Musical instrument manufacturers certainly have a lot of options on how to spend their marketing budgets. From magazines to blogs to podcasts, there is no shortage of great ways to advertise your product. One way that a company can get a lot of bang for their buck is with a killer website.
To me, companies should treat their websites like their ultimate company store. Bring the customer inside the world of your brand and show them what makes it special. Give them an experience that only your brand can provide.
However, there are far too many companies that are not doing it right. From hard rock guitar companies whose sites are written in almost unreadable gothic fonts, to guitar giants who lay out their website like it’s the menu at Applebee’s, there are a lot of bad guitar gear websites.
But we are here to praise websites, not to bury them! Let’s take a look at a few websites that have the organization, the cool factor and the special features to stand above the crowd. Here are a few of the big boys that are getting it right:
Picking out replacement pickups can be a confusing and overwhelming experience. Dimarzio’s website acknowledges that fact and embraces it, taking the customer by the virtual hand and leading them through the selection process. See that little link at the bottom-right of the page called ‘Pickup Picker’? Click on that bad boy and let your selection experience begin. This cool tool takes into account everything from the wood of your guitar body to the problem you are trying to solve with this pickup and then recommends three pickups that would do the job. This is certainly not the end all and be all of pickup selection – I wish it told you a little more about why it recommended the pickups it did – but if you are looking for a place to start searching for a new pickup, you could do a lot worse than Dimarzio.com.
Videos have become a staple of every good manufacturer website, but Peavey, with their ‘PVTV’ section, has taken it to the next level. Sure, you’ll find the standard gear demos by their signature artists. You’ll find artists and employees talking about how great Peavey gear is and showing off their rigs. But you’ll also find some videos that are actually useful! Like their video on how to replace a Peavey speaker cone and a series of ‘how to’ videos on using their digital mixers.
A clean and all around easy to use site. Everything is just where you need it to be and no more than a few clicks away. As with all the other sites on this list, it is also packed with all the information about ESP guitars you could want. I especially recommend checking out the ‘Special Features’ link under the Support dropdown. This page walks you through the details that make an ESP special and diagrams the control layouts for many of their most popular models.
Remember the old days when Boss used to put out that little pocket-sized booklet with the details and recommended settings of all their pedals? Man, I loved that thing. Their website has now become the virtual version of that booklet. One great aspect of the site – and one I would like to see developed further in the future – is the Virtual Pedal Board 2 found under the Interactive Demos section. The Virtual Pedal Board allows you to turn on and off pedals on a board to see how it affects the sound. I wish it allowed you to drag and drop pedals and adjust the settings, but dare to dream!
Enough about the big guys! There are some smaller manufacturers getting it done on the web as well. Here are a few of my favorites:
Since the hey-day of MySpace, ProTone Pedals has been using the Internet and just about every form of social media out there to interact with guitar players. But their website is where the magic really happens. It’s beautifully laid out and packed with twice the information and demos of most big players in the guitar pedal scene. ProTone really is the gold standard for how a company can grow and present a great product to the eager masses with a killer website.
Saint Blues has taken the approach of a clean and simple website that looks very classy and gives you all the information you need if you are considering one of their guitars. In addition to the standard demos and product information, Saint Blues also includes some killer deals in their prominent Demos section and some fun information about the
65 Amps is great example of breaking the rules and making it work. Generally I hate intro pages that make you ‘Click Here to Enter Site’. I also hate it when you have to hover your mouse over a link to see what the link is actually for. However, 65 Amps does both those things in a fun and classy way. The home page is a tribute to classic album covers and that fun factor continues throughout the site.
That’s just a few of the great sites out their. This list is by no means comprehensive and is just a look at a few of my personal favorites.
Until next week, don’t forget to bliss out.
3 comments:
I'd give an honourable mention to Seymour Duncan too. You can tell that they've actually thought about what their customer might want to find out, rather than pumping out the BS their marketing dept want to publish.
Wow, awesome... thank you so much!
Dennis
I'm sure the ESP and Peavey websites are great for right handed players, but for lefties they are both terrible. It's impossible to find out which guitars are available left handed on either site. Many sites now have the option to brose guitars by dexterity, these sites have a webteam with some common sense.
I've been trying to email ESP for 2 months now to try and find out about lefties, I also cannot get them to verify my account on their forum. So maybe they have a nice looking site, but its incredibly discriminatory and their customer service is non-existent.
Just my thoughts! :)
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