Introducing My New Piano Studio Website!

I knew it had been a while since I last redesigned my studio website, but after doing a little digging I discovered it’s been 11 years! Even though I still liked elements of how it looked, it was nowhere near being optimized for mobile viewing, and when I was saving screenshots of the main pages for my archives, the final count came to 74. Yikes!

For the past year or so, I’ve been pondering a redesign, scoping out potential theme ideas, and reading pointers from others on how to design an effective site for today’s audience. According to my research, apparently no one wants to click through page after page of my carefully collected quotes, soaking in inspiration while trying to locate information about getting their child enrolled in piano lessons. Who knew? So, alas, I scrapped the vast majority of the site and distilled it down to the essentials. These two posts in particular were quite helpful in figuring out what that meant!

3 Ways to Look at Your Studio Website with Fresh Eyes by my friend and colleague Amy Chaplin of the Piano Pantry blog

Technology Tips and Tools: How to Get More Students to Contact Your Studio by Daniel Patterson in the MTNA Business Resources

I’ve been a long time WordPress user, so I knew I wanted to stick with a WordPress theme. For a while now I’ve been eyeing the Divi Theme developed by Elegant Themes, which seemed extremely versatile and user-friendly. I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. With some helpful YouTube videos, an included layout pack, a bit of help from tech support, and a few late nights, the new site is up and running!

There will undoubtedly be more tweaks in the days and weeks ahead, but it sure is nice to check this off my to-do list before starting up piano lessons for the fall. Also, I had a few issues with the mobile version (as in, the version on my laptop screen looked beautiful and then I opened it up on my phone and it looked terrible!), but hopefully they are all resolved now. With over 90% of internet users accessing websites on mobile devices, it’s absolutely essential now to make sure a website is mobile optimized. In fact, in the future I’ll probably actually start with a mobile theme and then tweak it for desktop users, which I didn’t think of doing this time around. Anyway, I welcome any and all feedback, especially if you see design issues with the site or have suggestions for anything I left out that should be included!