navigate my way around the site so that I’m now confident about adding and changing content on my own.  I’m telling all my colleagues and friends to use Florence Road.

www.mediafriendly.com.au