Make sure people can find you!

This should go without saying but sadly it’s far more common than you’d think. The temptation is to think that you’ll leave stuff like this to the distributor or you’ll deal with a website once you’re in post or when you get into a festival, but this is a critical error. You need a website from day one, ensuring you connect with your audience early and giving you the time to build a relationship before your film’s release.

Your film’s website is many things to many people--it’s a hub connecting all the disparate social, commercial, distribution and marketing activities that happen all around the web. It’s your film’s home on the web and wherever someone might discover your film. It’s where you want your audience to ultimately connect with your film. This ensures the strongest possible connection between, you, your film and your audience.

And no, a Facebook page alone won’t do! Why? Because with Facebook, or any other social network, you don’t own your audience, you can’t take them from one project to the next, they’re locked into someone else's network. Likewise, Facebook’s one-size-fits-all solution is not going to best serve your film or sell your film effectively. By all means have a Facebook page, but consider it one of many marketing assets, not your home on the web.

Whatever you do, don’t forget or put off creating a website for your film. Act now or you will be missing out on valuable early fans who could become influencers. Your website and mailing list are where the magic of serendipity happens.



Mistake #2. Failing to Define Clear Goals

The current goals of this site are very clear

This is about planning. Too often the strategy behind a film’s website is, “We need a big trailer and a link to buy,” but we all know selling films isn’t that easy. Likewise, a common approach is “I really like the website for film X or film Y, let’s copy that.” But what you really have to ask yourself is: what are the current goals for my film? Once you’ve established those goals, you can design how your site is going to help you achieve them.

Producing a website for an impact documentary that is in production and looking for finishing funds is very different from creating a website to sell a genre film direct to audiences in the Scandinavian market. You should plan your website carefully, lay out your current goals, whether that be funding, creating social impact, changing minds, promoting your film’s appearance in festivals or selling the film direct. The website design, layout, calls-to-action and language will all be very different depending on your goals.

Remember your site will evolve throughout the film’s life and should serve different goals at different times.

Checklist:

• Align your website design and layout with your current goals
• As your goals change, remember to change your website
  

Put your trailer up front and center

This is fundamental but all too commonly forgotten. What you should consider to be “the basics” is going to depend on the current goals for your film. That said, there are some golden rules:

Show us the trailer, don’t hide it away on a trailer page; your trailer is the best tool you have to sell your film. Don’t make a user click through to view it.

Whatever you do don’t forget contact information. It sounds simple, but it’s vital. Email is a must and a phone number is preferred - you never know, a sales agent might call. Adding a street address to your emails will reduce the likelihood of getting caught in spam filters.

Remember your press kit and press-specific contact information. At a minimum this should be the synopsis and a small but good selection of high-res photographic stills. The more eyeballs you can get on your film the better. Give the press the best possible resources to paint your film in the best possible light. Is your film screening at festivals, and better yet, has it won awards? Don’t be shy, list your screenings, promote ticket sales, display your laurels with pride.

Don’t forget to make sure your site is as discoverable as possible. This means ensuring that each page of your site is optimized to give search engines the best chance of indexing them and accurately gathering information about them. The more optimized the content and the metadata on your pages, the more Google will reward you with traffic. Search engine optimization is a big subject. For more information read this guide to ensuring your site is discoverable.

Checklist:

• Make sure contact details are on the site
• Check your site’s search engine optimization (do a test search in Google)
• Check your site in social media (do a test share of the URL in Facebook or Twitter)
• Add your press kit, trailer, awards, reviews and showtimes

Uh oh - where’d my site go?

This is a disaster, but a very common disaster. You’ve had an idea for a film and at the height of your excitement and motivation you register the perfect domain name. Two years of pre-production, planning, financing etc. pass and now you’re in production and you want to launch a teaser website-- but what’s happened to that domain? It’s expired and someone is cybersquatting your domain - nightmare!

The other oh-so-common version of events is that an intern or assistant registered the domain to their Hotmail address and you’re not in contact with them anymore. Your domain is one of the cheapest, but most valuable things you’ll purchase for your film and a simple administrative error can see it slip through your fingers.

Make sure you register the domain yourself to an email address you regularly use, store credit card details with the registrar, and set the domain to auto-renew. These simple tips will stop you from losing such a critical asset.

Checklist:

• Register your domain using an email address you use regularly
• Set your domain to auto-renew
• Save your payment details
  

• When sending emails, use your voice and personality - be real, be authentic
• Review how your personality comes across in the website content
• Use design to inject personality into your site