Case studiesIn build

Christopher Bond

Christopher is a composer and conductor who sells his own scores. His old site wasn’t set up to sell PDFs, so people emailed him for a score and he sent each one on himself.

Catalogue 60-odd works, each with its details
Delivery A watermarked PDF as soon as someone pays, once it’s live
Control He’ll edit the site himself
Updated

The whole of the new Christopher Bond home page: a photograph of Christopher conducting, the line “Written to be played”, the catalogue as cover artwork, his conducting, recordings to play and the bands that commissioned him

The new site is still in build. Pictured from the latest build on 21 October 2026

Before and after

Christopher Bond’s home page as it was before, on a page builder: “Composer, Arranger, Educator” over a photograph of a band on stage — BeforeThe old home page

The new site: Christopher conducting, the line “Written to be played” and a row of score covers — AfterHand-coded, with the catalogue up front

What changed
Before	After
Every score was sent by hand.	A watermarked PDF will arrive the moment they pay.
Instrumentation, duration and grade sat in loose text nobody could search.	Every work has its details as fields, and the shop will filter by any of them.
The latest news on the site was from 2020.	He’ll post news from his admin screen.
Changes meant fighting the page builder.	He’ll change prices, add works and edit his biography in the same place.

Inside the site

The music page: the catalogue of scores as cover artwork, with a search and filters — /musicThe catalogue, every work as its cover

A single work’s page: its cover, the price, Add to basket and more for brass band underneath — /works/ancestral-tidesOne work, with its price and a listen

How we went about it

01

We built the shop ourselves

Each PDF carries the buyer’s name and order number on every page, so a shared copy can be traced. We couldn’t find an off-the-shelf shop that did it the way he wanted, so we built that part, and the rest of the site to match.

02

We sorted out the catalogue first

Each work became a record with named fields, checked for mistakes, before any design. The shop, the search and the admin screen all read from the same place.

03

We built him his own admin screen

It covers his works, the press quotes on his pages and the site’s settings, and nothing he doesn’t use. He sees each change in a preview before it goes live, and can put back an earlier version from its history.

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This write-up is published with Christopher’s permission. His current site is at christopherbondmusic.co.uk.