Turn Vinyl Into Bytes

Now any music lover can digitize their vinyl records at the touch of a button with American Audio’s new TT Record. A belt-driven turntable, the TT Record converts old 33 and 45 RPM records into digital MP3 files and records them directly onto an SD card or USB memory stick.

A completely standalone unit, the TT Record doesn’t require a computer or additional software to do its job. Virtually anyone can use it to convert their entire vinyl collection into ready-to-play MP3 files. You just place your vinyl record on the platter, insert a USB memory stick or SD card into the unit’s built-in USB slot, press the record button, and presto! - it rips your vinyl track to MP3 format.

“The TT Record is an easy and affordable solution for DJs and everybody else who wants to rip their old vinyl collection or their rare records to digital,” said Tom Freret, national sales manager for American Audio. “What’s amazing is that you don’t need any special technical knowledge, additional software or even a computer to make it work. All it takes is, literally, the press of a button.”

The TT Record comes with everything you need to record all of your vinyl tracks as MP3 files, “on the fly.” It includes a full size belt-drive turntable, needle cartridge with headshell, a 33/45 rpm selector, +/-10% pitch slider, an adapter for 45s and a slip mat. You don’t even need a stereo system to monitor the TT Record during operation, as it comes equipped with a headphone adapter that plugs directly into the back of the unit.

You can create clean breaks between tracks simply by pressing the Record button on and off, which affords the luxury of being able to record each album track or 45 as an individual MP3 file. Use the SD card or USB memory stick to transfer your files directly to an MP3 player or computer for instant access at the gig, in the home or on the go. As part of a special limited time offer, American Audio is including a bonus SD USB card reader with the purchase of each TT Record.

DJs can use the SD cards with two other exciting new digital playback products from American Audio: the SDJ-1 dual SD player, and the Q-SD, a 4-channel mixer with SD card player. “If you’re a professional DJ, your entire night’s music can fit on one SD card,” said Freret. “You won’t need any external hard drives, expensive laptops, extra MP3 players or complicated software. Going mobile has never been easier.”

The TT Record measures 17.75″ x 14.5″ x 5.75″ (449 x 370 x 145 mm) and weighs just 9 lbs./3.8 kgs. It is power rated at 9 watts and has switchable voltage (115V/60Hz or 230V/50Hz).

The TT Record carries an MSRP of $279.95. For a limited time, a bonus SD USB card reader will be included with each purchase of the TT Record as a special offer from American Audio.

Click on the links below to see demos of the TT Record in action!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L5254okniE

Weisz’ Web World on Mobile Beat

The list of websites to bookmark continues on…http://www.istockphoto.com: I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this site before but I’m sure there are still many who don’t know about it. You can get a picture to use on your website for as cheap as $1-$2. The premise behind iStockPhoto is you pay more based on the size picture you want. Since pictures for your website will be pretty small, the pictures in the $1-$2 range will be perfect. They do have 6 different sizes of pictures to choose from and 5 different sizes of royalty video clips to choose from.

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm: This is a specific page on a website I really like. The reason I have this specific page bookmarked is because it’s where I like to start when I visit it as it often has new featured websites. As mentioned at the top of this page the goal of this page is where the author of the website tries to “sum up the current state-of-the-art in graphic design for web pages, and identify the distinctive features that make a web page look fresh, appealing and easy to use.”

Overall the website has a ton of excellent content covering a wide range of topics from copy writing to the basic design process. I would highly recommend spending at least a few hours reading through the various sections of this website and it will have you looking at your current website in a different way.
Website review

http://www.ccsnds.com

Good:

Nice website design that would probably appeal to brides.
Good bio page with a good picture.
Nice photo on the services page.
Good questions on the FAQ page.
Suggestions:
Drop the flash intro-it’s a waste of the visitors time and serves no purpose.
I had to go all the way to the bottom to the very small print to find out where you were located. I thought maybe you were in St. Louis with the quote from the St. Louis wedding magazine until I saw that at the bottom. (Note: After skimming through the text I see ‘New England’ DJ in the text however that doesn’t tell me where in NE you are or where you provide services).
Glad to see you have a music player at the top so people can stop the music if they want. However, you should set it so they click play for the music to start. Music on websites is not a good idea.
You have some text on the website that should probably be links. Like, “Contact Us to learn more about how we…” & “Check out our wedding tips & FAQs…” Both of those should be linked to something but they aren’t.
Videos page: Currently says under construction. Unless you’ll have something up there very soon (next 3-5 days?) take the link down until the page is ready.
I see that you use DJ Intelligence-why not put your music tool on your website so people can search for music on it? It’s a great engaging feature that has landed me numerous bookings.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

What’s A Meta With My Site

I’m going to get right to this week’s question and website reviews after having had a lot of content the last few weeks focusing on meta tags.Questions

Q. I’ve enjoyed reading your articles about META tags and have implemented some on my home page. Do you also use them on other pages other than your home page?

Rob Godshalk
Joker’s Entertainment

A. You definitely want to have meta tags on every page. The biggest question is whether to have the same tags on every page or if you should have unique tags for each page on your website. If you check out last week’s column I gave some information that might help you decide which way you want to go.

Glad you’ve enjoyed the column!

If you have a question about websites you would like to be included in a future column please send your question along with your name and company name to jim@discoverydjs.com.

Website reviews

http://www.jpwdj.com

Good:

You have your location & phone very near the top.
Demo videos that show potential clients what you have to offer.
Scanned in thank you notes look good.
Suggestions:
The logo on your home page is way too big. You should shrink it down to at least ½ that size.
‘Click here: Availability to check…’ that’s worded very awkwardly. What about ‘Check Availability for your event date’ with the words ‘Check Availability’ linked to your date checker?
Why not put your location (Naperville, IL) and phone at the top by your company name?
Remove the link to play Tetris & other games from your demo page.
You have a lot of empty space on the left…why not put some pictures there or put something else there? If not, you probably shrink that part a bit.
Review your website (and have others review it too) for consistency. You have your company name as J.P.W. Productions at the top of every page but on your FAQ page you have Jpw Productions.
Drop the equipment page-stock photos of equipment means nothing to a B&G. The picture of your set-up is good though…maybe you could put that on another page on your website?
Website could really use some more pictures and a bio page.
http://www.billysdjservice.com

Good:

Overall professional looking design (although you could probably do without the stack of blank CDs)
Company name, phone and location at or near the top of the home page as well as at the bottom of the page.
Suggestions:
You have D.J. all over your website. The most common way to write it is DJ.
Drop the calendar and use a service that allows clients to interactively check your availability. The empty calendar makes it look like you never DJ.
Drop the ‘Welcome to our website’ text.

Overall you have a very basic website. It looks good (I’m guessing it’s a template) but there’s not much to it and it isn’t very engaging. There are so many more things to be added like a bio page, a call-to-action (what on your website makes them want to call you or e-mail you right then to inquire about your services), interactive tools to browse your music library, etc.

I can see the Superpages button down at the bottom. I’m guessing part of the simplicity of the site is due to what you pay Superpages for your site. My suggestion is switch to a host that isn’t a Yellow Pages company as it will be much cheaper and will give you more options & flexibility. That’s not something to need to do today as it is a sufficient website but if you’re looking to grow your business online (which just about everyone should be) then I would definitely recommend that change for you.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Getting On The Web

A quick scroll through the options for building and maintaining your web presenceJust as DJs recommend that brides hire a DJ versus using an iPod for their wedding, it’s in your best interest to hire a website designer to create a website for your business. However, there is now a wide variety of options you can use, either to launch your first website or improve on your current website quickly and easily, even if you don’t know HTML or website design.

Getting Started
Unless you’re a graphic designer, the first step will be determining where the design for your website will come from. You can hire a designer to create the design; use a template from within your website building software; or buy a template from somewhere online. Finally, you need to decide if you want to utilize a web-based editing tool or traditional website building and editing software.
If you decide to use traditional website editing software you’ll need to either find a designer or choose to go with a template. If you’re not familiar with website templates, they’re simply the basic design or shell of the site. If you buy a template you can do all the editing yourself to customize it for your needs. Templates are good for advanced users who don’t mind the possibility of another website having the same basic design as their website. If you’re looking for DJ-specific website templates check out Disc Jockey Templates (www.discjockeytemplates.com). There are also probably thousands of other websites that sell templates. You can do a search on your preferred search engine for either “website templates” or something more specific like “wedding vendor website templates” to find something that suits your taste.

Traditional Website-Building/Editing Software
If you’ve chosen this route, you’re either buying a template you’ll be editing or you have a designer creating a site that you’ll be maintaining. Your goal is to find software that’s easy for you to use, so maintaining your website isn’t a challenge. The following are some of the more popular choices:

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 ($389)
One of the most popular WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. I think there’s a bit of a learning curve to Dreamweaver but most people who use it swear by it. If this is your first venture into working with websites, I would not recommend starting with Dreamweaver.

Adobe GoLive
While still available for purchase, Adobe isn’t promoting this software as much as they promote Dreamweaver (they inherited Dreamweaver when they bought Macromedia a few years ago). The GoLive page on the Adobe site does offer an electronic download of the software but also recommends checking out Dreamweaver before buying GoLive. It is believed that there are no plans to release a new version of GoLive.

Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Despite FrontPage being discontinued I still mention it because it is a very easy to use WYSIWYG editor. I learned how to edit websites using FrontPage and it was easier to use other website software after knowing FrontPage first. This last version of FrontPage was by far the best version of the software. I checked the websites of several big-box stores to buy FrontPage but came up empty. I did find some smaller, lesser known software websites still selling it but be sure to exercise caution when buying from a site you’ve never heard of before. I personally still use FrontPage and know many other people who maintain their sites with this software.

Microsoft Expression Web Designer ($229)
This is Microsoft’s replacement for FrontPage. I personally haven’t used it but I’ve read that it is pretty similar to FrontPage. If that’s the case it’s probably worth checking out. There is a demo version of it on the Microsoft website.

Notepad (free)
Most people reading this probably won’t be able to build or maintain their site with Notepad (I know I can’t!) but I wanted to mention it because it’s the simplest form of creating and editing websites. Believe it or not, even with all the website building software out there, some people still prefer using a basic text editor like Notepad to edit their website. I wouldn’t recommend this option unless you’re an expert with HTML.

Yahoo! Sitebuilder (free, plus paid hosting)
This is somewhat of a hybrid between traditional and web-based. Sitebuilder is downloadable software that you run on your computer but it includes a lot of features similar to the web-based solutions (more on that below). The software includes 380+ templates to help you create your website. It features easy to use drag and drop capabilities, making it like the web-based tools. The Sitebuilder software is free but it is $11.95 per month to have your website hosted with Yahoo, which is the only place you can have your website hosted if it’s made with Sitebuilder.

Other options
There are probably hundreds of website/HTML editors available for purchase and even some available for free. (A great source for completely free software is http://sourceforge.net-a quick search for “WYSIWYG HTML editor” came up with over 6,000 results, with at least a percentage of those being programs that would be useful to non-computer geeks.) Your best bet is always to download a demo before making a purchase.

Web-Based Solutions
Web-based options are probably the easiest to use and usually include free use of templates/designs, so you don’t need a designer. You can also save some upfront costs by eliminating the need to buy software if you choose a web-based solution.
While web-based solutions are appealing they do have some negatives. Usually you can’t move your web-based design from one host to another, so if you’re unhappy with the host/company you’re stuck unless you want to build a new website from scratch. Also, web-based solutions work in such a way that sometimes doesn’t give you as much flexibility with the design and layout of your website as traditional software does. Finally, web-based solutions are completely stored on the website hosts servers. Since you always want to have a back-up of your website, find out if there’s a way to back-up a copy on your computer in case there’s ever a problem on their end.
The following are a few of the more popular web-based solutions:

EZDJWebsites (www.ezdjwebsites.com)
Ranges in cost from $99-$199 a year, depending on how many pages you’d like for your website. The Bronze ($99 a year for 5 pages) or the Gold ($119 a year for 12 pages) would probably be sufficient for most DJ companies. You can choose from 12 different templates as well as a variety of pictures to use on your site.
A nice feature of EZDJWebsites is the ability to easily integrate DJ Intelligence tools. (DJ Intelligence, at www.djintelligence.com, provides modules you can seamlessly plug in, to add booking, scheduling, event planning and many more interactive features to your website.)
Sample site made with EZDJ Websites: www.jbsentertainment.com

Website Tonight (www.godaddy.com)
Features over 800 templates and 8000 pictures you can use to build your website. Prices range from $4.99-$12.99 a month (they do also offer discounted rates when paying yearly). Includes the ability to add a Flash (animated) intro, forums, RSS news feeds and more.
Sample site made with Website Tonight: www.hailmarysonline.com

Homestead (www.homestead.com)
Offers a free 30-day trial that includes website hosting, 5 web pages, site stats and more. Choose from over 2000 templates to help you create your site. They have 3 different packages from $4.99 to $49.99 a month. The $4.99 option would work for some DJ companies who want a very simple web presence. The $19.99 is probably what most DJ companies would want. They also have an option where you can have a website designed for you and then you can maintain it with their online tools; this way you’re not just using a template.
Sample site made with Homestead: www.nzadventureco.com

As you can see, you can make a very nice looking website with web-based tools but while they are easier to use than traditional software (in most cases), still takes a fair amount of work on your end to make the site look clean and professional.

Let’s Build a Site!
If you don’t have a website yet (living in the Stone Age, eh?) now you have no excuse to not have a website. The best advice I can give is don’t make your sole decision on which route to go with your website just based on cost. If you know nothing about websites and don’t plan to learn, hire a professional to design and maintain yours, or check out one of the web-based solutions.
I designed my first website and now look back and laugh at it. (If you want a good laugh too go to www.archive.org and type in www.discoverydjs.com to check out my site from back in 2000). Despite having website design and maintenance experience for 7+ years, I hired a designer to design my current website and I do all the maintenance. I also recently launched a new website using Website Tonight. Within a matter of hours I had a very nice looking website just for weddings.
When a potential client visits your website for the first time, it is a lot like meeting you for the first time; it becomes their first impression of your company. Would you show up to a consultation looking like you haven’t bathed in a week? Probably not. So why would you let your website look like a mess? Take the same pride in your website as you do your appearance and performance and you’ll be on your way to having a successful presence on the Internet

*All prices taken from NewEgg.com and are for Windows versions. Check with your preferred software retailer for their prices.

Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, working on-air and as sole performer for his company, Discovery DJs. A regular MB contributor, Jim has also spoken about websites at Mobile Beat and other national DJ conferences. He is a moderator at the ProDJ.com forums, and provides a regular online column on websites, “Weisz on the Web,” at www.mobilebeat.com. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Getting Your Site Noticed

So you have a website but you aren’t getting and hits to your website. My first recommendation is Pay-Per-Click advertising since it’s the fastest and can yield the best results. If you’re looking to do it the old-fashioned way here are a few websites that can assist with your submitting your website to the various search engines. Just remember, since most are free, they aren’t guaranteed to work and it will take some time (4-6 weeks, at least) for your site to start showing up (for both paid & free submission). Also, don’t submit your website to the same search engine more than once a month…otherwise the search engine may consider you a spammer and it may affect your search engine position.
Add Me: http://www.addme.com (free & paid)
Traffic Blazer: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/traffic_blazer/landing.asp (paid)
Web Position Gold: http://www.wpgsales.com (paid - downloadable software)
Submit Express: http://www.submitexpress.com (free & paid)
Website Review

http://www.digitalmusicent.net

Good:

Clean & professional look/design.
Good color scheme.
DJ Intelligence pages look good and blend in well with your website.
Suggestions:

No location anywhere on the home page (city or state)….add both somewhere.
How about some bio information on the About Us page?
In your e-mail you gave me the website www.digitalmusicent.net and the e-mail on your website is .net. However, it seems that you own the .com. Any reason why you promote/use the .net more than the .com? Unless you have a really good reason you should switch to the .com as it’s more memorable.
Testimonials page makes it look like you don’t DJ very much. Can you get 3-4 more on there?
You could use some text on the Events page.
It seems like weddings are your main focus-why no weddings page? The website seems geared toward weddings so it seems weird there isn’t a page dedicated to that type of event.
A footer at the bottom of your pages with your contact info and maybe the links to the various pages would be a good addition.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Numark EZ Vinyl Converter

Numark announced the bundling of MixMeister EZ Vinyl Converter 2 for vinyl-to-digital conversion that includes Gracenote song lookup technology. The new version will ship with Numark’s TTUSB and TTXUSB turntables for streamlined conversion of vinyl.

EZ Vinyl Converter 2 is a follow-up to the original EZ Vinyl Converter (now called EZ Vinyl Converter Lite). The new version includes technology from Gracenote that connects to the Internet and locates song, album, artist, and other important information and automatically fills in the ID3 tag information during the vinyl-to-digital conversion. This means that in just a few mouse clicks, Numark users can convert loads of vinyl tracks directly into iTunes.

“EZ Vinyl Converter is simply the fastest, easiest way to get vinyl into iTunes.” Stated Dave Sampson, Marketing Director for MixMeister. “There have been other software programs included with turntables, but typically they are more focused on editing. EZ Vinyl Converter 2 takes the guesswork and hassle out of bringing old recordings into the MP3 format.”

EZ Vinyl Converter 2 will be available as a free download for Numark TTUSB and TTXUSB owners within the next 30 days. Users of the current EZ Vinyl Converter are eligible for a free upgrade via download once version 2 is available. Those without Numark turntables who want to purchase EZ Vinyl Converter 2 may do so for $10.00 U.S. once it is available online.

Sites Worth Citing

Useful websites to help with your web presenceIn my bookmarks in my internet browser I have a folder called ‘web page building.’ If you don’t have one, I highly recommend creating one. I have links to about 2 dozen websites (looking at it now I can see it’s overdo for some updating!) that I’ve found to be useful over the years when working on my website.

Over the next couple weeks I’ll give the links to some of my favorites and explain how they can help you, too. I’m going to start with just one this week since it has many useful features.
http://www.marketleap.com: This has been my favorite resource for years when it came to anything search engine related. I haven’t used the site much recently but a few years ago I was using it a few times a week.

Marketleap has several really great (free) tools you can use to analyze your website in the search engines.
Link popularity check: (Taken from the Marketleap website) One of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website’s online awareness and overall visibility. Simply put, link popularity refers to the total number of links or “votes” that a search engine has found for your website.
Marketleap has designed this link popularity tool to help website owners find out who is linking to their site, but also to give a useful benchmarking report to quickly show where you stand in comparison to competitors and other major online players.
Trend/history report: This is part of the link popularity check. This will only work if you’ve used the Marketleap link popularity check tool in the past. For my DJ website, it created a report going all the way back to 12/01 as that was when I first started using the Marketleap website.
Search Engine Saturation: (Taken from the Marketleap website) Simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain. Not all search engines report this information but enough of them do to create some meaningful benchmarks for your search engine marketing campaigns.
Keyword Verification: (Taken from the Marketleap website) Checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. It’s important to be in the top 3 pages of a search result because most people using search engines don’t go past the 3rd page.
In addition to all the tools on the Marketleap website they also have some great information about search engine optimization in general. The main section of articles is called Search Engine Optimization 101: http://www.marketleap.com/help/seo101/default.htm

I highly recommend reading all of the articles in SEO 101 at least once….and if SEO is still new to you, read it a few times.

Website reviews

http://www.soundbytesdjs.com

Good:

Good picture at the top of the home page.
I like your logo, especially the color scheme that it utilizes.
Overall clean & professional looking website design.
Suggestions:

You have ‘Northern Michigan’ near the top of your home page, which is good, but are people going to go to a search engine and type in ‘Northern Michigan DJ’? I doubt it…more than likely they’ll be putting in a city. So, you should list the closest big city to you there.
Overall the website has a very club/school feel to it. If that’s your target market, you’ve accomplished your goal. However, I see a lot of information about weddings so it seems like you are focusing on both schools & weddings. You might want to change out the picture at the top and go through the entire website looking at it as a bride would.
Text on the picture on the home page is somewhat hard to read.
I just found your ‘weddings site.’ That definitely is more like it but how many people will click on that? I bet many will do I what did, which was click on services and look at the information about weddings.
There’s pretty much no information about what packages you have for schools. Since you have wedding packages why not school packages?
Frequently Asked Questions: Why does it open in a new window, on a blank page with white text on a black background? It should be text on your existing design like everything else….it’s confusing the way it is now.
Somewhat off-topic, but you say “You will never hear us playing a song with inappropriate words.” You might want to re-word that…what’s inappropriate to you, me and a school administrator is different. Why not say “All of our music is radio edited, as we get it from the same place radio stations get it from.”
You have underlined text on your website that’s not a link….never underline text on a website unless it’s a link.
The formatting (page size) of your testimonials page is messed up (at least in Firefox).
Going back to the school/club feel, the gallery page only has school pictures…might want to put some wedding pictures up.
Several of the buttons don’t work on your weddings website.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Getting Your Site Noticed

So you have a website but you aren’t getting and hits to your website. My first recommendation is Pay-Per-Click advertising since it’s the fastest and can yield the best results. If you’re looking to do it the old-fashioned way here are a few websites that can assist with your submitting your website to the various search engines. Just remember, since most are free, they aren’t guaranteed to work and it will take some time (4-6 weeks, at least) for your site to start showing up (for both paid & free submission). Also, don’t submit your website to the same search engine more than once a month…otherwise the search engine may consider you a spammer and it may affect your search engine position.
Add Me: http://www.addme.com (free & paid)
Traffic Blazer: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/traffic_blazer/landing.asp (paid)
Web Position Gold: http://www.wpgsales.com (paid - downloadable software)
Submit Express: http://www.submitexpress.com (free & paid)
Website Review

http://www.digitalmusicent.net

Good:

Clean & professional look/design.
Good color scheme.
DJ Intelligence pages look good and blend in well with your website.
Suggestions:

No location anywhere on the home page (city or state)….add both somewhere.
How about some bio information on the About Us page?
In your e-mail you gave me the website www.digitalmusicent.net and the e-mail on your website is .net. However, it seems that you own the .com. Any reason why you promote/use the .net more than the .com? Unless you have a really good reason you should switch to the .com as it’s more memorable.
Testimonials page makes it look like you don’t DJ very much. Can you get 3-4 more on there?
You could use some text on the Events page.
It seems like weddings are your main focus-why no weddings page? The website seems geared toward weddings so it seems weird there isn’t a page dedicated to that type of event.
A footer at the bottom of your pages with your contact info and maybe the links to the various pages would be a good addition.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

Browser 101

In response to all the requests, I thought I’d focus on web sites this week. In response to you, here we go…Website reviews

http://www.djtylert.com

Good:

Pleasing colors & nice logo.
Good images at the top of the home page.
Location right at the top of the home page.
Weddings packages page is nice & neat.
Suggestions:
I opened your site and I didn’t see any navigation buttons, images at the top were all screwed and overall the site looked very messed up. Then I opened it in Internet Explorer and it looked much better. For more info read back a few columns when I reviewed someone else’s website with the same issue. Basically, you want to check your website in a few different browsers (at least Internet Explorer & Firefox) to make sure it looks OK. You definitely want to get the site fixed for Firefox as it’s getting to be more & more popular.
A rule of design is to have places for the eye to rest-also known as white space. I think you can create some more of that by dropping the date & time that you have below your logo.
It’s really weird that I have to click a box over your buttons before actually clicking on a button…it’s kind of a pain. I’m guessing this is a template website and that’s why you have to do that. If it’s not and you can remove that I’d recommend it.
What’s up with the @msn.com e-mail address? Drop that and use an e-mail @djtylert.com.
You have many links on your website that lead to your contact page…but they don’t seem like a link that should go to that page (like ‘wedding party’ on the wedding packages page). I’m guessing this is done for search engines. However, it’s very annoying & misleading to the website visitor.
http://www.atmospheredjs.com.au

*Note, this website review request came from Jarrod Brake of Australia. Thanks for reading the column all the way in Australia and I’m looking forward to seeing how your website compares with US DJ websites

Good:

I really like the look/feel of the site….good color scheme & buttons.
Nice letter that you have linked to on the home page. Maybe you can make that link yellow or green to make it stand out?
Great pictures at the top above your buttons.
Weddings page looks great (again, drop the music/have a play button for music though).
Contact/quote button at the bottom of pages is a great call-to-action.
Suggestions:
A pet peeve of mine is audio that automatically starts upon page loading. While the audio on your website is very professional, I was listening to music when I went to your site so I could barely hear what you were saying (until I turned the music down). Then, every time I went to the home page it started again. Maybe you could put a little button at the top by the home button to play the intro? If not, can you set a cookie so it only plays once per visit to the site?
Drop the song lists and replace with a music search tool (like the one available through DJ Intelligence).
There are several misspellings on the Christmas parties page. Also, it looks a bit plain compared to all the other pages.
What about a ‘Company Info’ or ‘DJ Bios’ page? For something like a wedding, most people like to know who they’ll be working with.
Jim Weisz has been a DJ since 1999, primarily serving the wedding and school dance markets. Jim is originally from Chicago, having lived there until relocating to Dallas in 2003 to take a position with JonesTM (formerly TM Century). Jim has spoken at several national DJ conventions about websites. He has also written more than a dozen articles for Mobile Beat magazine about websites and a variety of other topics. Jim can be reached at jim@discoverydjs.com.

PCDJ Goes Video

PCDJ announced its VJ package - a video system that works much like the company’s existing audio-only application enabling a performer to provide music, video and karaoke from one computer running one software application. The company says it’s possible to DJ, VJ, and KJ all from one comprehensive interface that’s easy enough to use for the beginner, but with all the features the pros need and want.”With our ultra-accurate automatic beat-mixing, your songs will always stay in sync, allowing you to focus on the other aspects of your mix. The seamless loop engine will let you pump out remixes on the fly, whether you’re mixing Video, Audio, or even Karaoke files. With frame accurate cueing and no-latency playback, you have the most realistic feel possible. Choose your method of control: Keyboard & Mouse, any MIDI controller, Time-code, or a HID device such as the PCDJ DAC-3. Mix, Scratch, and Remix - with PCDJ VJ all your performance needs are at your fingertips.”

Features

Mix Video, Audio, and Karaoke files
Clip Bank for instant load and playback of visualizations
BPM calculation engine works with all types of music
Automatic beat mix tracks
Seamless smart looping
Beat locked video and audio effects
Instant search for tracks
Media-case will automatically sort media types
Set infinite cue points per track
Headphone cueing with I/O soundcard support
Many video effects and transitions to choose from
Send out the video, karaoke, and scrolling text to a second display
Live camera feed - mix live video right from the dance floor
Master tempo and pitch control
Realistic Scratching with mouse, midi control, time-code, or DAC-3
Options

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