The continuing story of a man trying to find success and succeeding in being too busy to find success…
Okay, so I'm running behind a little due to the usual big workload that comes at the end of each month. Fortunately, the tasks in Chapter 3 of Music Success in Nine Weeks were a little easier for me. The chapter is about “maximizing your website” and is something I've been thinking about for a while. I do some web development to supplement my income so I'm quite knowledgeable about the technical side of things, but I'm not really a designer or usability expert and that's where Ariel's book came in very useful. I found that my attention was drawn to things that I would perhaps normally skip over or not even think about.
Amongst the 6 steps suggested is “have a consistent look and feel throughout the net”. To some extent I had already done a lot of this – a while ago I decided that green should be “Jesta's colour” and wherever possible I've used designed my profile on social networks and other websites to at least feature some green elements, and if possible echo my website as closely as possible. I haven't taken it too far at this stage though because I'm hoping to release an album soon and want to tie in the design of the album cover with a refreshed design of the website and internet presence. I'm beginning to dislike the white text on black background so that will probably change.
I also hope to get some new photographs soon which will no doubt feature in the redesign. To cover my lack of pictures for the time being I took a self-portrait – my arm outstretched hoping that I'm pointing the lens in roughly the correct direction! I've featured that photo on my home page and updated my profile pictures across the internet where I felt relevant.
As for the other steps this week I had already taken care of some of them, so instead I concentrated my efforts at particular things. Firstly I really didn't like the way the content was laid out on my old home page, so I've shifted items around and I'm much happier with it now – it may not be ideal, but I can continue tweaking until the complete redesign is done.
I've also added icons and links to anywhere Jesta can be found on the web – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… by golly there's a lot! I've got a great little system in place that allows me to very easily add new links in various places in one go. That's where my web developer side came in very useful.
Overall, a useful week that got me thinking about usability a lot and thinking in the mindset of a first-time visitor to my website. I'm open to feedback if you've got any comments or new ideas.
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