Kline Music
klinemusic.com
This is the biggest competitor to Watermelon Music. Kline Music provides the same services and equipment, and is nearby. The website is well done and gives a feeling of respectability.
- Listings created from analysis of sales data. For example, “ukulele” is a choice in the main drop down where the other listings are general categories.
- Very clean top navigation menu, and an effective use of link lists in the footer.
- Images are compelling (although not everything has an image)
- Rental information is straightforward and not overly complicated
- Responsive
- High learnability
David’s Broken Note
davidsbrokennote.com
Another nearby competitor, David’s Broken Note, has a nice website with a lot of content. They don’t have as large of an instrument selection as Watermelon Music, but you can search for rental instruments that are available and reserve them online, which is a great service to the user. The feel of the website is sweet, and not distinctly musical.
- Responsive
- Has functionality to search available rentals
- Conveys a lot of information on even cell phone screens with good styles
- Instrument pictures for listings are high quality, and sometimes there are videos.
- Search categories are missing pictures.
- No search result filtering, although it may be unnecessary because there isn’t as much inventory.
- Good use of white space.
Tweed Hut
tweedhut.com
Tweed Hut specializes in selling instruments, and does not rent instruments, nor does it do repairs. I picked Tweed Hut as a site competitor because it sells instruments very, very well. It is a local brick & mortar business, but it also sells and ships instruments worldwide. Furthermore, the website has a very “cool musician” vibe which I think Watermelon Music has in person, and aspires to have on their website. Many small independently owned businesses are expanding online, either by desire or necessity and Tweed Hut seems to be doing it well.
- Responsive
- Beautiful images on the home page
- Categories in top level and sub level navigation by brand were well thought out.
- The search features and filtering are excellent, particularly being able to filter by instrument condition and price.
- The user can change their currency and location for shipping globally so that they see all prices in their currency, and all personalized shipping costs when viewing the instrument of their choice.
