CASE STUDY- Early Internet Presence
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Entertainment's leap to the web
I was first approached by Miles, many years ago for an album cover illustration for the University of Kentucky Jazz Ensemble. Computers, had only started to gain a place in the prepress world, so this peice was created by hand("Cruisin" - shown below). Many pieces of collateral materials were created before the inception of the internet by hand and computer, in order to drive album sales, such as posters, concert flyers and more. But, the most cost effective leap, for Miles, was the implementation of a website. Even though sites were expensive to build at the time, even on a small scale, a site would give the needed information for concert schedules and more.
The site had humble beginnings as a section of Idoart.com/miles as a test and an additional learning experience for me. The usage statistics alarmed even me in a very short time for how many visitors were getting there in search of (at the time a new thing) MP3's. In the early 90's, only larger record companies had the good sense to build an online presence, and there were only limited browsers and very limited search engines. That wasn't a bad thing, considering there weren't that many websites either and traffic was good automatically because of limited places to go. Network Solutions had a monopoly on website names, as the only registrar, so there wasn't enough in the budget for multiple domain names at the time.
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The University of Kentucky's full site had just been built a short time before and the opportunity for link relevance was high. Universities were some of the first sites online with graphical interfaces.The initial site for Miles was built with a great deal of invisible pages, which at the time, the search engines wouldn't get you for, for spamming. Everything had to be coded by hand(notepad/textedit)in order to get exactly what you wanted, and at the time it wasn't possible to fully adhere to branding in straight html without keeping everything in image form. Considering the speed of internet connections at the time, that wasn't much of an option.
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One of the primary functions the website would serve, was ecommerce, for albums and books. This also was a somewhat new function to the internet and there were only two shopping carts available to buy, if you didn't code your own, highly insecure piece of work. Both were over ten thousend dollars and still came with a mile of disclaimers. So for a while, if you wanted to buy something you could send a secure form or just call to order. Eventually a numerous companies started popping up that offered ecommerce services through thier sites. So we chose CCNow and have been with them for almost a decade.
The site has seen many transitions over the years and is now one of the hottest saxophone sites on the net, thanks more to the skills of Miles Osland! It's great to see how well a site can work on a local/regional level. Every time I go to one of the concerts, I innevitably run into someone who found out about the show from the site. Many of them tell me, "I bought one of the CDs off the site and I had to hear it for myself." (Miles is one of the best players in the world on sax and flute.) |
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Easily Heard - Easily Sold! |
"In the year 2000, one in every 5 bands signed were either discovered on the internet or thier website played a mojor role in getting them signed." |
More case studies are in progress as time permits... |
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