Hey Neill,

You wouldn't be the first person to say that. However, these templates are designed this way for two reasons...

1. They have been tested against more artistic looking pages and the simple white pages tend to convert better. A branded "more modern" looking page can do well, and I understand the desire for a page like that, but more often than not, design elements represent distractions and place pre-conceived feelings in the mind of a prospect, and more often than not, conversions go down. You can certainly overcome those odds when you know what you're doing and when you really know your audience, but the majority of people getting started with marketing do not. And for that reason I have created a simple template that I know has the potential of converting well. The sites you mentioned are popular sites, but they are not designed with direct response marketing in mind and are not ideal sales platforms as a result. In direct response circles it has long been an axiom that "ugly out performs pretty". That said, I've seen many musicians put together some pretty slick looking sites using the MMM template. You just need to apply a bit of customization.

2. The other reason I use this template is because I am in a position of offering one template that can serve every genre of musician. For that reason, branding is not an option and I needed to create something simple and clean. The template continues to convert well for me and many others, until that changes I will continue to use it.

I'd also add that the template is completely customizable. You can make any changes to the colors, fonts, background images, etc. The sky is really the limit and what you do with it is up to you. But I'd recommend starting with a simple out-of-the-box template first and making that convert for you before you start experimenting. Otherwise you won't know what is working and what is not based on template vs content.

Looking at the squeeze page you have up... Dark colors typically hurt conversions. Not in every case, but more often than not. You are also missing a few copy elements. You have all the right calls to action but I personally think that you'd benefit from a descriptive paragraph or two which connects fans with the reasons they would be interested in your music.

Hope that addresses your concerns.

Sound good Neill,

I think the important point is just that what is most important in terms of conversions is having a very clear message to market match. A slick template can help with that, so long as it doesn't get in the way of that. If that makes sense.

In trying to teach thousands of artists how to be successful with direct response marketing (which I need to stress, is very different than traditional advertising), I think it's important that I offer a template that will - at the very least - not contain elements that may be distracting and hurt conversions. But there is no reason you can't take measures to customize a site to your liking, so long as you know what you are doing and have a good control metric before playing around too much.

I'm about to launch a website builder called TunePipe. TunePipe allows musicians to build direct response marketing focused websites with a click of a button, but gives dozens of template options for those who do feel they need something that looks a bit slicker. However it also includes very stripped down templates as well, for all the reasons mentioned. That will be out sometime in teh next few months.... hopefully 🙂

Hi Neill,

Steve here.  Unfortunately the font for the H1 headline is dictated by the Stylesheet for the MMM theme template.  It could be edited but we don't recommend doing so, unless you are experienced with CSS editing.

Regarding the "powered by", this is also hard-coded into the page templates.  Would you like to remove it, or simply edit it to say something else and direct to a different url?

Let me know and I'll give you some instructions to follow.

Thanks!