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The Road Hammers Nail Their Web Site Design

During my weekly Berklee music marketing class chat session last night, a student made me aware of The Road Hammers. It's a Canadian band that plays country rock music for truck drivers and people who love life on the road. To give you an idea, some of their songs include "Girl on the Billboard," "East Bound and Down" and "Heart With Four Wheel Drive."


A band that serves a niche audience like this is interesting enough. But what really impressed me was The Road Hammers' web site. It has so many great elements, including ...

• Simple, clear, one-word site navigation links right under the banner at the top.
  
  
• Tasteful use of Flash-based elements within the page, such as the top banner and the video player further down the page. (Note: Too many music sites abuse Flash.)
  
  
• The "Submit Your Own" fan photos section. Nice interactive touch!
  
  
• An email list sign-up form near the top of the page
  
  
• Clear sections for the band's latest blog posts, news, and tour dates.
  
  
• And short spoken word audio clips that sound like a trucker speaking over a CB radio.

Overall, a great home on the Web for a band that cleverly stands for something. Visit The Road Hammers' site and see for yourself.

-Bob

P.S. Want more music web site design tips? Check out the brand new Killer Music Web Sites special report and audio. On it I critique 19 artist and record label web sites and point out in detail what's working, what isn't working, and what needs to be changed. Don't promote yourself online without these music web site design essentials.

posted by Bob Baker @ 11:19 AM   7 comments

7 Comments:

At Dec 2, 2008 12:56:00 PM,  Will said...

not bad, but hate white text on a black background!

 

At Dec 2, 2008 2:41:00 PM,  Michael said...

Wow, Glad you like! I put together the site map and layout for this site before leaving echo.

Doing new work at Strategic Blend .

Take a look at our work.

 

At Dec 2, 2008 4:28:00 PM,  Heather said...

I think part of it is they are using the service called "echo" for making websites. They seem to have the formula down! You can see other examples on their website.

 

At Dec 3, 2008 5:41:00 PM,  Anonymous said...

I like nin.com better.

 

At Dec 4, 2008 12:36:00 PM,  Anonymous said...

Re: Heather, "echo" is a company out of Nashville, TN formerly "echoMusic". A very EXPENSIVE service ;-) with a control panel (content management system).

 

At Dec 8, 2008 12:35:00 PM,  Dan-O said...

I agree, great site. The most important element is the email sign up form, and they do it just right.

Although, they would get allot more sign ups if they offered something free. For instance, the new Evermore site is the perfect example of what they call a "squeeze page" in Internet Marketing. It's sole purpose is to get the users opt-in email in exchange for a free music download.

Dan-O's Free Music Downloads
http://www.danosongs.com

 

At Dec 8, 2008 1:25:00 PM,  Elizabeth said...

Hey, one of the other managers at RGK found this article and were very excited! I'm The Road Hammers media manager and have been working with Jonathan from echo for months on the site.

Michael, the site has completely changed since you left echo in February.

Thanks to Elijah, who is a great designer and did this website.

Sounds like a great class at Berklee, hope you all enjoy TheRoadHammers.com

 

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