Artist Website Review: Matt & Kim

Their music is a good time and their live show is one big party...but their website? Bore-city. For two kids from Brooklyn who sold out their 2011 Sidewalks tour, Matt and Kim sure are missing the mark on what a good website looks like. I was completely shocked to find such a lack of excitement online considering the energy that seeps through the lines of their music.

Greetings! from ugly website land

Home Page
The beach ball of death finally stops spinning and visitors are greeted with content galore! (this explains why it took so long for the page to load). An embedded YouTube video, with no border or banner to make it blend with the page, is the first item seen by visitors. Below the video is their Twitter, News, and Voicemail (I'll come back this later) feed. Lining the right-hand side of the page is their social media buttons, a mini-photo stream, upcoming show dates, toolbars to receive access codes for digital downloads, and an archive hub. Phew! Could they cram anymore stuff on there? Answer: NO.

Overall Layout
The layout of the site is nothing fancy. It consists of their banner at the top with ten tabs underneath to access all the different pages: Home, News, Tour, Releases, Music, Videos, Photos, Stores, Links, and Contact.  Each tab lights up when the mouse drags over it which, would be a neat feature if there wasn't all this other STUFF to look at...sensory overload! Every page has a different layout in order to tailor to the content being featured but again, the pages are so busy I have zero desire to sift through all the information. The best layout award goes to the Music page because it features clean cut media players where visitors can listen to their singles. The blue and white color scheme highlights the album art perfectly while the orange text compliments the blue tones. The entire layout has a great deal of potential but it's simplistic approach doesn't support the mass amounts of content the band wants to share.

Content
One thing I have to praise Matt & Kim for is keeping their site FULL of up-to-date and brand appropriate stuff for fans to sift through...even though there is crap ton of it. The best part about having too much is that it would be easy to scale everything back as opposed to having to create content in order to fill in the gaps. I think the website would benefit from a professional de-cluttering...TLC's Hoarders style. If they eliminated the side-bar, condensed some of the pages (such as "Music" and "Releases"), and maybe even created a blog to post about live videos and interviews, the site would feel SO much more organized...and I could breathe when I look at it.


Voicemail Feature
This has seriously got to be one of the funniest/craziest/awesomist ideas I've ever seen. I attended Matt & Kim's show at Terminal 5 back in early July and at the end of the show, they gave the audience a cell phone number and encouraged everyone to text/call whenever they'd like. I still have the number in my phone but I never actually took advantage of it because it appeared to me they were just trying to be "cool" and the number was actually just a gimmick. I was very wrong. On their website, under Home and News tabs, is a stream of text message conversations and voicemail recordings to the band from the fans. They even include the area code from the number that contacted them. It's like Texts From Last Night but minus all the stories about throwing up in strange places. The messages are also divided up into sections: Hate Mail, Kim's Favorites, and Random. With Matt & Kim's career on the rise, I really hope they continue the Voicemail campaign in order to connect with their current and future fans in an innovative way.



Aesthetic

Forrest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." Well whoever designed this site was in the Forrest State of Mind because the background is a huge surprise every time a page re-loads. The band's roots are in New York City so all the images are blown up shots of everyday NYC stuff...subways, streets, buildings etc. This is conceptually an interesting idea but wasn't carried out well enough by the designer. Some of the photos used for the background are not only pixilated but clash completely with the blue/white theme on the stationary pages.  The New York State of Mind that Matt & Kim love to preach is displayed quite well just by their banner with the graffiti-ed buildings. They really just need to cut the flare and go with a basic, black background aka: the triple B.

We get it Matt & Kim, you're fun. You like have a good time and run naked through New York streets but that doesn't me your website has to be as loud as Kim's kick drum.


KGC