| Design Mistakes That Ruin an Effective and Attractive Profile |
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By Michelle McCarty | MBSTIA 1. DON’T- add EVERY living blinkie, flashy and do-daddy thing to your page. This will turn 90% of the people who visit your page OFF! One of the biggest mistakes that artists make in self-designing profiles is to add way to much ‘visual junk’. Keep your page clean and simple. On a side note… stay away from “Falling Objects” on your page. It doesn’t look cool and it crashes browsers very easily. 2. DON’T – use colors that clash. A red background with green text just does not look good on a computer screen. Make colors complimentary. Make sure that a reader can read what is on your page easily. Also, don’t make the mistake of using too many colors. Keep it to two or three for text and headers and make sure whatever background color or image you use works with the text colors well. 3. DON’T- overdo it with excess information! Just put enough info to get the reader interested. You can always put a link to your main band web site where people can read more in depth. Most MySpace users don’t have a very long attention span, so don’t bore them with a book in your “Biography Section”. Also don’t forget that your clever, witty ramblings can go in your Blog. Most artists don’t make use of the MySpace Blog in an effective way. Use your Blog! 4. DON’T – turn your MySpace profile into a storefront only. Most people will be turned off if you try to hard sell them anything on MySpace. Simple links to the basics will be effective enough. If a fan is interested in more, you can point them to your web site… because you DO have another web site besides MySpace, right? ;) One of the keys to being successful on MySpace is to keep in mind that your fans are your friends. Treat them that way! Respect them enough to know that they will know where to go to get merchandise if they want it. Fans/Friends want to connect with you on a personal level. Much of the time, you have to woo them for a while before they will want to give you their money. Be aware of this and act accordingly! 5. DON’T- design your profile yourself if you don’t have a working knowledge of CSS, HTML and basic graphic design. You will end up costing yourself or your band a lot of potential fans if your presentation is not cohesive and attractive. People DO judge a book by its cover (unfortunately!). If you really can not afford to hire a designer to help you, then there are a number of free layout sites like http://www.freeweblayouts.net/ and http://www.layoutstuff.com that have tasteful layouts. You run the risk of being among a lot of users that have that layout, but it’s better than you hacking up your MySpace page with a poor self made design/layout. ©2007 Michelle McCarty              |
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