Re-launched Octopus Agents, letting their artists take center stage
Octopus Agents is an independent music and booking agency based in Amsterdam. Representing a wide range of artists that have one thing in common: they all produce electronic music; perform it live or DJ around the world. Together with the Octopus team we’ve worked hard on a revamp of the website.
- Art Direction
- Research & Analysis
- Wire-framing & Prototyping
- UX/UI/IA
- Frontend Development
- Craft CMS Implementation
“As we’re representing and working with many different artists in electronic music, it is very important every artist and his or her page has it’s own vibe. Johannes understood this very well and integrated a back-end system which is user-friendly and which we can use into eternity. Dion Verbeek, Owner
The process
My design process involved stakeholder interviews, distillation of foundational research into user personas and a high-level strategy, collaboration on branding and ‘look and feel,’ heavy sketching, wire-framing and prototyping, visual design, and collaboration with the Octopus Team on the little details that matter.
Content Builder
Each artists unique
The most challenging part was the content builder. I developed a highly flexible content builder so the agents have the ability to easily compose an artist biography from scratch. They can pick from various layout options and hero styles; customize the color scheme; and organize the display of images and multimedia embeds, depending on the story they want to tell about their artists.
Advanced features
Modern and future proof
With Craft CMS, I could deliver the author experience (AX) and user experience (UX) that Octopus Agents was looking for, without the price tag of a complex proprietary back-end.
- Instant artist search from all pages
- Automatic presskit (ZIP) generation from selected files
- Mailchimp newsletter integration with selected news items
- Fully customizable artist pages
- Custom instagram feed
- Auto posting of news items to twitter
- Workflow submission system for interns
“…he really translated the company that Octopus is into the website. Rather than creating the standard agency website, the website ended up as a magazine with new content every day. This way we are reaching more people and integrating our news into social media, so people end up on our website more and more and also start to see the Octopus website as a source of news, new music and a kind of glossy for electronic music.” Dion Verbeek, Owner
Conclusion
Octopusagents.com is a website that resonates the personality of the artists. The team now produces detailed stories, and spend lots of time defining the right design for each artist. It’s beautiful. The result is a focussed portal into their music world that contains lots of relevant news features, new releases, mixes and radio shows all refreshed on a daily basis. I’m proud of what we created, and have had enthusiastic feedback from the team. The work has been energizing, to say the least.
Amazing stats since the relaunch:
- 291,93% session growth
- 317,66% more visitors
- 217,89% more pageviews
