Message/Audience
1. What is the primary message you wish to convey to your audience with this site? You’ve found a mature songwriter who knows how to dress poetry up in pop. Big, active catalog from Austin’s best young alternative songwriter.
2. What are your secondary objectives and overall goals you hope to achieve? To symbiotically build a large catalog > web presence > digital distribution > sales & licensing income.
3. What goals does your organization intend to reach with a new Web site?
4. Who is your target audience? Is it different from your current customer profile? Describe in detail. I don’t know. I guess my current customer profile starts with my friends and fans. They are 25-55. They are professionals and artists. When I think in terms of the AAA niche, my audience is tomorrow’s adult alternative consumers. It is discerning listeners, who want to hear the lyrics. It is aging hippies, KUT and KGSR listeners, but also KOOP and KVRX too. I wonder if my current customer is younger and more Web-centric than where I should be fishing.
5. How does your music differentiate itself from competitors? Sophistication, meaning: interesting lines over alt-rock jazz. Ultimately it is because my songs have meaning that I stand out. My stories enjoy clever progressions. My audience enjoys my competition but winces when they throw in a vague, cheesy, or a cliche pose for a lyric.
6. What are the key reasons why customers choose your music? Engaging, fresh songwriting, wordplay, sweet melodies, sophisticated hooks.
Perception
1. Use three adjectives to describe how the site should be perceived by the user. (examples: conservative, progressive, friendly, formal, casual, serious, experts, humorous, service-oriented, professional, etc.) Smart, fresh, original.
2. Is this different than current image perception? Maybe, slightly, but I reach so few people now compared with who I am shooting for. I am largely unknown. Whatever may proceed me should not be a problem, but I need to define more specifically/helpfully my market positioning.
3. What do you feel is the biggest challenge in getting your image across to customers? Getting feedback from users that would help me narrow my AAA niche down. Is it sensitive stoners, web progressives, jazz swingers, innocent creatives, smart sophisticates, all the above? Is this AAA? If it’s not, do I look outside that niche, or do I burrow within it?
4. Describe any visual elements or styles that should be utilized from your current Web site or existing marketing materials or collateral (logo: j-hook?, color palette: lightblue and brown, navigation, typography). Please provide existing samples. I need to come up with some design preferences to hire a designer.
5. How is your music currently perceived? I don’t know. I need to test. Do you wish to carry through the same kind of message through your Web site?
6. How does your music site fit into various Web groups/networks? my site, mp3 bloggers, recommender sites, reviews,
7. Is your relationship to the fans/biz clearly defined? If not, would you be interested in strengthening that relationship? If not, please explain.
8. List any URLs of sites you find compelling. What do you find the most interesting about these sites?
9. List URLs of competitor sites and briefly state what you like and dislike about their overall site.
Action
1. What is the primary action you wish your target user to take from the main page of your site? (examples: download, browse, move along specified path, email, order, explore, click button, call, etc.) listen to a song, comment, browse songs, download a song, sign up for updates about new material, buy direct, buy iTunes/whatever.
2. What is the primary action you wish your target user to take before leaving your site? Listen to my music. Is it the same action? It is. If not, describe why.
3. What elements are key items you wish to have available to the user on every page? Subscribe to my mailing list. Buy my albums.
