Wayne Watson

Few Christian music artists claim a legacy as rich as that of Wayne Watson. Our goal for Wayne Watson's first ever "all in" web community was to build a brand image that could hold over two decades of No. 1 songs, over a dozen best selling albums, and one of the most thoughtful writers in the entire music industry.

Design

Our design recommendation was to lean into a brand image that positioned Wayne as an authentic, timeless creative entity. Therefore, we looked for textures, typefaces and colors that helped remind his millions of fans that he's been around a long time — and is still relevant to today's Christian music lovers.

A key part of our design strategy was a layout that made our key image of Wayne the most prominent part of the layout, while still providing plenty of space for new content. Therefore, each page features a Flash animation as a third of the horizontal page space.

In addition, the header for the site — normally reserved for just a logo and main navigation — now does the heaviest lifting. We dedicated 25% of the vertical space above the fold for email newsletter signup, featured web store products, and the event schedule. We also include direct links under the log (also built in Flash) for member login.

Other stuff:
• Songs
Visitors always have multiple direct access to listen to and purchase songs, no matter what page they are on at the site. We also built a table that provided visitors with the opportunity to listen to any song, read Wayne's comments about that song, purchase the song at iTunes, or purchase the corresponding CD in his web store.

• Flash
We used Flash for both the main brand logo and in the sidebar, which dramatically boosts the "wow factor" at the site.

• Packaging
Once we got the site designed, it became clear to the team that Wayne's new project needed to be packaged to match the site's design. We basically redesigned Even This around the layout, photography and typography we used for the site, which improved Wayne's marketing consistency.

• Store
Because of the length of his major label recording career, never before had all of Wayne's CDs, books and merch been available for sale in one place. Wayne's on-site web store provided us with the opportunity to immediately offer one stop shopping to all of Wayne's fans, which resulted in a remarkable flood of ecommerce sales as soon as the site went live.

• Blog
Wayne is a very thoughtful and articulate writer, so we connected him with a great blog at Blogger. We used a great widget called Blidget (marketed by Widgetbox) that feeds his blog directly to his site through a clean and simple Flash viewer. Visitors can even copy and paste the code to place his blog at their own site. Therefore, we get the best of both worlds: A public blog with branded, on-site content feeds. Oh, and here's the best part: It's free!