Lately I’ve been reflecting back on our 10 year history, and, as CEO, I think it’s sometimes my job to unapologetically brag about our platform.
Devil is in the details, they say. We often get asked the question “Why is Bandzoogle better than [insert every other way you can build a website]?”. While it’s easy to talk about our technology, our fantastic team, and our affordable pricing, it’s often when we get to demo the platform and dig deeper, that artists’ faces light up, and they “get it”.
So I thought I would make a list of my favorite, sometimes lesser known and less obvious actions you can do with Bandzoogle.
Some of these are newer or hidden gems, so even longtime Bandzoogle members might learn a few new tricks. I stopped at 63, and then added 3 extra features that are coming real soon. In no particular order:
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Get a mobile-optimized website, instantly. All our themes are now 100% responsive, so your website is also a mobile website. Just like that.
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Upload and use your own fonts in the Design tab. We have a long list of fonts built-in, but you can also upload yours.
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Email fans in a specific geographic area. Tell them you have a show coming up in their town.
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Keep 100% of your sales. (Pretty much everyone else takes a cut, but we don’t.)
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Live support chat with Melanie, Allison, Adam, etc. Our team provides live online support, 7 days a week. And all of them are musicians.
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Change your website’s design anytime. Your content and features aren’t affected, so feel free to experiment, and publish when ready. (And we add new themes all the time).
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Add a site-wide music player. A player that won’t stop when fans jump from page to page. We don’t recommend you set it to auto-start (but you can if you want. It’s your website.)
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Save money! Import your existing mailing list into our integrated mailing list tool (and export if needed) and send your newsletters and email blasts. It’s included at no extra cost.
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Change your page layout in seconds. Full width features, 2 columns, 3 columns, side-bars; you can change your layouts in a few clicks to make each page unique.
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Specify if your show is all-ages, 18+, 21+, etc. In our Events feature, a drop-down menu lets you do that. A small example of how we optimize each feature specifically for musicians.
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Sell your tracks as .mp3 lossless .wav or .flac (new!). Make those audiophile music fans happy.
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Own your .com. We include a free domain name with our plans, and it’s yours forever. You can also use Bandzoogle with a domain name you already own.
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Pre-sales. Let your fans pre-order your next release.
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Automatically add and sync your Instagram pics on your website. Yes, colourful vintage filters look great on your homepage.
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Have a sale! You can discount any item in the store, by price or by % (Pro only).
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Give a free track to fans when they sign up for your mailing list.
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Accept credit card in your store. Fans can use their Paypal account, or a credit card.
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Manage multiple websites from one account. Build a second website for that solo project, or for a friend.
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Sell sheet music, videos, ebooks, loops, ringtones, etc. Our Store feature now lets you sell any digital files (not just music). As always, keep 100% of your sales (Pro only).
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Use your logo instead of your band name in your headers. Transparent .png files are best for this.
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Make full use of Paypal’s features. Since we don’t circumvent Paypal, you get to use all they offer (for shipping, calculating taxes, accepting foreign currencies, etc).
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Get a free step-by-step guide to help you build your website. Just click here. Good advice even if your website isn't powered by Bandzoogle.
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Display your photos in different gallery and slide-show formats. We added a few new ones recently.
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Print download codes on cards or merch (Pro only).
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Add YouTube or Vimeo videos to any page in a couple of clicks. They auto-format with your layout.
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Track your stats, plays, visitors, and email campaigns. We give you easy to read dashboards, and full access to your Google Analytics.
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Instantly get your website SEO-optimized. We automatically structure your website and output clean code that's easy for search engines to index. So you will get found on Google, Bing, and others.
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Add your Bandcamp music to any page in one click.
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Connect with other Bandzoogle members, artists of all genres and from everywhere, through our members-only Community.
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Customize your favicon. That’s the little square logo you see in the tabs, address bar and bookmarks of your visitors’ browsers.
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Schedule a blog post or a news item to be published later.
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Get a name-of-my-band.rocks domain name (.band coming soon !). This is awesome if that .com you wanted isn’t available. We include one domain name for free. You can get additional domain names from us for $14.95 each year.
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Build a landing page, or squeeze page, using our Intro page option.
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Set the price for any item, or let fans name their own price. You can also give free downloads.
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Upgrade or downgrade your plan anytime, without penalty… also, our pricing hasn’t changed in 8 years, and we keep adding new goodies.
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Tweak your theme’s CSS. (That is, if you enjoy cascading your style sheets...).
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Get a free website review and advice. Just ask our team. Or do it yourself with our 16 Point Website Assessment Checklist.
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Don’t worry about details like hosting, domain names, load speed, and bandwidth. It’s our job, and we use the fastest and most reliable infrastructure available.
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Add a tip jar, a “donate” button. Pass the hat.
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Add a flyer, a photo, or a logo to your event listing.
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Customize your website’s footer. Add your sponsors’ logos, copyright notice, “designed by…”, etc.
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Share a track or album on Facebook. It will link back to a specific player for that album or track. Your fans can share them, too. And you can track the plays, (and partial plays and skips).
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Decide if visitors can stream the whole track, or just a preview of it. And decide exactly (to the second) what the preview is.
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Add your ideas and requests to our Suggestion Box. It helps us decide what to build next.
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Password-protect any page. This is great for a press-only page, or a page where you keep your band documents.
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Fan specific features and pages. Fans can create a profile on your website, participate in your discussion forums, see members-only pages, etc.
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When fans Google you, they’ll see your dates right in Google Search. Thanks to Google’s Knowledge Graph.
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No branding, except yours. No Bandzoogle site ever has ads on it (unless you want to add them, which is cool). We even remove the Powered by Bandzoogle footer mention on Pro accounts.
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Import your tracks hosted on SoundCloud. No need to re-upload them.
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Host a podcast on your website, using our Blog feature. Fans can subscribe with iTunes.
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Use Bandzoogle to build a website for your business. Studio? Venue? Music teaching? Restaurant? Yoga studio? You can manage multiple sites from one account, and Bandzoogle works well for any business.
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Set options for your store products (size, colour, etc.), or services (duration, instructor, etc.).
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Get a discount on printing and shipping of tour posters. Actually... we don’t do that ourselves, but we offer many exclusive partner discounts in our Community.
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Add your PledgeMusic offers to any page on your website.
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Start with a blank design and customize it, no coding required! (Standard and Pro only).
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Regular weekly or monthly gig? Set Events to be recurring, with a start and end date, or specific number of shows.
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Add lyrics and other notes to a track.
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Free drinks and advice! We have begun hosting Bandzoogle member meetups and workshops in different cities. We’ll email you if we plan one in your area.
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Easily create an EPK. We make it easy with our Preset pages.
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Add a Guest Book to your website. Very “old school”, but fans love it.
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Import your Tumblr or your other external blog into your website, and it will automatically sync new posts to your Bandzoogle blog.
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Add external widgets to your website (SoundCloud or Spotify players, ReverbNation widgets, external calendars, etc.)
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Easily integrate your events with Google Maps. You don’t want your fans to get lost.
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Report your sales to Soundscan and Billboard
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Track your merch inventory and ticket sales
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Sync your events with Bandsintown
Get your own affordable Bandzoogle website up-and-running in minutes with these features and more. Sign up now!
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- Promote your music on your own unique website.
- Sell music & merch directly to your fans. Keep 100%.
- Grow your fan base with built-in marketing tools.
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