5 Tips For Improving The Look Of Your Artist Shop

Selling your merch direct to fans has become an established best practice among independent artists. It affords a number of advantages, allowing you to keep more revenue and fan data. Here we look at some ways in which you can spruce up your virtual shop and boost your sales as a result

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Guest post from SingleMusic

Selling direct to fan has quickly become a “best practice” for independent artists. Whether you’re offering your back-catalog, branded merch or pre-sale bundles for an upcoming album – operating your own store allows you to keep more revenue and all of the fan data.

So what can you do to improve the look of your shop and better engage fans? We’ve found 5 examples of Single powered web stores that rock. Our hope is that you can apply these strategies to your own shop to increase conversions and push your career forward.

1) Landing page

Our first recommendation for a better looking artist shop is to implement a custom graphic landing page. This is what a fan first sees upon navigating to your site.

Not only does this give you some creative freedom for your fans’ first impressions – it gives you an opportunity to funnel fans to an action you’d like them to take. In the example below, Stick Figure used this landing page to direct fans to purchase pre-sale bundles for their new album, “World on Fire”.

2) Product Variety

Sure – you can sell a t-shirt and hoodie branded to your new album. But this isn’t pushing any boundaries. Big K.R.I.T. attached his new digital album to tons of different products within his shop – including a skate deck, beer glass, umbrella, puzzle, water bottle, fanny pack, mini bat and more.

While printing custom skate decks may not be possible for the average independent artist, you can learn from Big K.R.I.T. and come up with innovative merch ideas to appeal to different segments of your diverse fan base.

3) Choose a “Store Concept”

Getting creative will not just improve the look of your artist shop, but the entire experience of purchasing from you. The idea is best shown through the example of “Lana Del Rey’s Fucking Surf Shop” online pop-up.

Instead of just branding the shop as her artist name, she went with an entire surf shop design. Each of the products reflected this concept, including a beach towel, “Venice Bitch” crop top, vintage beach postcards, a surf-shop patch and more. Brainstorm some ideas to base your store around and set yourself apart!

4) Use Album Art Imagery

If you’re having trouble deciding on a look for your website – you can always “steal” some creative direction from yourself. Pull up your album cover – is there an image or idea you can use in your shop? Take Witt Lowry as an example. The cover of his latest album shows a cartoon version of himself walking through a forest. So this is exactly what he used as the hero image on his site.

5) Sell digital music using Single’s album product template

Everyone is used to the “iTunes” experience of purchasing music, including 30 second previews and the ability to buy tracks individually. What if you could use that same functionality in a store that you own – where you didn’t have to give iTunes 30% off the top?

This is exactly what we built, and you can see it in action in the example below from the LAW Records store. Or if you want to try out purchasing music to see what the transaction looks like from the fan perspective – try out our demo shop.