Designing for Kids and Business Owners – A Kindermusik Case Study

(Updated 03/2011)

I have been fortunate to work with some of the nicest people in the world: Kindermusik educators. Kindermusik is a music and movement class offered for young children around the world. See Kindermusik.com for more info on them.

Over the past two three years FourTen Creative has provided custom designed sites for four seven different Kindermusik locations on the West Coast in North America.  Some of the concerns central to Kindermusik educators may be relevant to your business as well. I am highlighting here some of the features and successes of these sites.

Interesting/Colorful Design: No stock templates here folks. Kindermusik educators are a colorful bunch as they appeal to infants, toddlers and young children. Each website project began with a custom graphic design process, integrating existing logos and color preferences to an appealing layout that conveyed fun, yet organized information logically according to what parent’s need.

Ease-of-Use: WordPress has always been my first choice because of how accessible it is for web design novices. Kindermusik educators, though intelligent and capable, often don’t have time to play with html code. With easy configuration and training from FourTen, educators are ready to edit their own schedules, add photos, and blog to their heart’s content.

Social Media Integration: You’ll hear me talk a lot about this, but I’ll keep it short here. These people are social by nature and their websites need to enable the relationships that are the foundation of their businesses. Sites from FourTen can be integrated (and automated!) to work with Facebook, Twitter, email marketing tools like Constant Contact & MailChimp, video providers like YouTube and Vimeo, and come stock with a blog.

Search Engine Playfulness: Ok, well… “Search Engine Optimization” didn’t sound as fun, but making it easy for people to find you on the internet is important. Sites from FourTen also enable seamless integration with Google AdWords campaigns (even custom landing pages) and drive people to get connected to a class near them.

Low Cost of Operation: Ok, let’s be honest, a small business these days can’t afford to keep a web nerd in their basement on retainer. With WordPress being an Open Source system, multitudes of free plugins, and the prevalence of low-cost wordpress hosting on the web, your overhead for a website could be as low as $85/yr. Seriously.

Registration Handling: Integrating registration forms into your site can be handled a number of different ways depending on how you process roster information and credit card payments. We have used methods such as Secure Forms, PayPal, Jackrabbit Class, Your Virtuoso and Kindermusik.com to meet the needs of these small businesses. WordPress websites are so flexible, that all of these methods work well.

Visit some of these sites to see Kindermusik websites in action or contact us for your own.

Studio3Music.com

PianoCentralStudios.com

KindermusikCambridge.com

NotableKids.ca

MusicAndMyChild.com

Developmusic.com

MagicMusicTime.com