How to build a website for your podcast
We believe podcast websites have three main jobs:
- Make it super-easy to sample your show
- Make it obvious and frictionless to subscribe
- Help your most engaged listeners dig deeper
To help our clients build websites for their own shows, we’ve put together a list of best practices. Here they are:
Mobile first
According to The Infinite Dial 2018, 69% of podcast listeners say the device they use most often to listen to podcasts is a smartphone, tablet, or portable device.
Make sure your show’s website is optimized for mobile.
Of course, we love beautiful, desktop-sized full screen experiences, too. The team at Response built a gorgeous site for McAfee’s show Hackable?, and it’s filled with delightful easter eggs. Crucially, it scales down gracefully to a mobile screen, too.
Touch-friendly audio players
There are many different audio players out there — from the built-in player provided by your podcast hosting company, to third-party solutions like RadioPublic’s, to full-blown custom-coded players.
Whichever player you choose, make sure it’s finger-friendly, easily tappable, and super-obvious for website visitors who aren’t yet familiar with podcasts.
Use official badges and branding
Big podcast distributors like Apple, Google, and Spotify already have tremendous brand recognition and affinity. Use that to your advantage.
Do
- Use official badges from podcast apps
- Place the most important badges above the fold
- Follow brand identity guidelines (here’s Apple’s)
Don’t
- Make your own custom podcast badges
- Search Google Images for “apple podcasts logo” and hotlink whatever janky weirdness you find there.
Which badges should you include? It depends on how much screen real estate you have to work with, but our “must haves” list includes:
- Apple Podcasts
- Google Podcasts
- Spotify
- RSS
Too many subscribe options can create a confusing or intimidating experience for new listeners. Prioritize the platforms that make the most sense for your audience, and trust that podcast listeners who use less-popular podcast apps will know how to copy/paste an RSS link, or search for your show in their favorite app.
A quick note on the word “subscribe” — for many people, “subscribe” connotes a fee. Think about it: we subscribe to magazines, and cable TV packages, and meal-in-a-box services.
Podcasts, by and large, are free. Yet as an industry, we continually use a word that suggests to some that they might have to pay.
Our recommendation: don’t use the word “subscribe” unless it’s immediately followed by the words “for free.”
Want a less-fraught verb for your podcast CTAs? Try “listen” instead.
Include an iOS Smart Banner
By adding a single line of code to your website’s <head>, you can enable an iOS Smart Banner that deep links to your show in Apple Podcasts:
At Pacific Content, we’ve seen subscription conversion rates on these iOS Smart banners as high as 21%.
Include Google’s recommended structured data
Google wants to double the amount of podcast listening worldwide in the next couple years. Make sure your website implements Google’s recommended structured data for podcasts, so your episodes will appear prominently in search results:
Google’s system relies on reciprocal links between your website and your podcast’s RSS feed. Once you’ve included Google’s recommended tags on your website, don’t forget to make any necessary changes to your feed, too.
You can find the full technical details at Google’s developer site.
Create compelling companion content
Your podcast’s website should be more than a way for new listeners to find your show. It should also provide deep value for existing listeners.
Consider the 99% Invisible website, which features in-depth, visually-rich articles for each podcast episode.
Or the S-Town website, full of additional resources and behind-the-scenes details.
Or Dell’s award-winning website for Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson, which includes gorgeous custom artwork, guest bios, and SEO-friendly episode transcripts:
Your podcast’s website should give superfans a way to engage with your show more deeply.
Build easy onramps for new listeners
Remember, 74% of Americans don’t listen to podcasts on a regular basis. Many of the people who visit your podcast’s website may not know how to listen to a podcast. Hold their hands.
The New York Times does a great job of this. On every episode page for The Daily, you’ll find clear, plain-English instruction on how to listen to the show:
When Charles Schwab launched Choiceology, they knew some of their audience would be first-time podcast listeners. So they built a helpful How Do I Listen to Choiceology? page, and linked it prominently from their main page:
When your website makes it super-easy to sample and subscribe to your show — especially for new listeners — everyone wins. Shows that make it easy, friendly, and simple for new listeners to enter the podcast ecosystem help grow the denominator.
Build Community
We asked our newsletter subscribers for their podcast website best practices. Jay Acunzo from Unthinkable Media made the case for using your podcast’s website to help build additional (non-RSS) distribution channels for your show:
Like big brand advertisers on Facebook and bloggers on Medium, and even some creators on YouTube, podcasters may face a reckoning if they continue to rely too heavily on a third party platforms to grow their audience. The aforementioned platforms were at first safe havens to grow an audience for makers of all types before they realized they needed to generate more revenue, at which point they restricted the organic reach to generate more ad spend (Facebook) or moved content behind a paywall (Medium, YouTube). Podcasters are playing a dangerous game without building community through primarily email, which is a true owned audience, rather than their listeners today, which are ultimately rented. Thus, their sites should offer more consistent and obvious email subscription options, and they should have a more strategic newsletter approach to build community on their terms, away from the algorithms and whims of third parties. History will repeat, and when it does, those with thriving communities built through email and surrounding owned channels will thrive while others run screaming, their world on fire.
At Pacific Content, we completely agree about the power of owned channels.
Remember
A well-crafted website is an important part of any successful podcast. The best podcast websites make it simple to sample, subscribe, and dig deeper.
What podcast website best practices have you found?
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