It turns out authors make lots of website mistakes.
by Gill Andrews
You didn’t sign up for this.
Writing and sharing your ideas with others – sure. But this website thing? You just wanted more people to read your stories. But now you spend hours agonizing over blog post topics, looking for free images, and figuring out why that widget on your website refuses to work.
Argh.
It wouldn’t be that bad if it at least would bear fruit, but this damn website isn’t even doing its job! Where are all the new readers and book sales?
I have no idea how to write a book. But I know a lot about websites and how people view them.
And now, after we’ve bonded over how frustrating this is, I’d like to tell you something important: Your website sucks, but I’ll show how to fix it.
“But you haven’t even seen my website!”
You wish! Preparing for this post, I’ve analyzed 50 author websites that belong to the regular readers of this blog (and I have a huge Excel sheet to prove it). I spent 10 minutes on each website noting down the mistakes to then uncover the most common ones.
Today, I’d like to talk to you about 5 of those mistakes – the cardinal sins of an author’s website that alienate your readers – and show you how to fix them.
Important note: If you’re happy with your website, you can stop reading right here. Why change a working system? Yet, if you’d like to improve your website and expand your readership, read on.
Mistake #1. A messy homepage with no direction
or “The main reason your website visitors flee to never come back”
Raise your hand if you’re a proud owner of a homepage that looks like this (don’t be shy; I can’t see you anyways).
Such layout seems to be common among author websites. Which is surprising, because the main purpose of an author’s website should be to attract new readers. Yet, this layout is very hostile to anyone who’s never heard of you.
A first-time visitor of your website doesn’t know what you do or what kind of books you write, let alone their titles. They check your homepage to learn more about you and your work, but you greet them with:
- A cryptic website tagline that doesn’t tell them what you do
- No author’s image (often: no author’s name)
- Countless images and links that pull their attention in all possible directions
- No or unclear calls to action
Want your website visitors to read your blog posts and check out your books? Start with a clear homepage.
How to create a clear homepage that makes your visitors stick around
Add your name and your photograph
State your name and place your photograph prominently on your website, close to the top. Don’t rely on your visitors to visit your About page. Show your face right on your homepage.
Make your website tagline is clear
Tell your visitors what to expect from your website. Are you an author? State your name and your genre or niche. Anne Brooke does a good job with her tagline:
“Anne Brooke. Poet and contemporary fiction novelist.”
So does Kaye Dacus:
“Kaye Dacus. Humor, Hope and Happily Ever Afters.”
Although she doesn’t say she also writes books (which is fine if one doesn’t want to emphasize that) she clearly tells her website visitors what to expect. Does your blog go by its own name? State your blog focus.
“Writingale. Web writing tips for busy creatives.”
Does it sound too simple? Maybe. But when it comes to your website, simple but clear always trumps creative but vague.
Define your goals
Think about it. What else would a new visitor find useful on your homepage? For example, your latest blog posts and books, and more information about you. What would you like every visitor to see? For example, your books, selected reviews, your featured services.
Remove distractions
Based on your goals, remove everything that pulls your visitors’ attention in the wrong direction:
- Kill your side bar on your homepage (kill it with fire). Your visitors can’t concentrate on the important information in the middle of your page while endless links and images are screaming for their attention from the sidebars.
- Remove your followers’ avatars, social network widgets and other links leading outside your website (more on this in a minute).
- Remove irrelevant badges.
The hard truth about awards and badges
Did you know that when you add badges a la “Liebster Award” to your website you help other websites rank better in search?
When someone tells you they’ve nominated you for an “award” or included you in some list they also ask you to mention them on your website, right?
This creates a backlink – a link from your website to theirs – which helps them rank better in search, while you’re cluttering your website and alienating your readers.
But even without a backlink, your readers can tell between an “award” and a real award.
Add relevant information
Add clear sections with the most relevant information for your visitors. For example:
- “About me” section
- Featured books / services / blog posts
- An opt-in for your newsletter
- Reviews, testimonials or other meaningful social proof
Add calls to action
Show your website visitors what they can do next. After every section, add a visually prominent call to action link or button. For example, “Learn more”, “View all books”, “Read more posts”, etc.
Mistake #2. A hot mess of a navigation
or “The main reason why people don’t visit many pages on your website”
Navigation was another major pain point on the author websites I looked at. Here are the most common problems I discovered.
Too many navigation items
Have you ever heard of decision fatigue? It’s the reason you scream “Screw it! I’ll do it some other time!” and close the browser when Amazon shows you 200 images for “black leather pumps”.
This is what happens to your website visitors when they see a gazillion of the navigation labels: Too many options make them feel so overwhelmed that they rather not chose at all.
Unclear navigation items
Anti-examples: Media, Policies, Challenges, Prompts, Flashback Friday.
Navigation should be the last place to exercise your creativity muscle. Your website visitors won’t read your navigation but scan it for the familiar labels, like About, Books or Services. If they don’t find or recognize them hidden behind a creative phrase, they won’t click on it.
Too granular navigation items
Anti-examples: Interviews, Why I self-publish?, Recent releases.
Your readers won’t care for your interviews before they know more about you. And as the space in the navigation is limited, you need to prioritize. Think of your navigation as a big picture of your website that instantly tells your website visitors what to expect from it.
Misplaced navigation
Your visitors expect your navigation to be at the top. If they don’t find it there they may not find it at all. Also, your visitors don’t expect multiple row navigation and may overlook the orphan labels in the second navigation row.
Drop-down menus
Here’s something counter-intuitive: Your visitors find your drop-down menus irritating. Plus, they are more likely to skip the “mother” navigation label (and less likely to check the page it leads to).
How to improve your navigation
- Place your navigation at the top of your website in one line.
- Don’t use more than 7 navigation items (the maximum number of items we can hold in our short-term memory).
- Make sure the labels are short and descriptive.
- Make sure the labels have almost the same level of granularity presenting your website visitors with the main entry points to learn more about you and your work.
- Unless your books are famous and people are coming to your website in herds just to read updates about them, don’t put book titles in the navigation.
- Avoid drop-down menus and reorganize your content to only have top-level navigation.
Mistake #3. Poor formatting
or “The one that makes you look unprofessional.” This is really unfair: You may be a bestselling author, but your website visitors will think you’re a clueless amateur if you make these formatting mistakes:
- Too long paragraphs (or too many one-liners after another)
- No text highlights (or too many highlights)
- Too small font size
- Confusion around clickable elements where links don’t look like links and text looks like buttons
- Poor contrast between background and text
On the other side, even a newbie author or blogger will get extra brownie points if their content is flawlessly formatted.
How to format your web content to appear professional
Avoid visual monotony
- Vary the length of your paragraphs between 3-, 2- and 1-liners to make the text more scannable and keep your visitors’ attention longer.
- If you’re using bullet points in your text, add space between the individual bullet points (here’s how to do it). Otherwise, you’ll end up with a wall of text with some dots on the side.
- Use bold and italic highlights for words or short phrases, but not multiple lines at once.
- Use uniform spacing between the paragraphs.
Make everything easy to skim and read
- Use font size big enough to read without pain, also on mobile.
- Make sure the background and the text color have enough contrast.
Make things look like they function
- Don’t make links look like images. Your visitors don’t expect an image to be a link and won’t click on it.
- Make in-text links stand out from the rest of the text. For example, here’s a link that stands out. Here’s a link that your visitors will also notice. And this link is hard to spot, so it won’t be clicked often.
- Make your important calls to action look like buttons of a color that stands out.
Yet, don’t make plain text look like a clickable element. For example, your headings should look like text and not buttons.
Mistake #4. Meaningless words
or “The one where you’re wasting your readers’ time”
You know this computer game where you’re driving a car but running out of petrol, so you need to collect bonuses to refill your tank?
The driver is your visitor, and the petrol indicator is their time. If you don’t constantly refill their “tank” with valuable easy-to-read content, it’s game over.
Before adding a sentence or an image to your website, ask yourself: Is it relevant and valuable to my readers?
Don’t tell your visitors “Welcome to my website” or “I’m happy you are here”. They don’t care. What they care about is clear and relevant information they can easily find. Don’t tell your visitors to “check out your side bar”. If you want your visitors to take action, include a link on the spot.
Meaningless words are especially damaging on your About page. Approach it the way you would approach the final draft of your novel: Remove meaningless words.
Mistake #5. Prominent social icons and links to other websites
or “The one where you ask your visitors to leave”
The “follow me” social icons have no place in your navigation. Nor your side bar. Nor anywhere else where they jump in people’s faces. Your visitors have just got to your website. Why are you asking them to leave this place that is 100% about you for the world of cute babies, cat memes and cake recipes?
Where to place the “follow me” icons?
Place the “follow me” icons in the footer. If someone genuinely wants to follow you on social media, they will look there. And everyone else should stay on your website and read more posts.
Also, make sure to include only the relevant social networks (unless you are equally active on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon).
You are a member of a writer’s alliance? Great. Don’t link to it but mention it by name (if you must).
You tweet a lot? Congratulations! But don’t even think of embedding your tweets on your website, unless Twitter plays an important role in your book sales.
You have 1000 followers? Wonderful!
Mention that number next to your email opt-in inviting people to “join 1000 readers” and remove their avatars from your website.
The only type of external links you should include
…are the links to the places that help you sell more books, for example, the corresponding Amazon or Goodreads pages, or a social network where you regularly meet new readers.
***
Phew. That was a truckload of tips!
Want to see me using them to transform a real author’s website?
A Real-Life Website Make-Over
I asked Anne to find one author who will agree to have their website critiqued in public. My special thanks to Debby Kaye who was brave enough to come forward. Below, I’ll discuss the current state of her website and then show you how to apply the advice from this post to improve it.
Debby’s website: Original state
You can view Debby’s homepage here. I wanted to include a screenshot in this post, but it was impossible as the homepage is very long. It has 10 featured blog posts and 41(!) widgets in the sidebar, and you would need to scroll 16 times to get to the bottom.
As a homepage, it lacks structure (see Mistake #1 above). So, I’ll look at it and provide improvement suggestions as if it was a Blog page.
Website header
This is the current website header:
The problems I see with it:
- Header image is taking too much space.
- Name and tagline aren’t visually prominent. It took me about 15 minutes to realize that the text in the header image is actually a name and a tagline.
- Unclear tagline. Your visitors won’t guess you are a writer.
- Too many navigation items.
Improvement suggestions:
- Make the header image smaller so that more content is visible right away.
- Make the tagline and the name visually prominent.
- Change the headline to clearly reflect who you are and what you do.
- Reduce the amount of the navigation items and make the labels clear.
Design
The main section of the page currently looks like this:
It’s visually cluttered. The website visitors don’t know where to look and what’s important.
Improvement suggestions:
I would suggest making it look something like this:
Overall page design:
- Remove borders around the sections
- Remove date and author’s name from the blog snippets. Leave only the number of comments because it’s social proof.
- Add more white space between the sections.
- Remove unnecessary information (hashtags, author name) from the blog post titles.
Sidebar:
- In the opt-in widget, make sign-up button visually prominent and remove irrelevant text.
- Remove all widgets that contain links to other websites (followers, social profiles, etc.) that don’t help you win new readers.
- Leave only widgets that encourage your visitors to explore more content or take action: Opt-in, search, “Latest posts”, “Categories” (while reducing the number of categories), “Review my books on Goodreads”.
Footer:
The current footer is a collection of images one doesn’t know what to do with.
Don’t underestimate your footer. It’s an area your visitors see on every page, which makes it an ideal place to draw people’s attention to important information and help them navigate through your website.
Improvement suggestions:
- Remove all images
- Add “About me” section and “Learn more” call to action
- Add “Top posts” section
- Include links to the main pages
The improved page
The improved page would look something like this:
Now it’s easy to skim the page as the relevant information is divided in clear sections. Strategically placed visual highlights show the visitors the clear paths to more content.
It is, of course, not an optimal solution. I didn’t talk to Debby and don’t know who her ideal audience is and where she finds new readers, and she may want to leave more things on the page.
The point of this exercise was to demonstrate the difference between a page with and without a direction, and how even small changes can drastically improve your website.
Final Words of Wisdom
I can almost see you shaking your head. Relevant. Clear. Simple. Won’t these boring concepts make your website boring turning you into some business person?
You are an artist! You want your website to be different. To speak directly to your readers. To reflect your creative personality.
And it should, because this is what your readers love you for. But if you allow creativity to take over your entire website you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Want more people to read your blog posts and books? Tame your creativity. Make things that are supposed to be easy, easy. Say things that are supposed to be clear clearly. Free the paths that lead to your main assets. Your writing is a treasure.
Yet, navigating your website shouldn’t be a treasure hunt.
by Gill Andrews (@StoriesWithGill) March 11, 2018
What about you, scriveners? Are you making any of these website mistakes? Obviously we are. 🙁 But I love our sidebar! Sigh. Do you find sidebars distracting? I realize that if you are using Blogger, you don’t have the choice of changing a number of these things: they come with your theme. But it’s good to be aware of clutter and clean up where we can.
Do you have any questions for Gill? She’ll respond to all your comments, but she’s in Germany, so there will be a time gap if you’re not in Europe.
About Gill Andrews:
Gill Andrews is a content creator and web consultant who turns underperforming websites into reader magnets and slick lead generating machines. To tune up your website, get her ultimate website checklist. You can also connect with Gill on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Struggling to get more readers for your blog and books? Feeling overwhelmed with your website? Let me help. I’ll thoroughly review your website, point out the main problems and offer actionable, easy-to-follow suggestions on how to fix them. Click here to learn more.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
The Camilla Randall Mysteries boxed set is on sale at Kobo for 99c during their International Women’s Day special honoring women authors.
The special ends on March 13th.
(Canadians, this is a sale that includes you!)
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Well, I’m sure some of those issues apply to mine. Especially since mine is a blog not a website and some things in Blogger I can’t adjust as easily.
However, I did have an expert go over mine a couple years ago and that’s when all the extra gadgets and images went. I was also told every book should have its own page, so it does. (I don’t have a lot so that works.)
Since it is a blog, I do want to keep my followers list. Besides, that helps me when I am checking on posts with my iPad – I just go to my blogroll.
Hi Alex.
Thank you so much for reading!
Well, if you’re perfectly happy with your website, you should leave it the way it is. Forget everything I said in this post. Every website is unique, and if yours is working fine for you despite some of the things going against the points I made here, that’s all that counts.
But if this changes one day, I’d like to point out that a blog is also a website but with a specific focus. And if you would want more readers to read your blog posts one day it makes sense to remove things from your blog aka website that make it harder for them to accomplish this goal.
Having volunteered for this project, Gill, I would like to say first of all and in full sincerity, THANK YOU for not outing me! Oh wait, that was counterproductive…
But I thought this was really interesting and I agreed with probably three of every four things you mentioned. Only more reflection will sort out whether that’s identical with the number of ways my blog is following your advice…
But the pictures you posted were irrefutable, I could feel my eye being drawn further into the site as you revised it (Ms. Gies, no worries by the way, it’s a good looking page either way. Besides, you’re Canadian so you’re golden).
I DO like me some progress bars, and I’m going to have to look at how many top-links I really need. But on balance, the big lesson for me was about the footer. Mine are bare as that Mother’s cupboard right now and I guess that’s just wasted real estate that I need to fill. Anyone want to give me a cool award?
Hi there, Will.
Thank you so much for reading! It is one huge post! 🙂 And I’m happy to hear it gave you a couple of ideas on how to improve your website.
Re not outing you in public: Haha. Well, I guess you got lucky 😉 Anne sent me a couple of links to the websites, but there was only place for one, and Debby’s was the most typical of those that I’ve seen. But I was planing to out you privately, as I wanted to thank the other 3 people who volunteered for this by sending them a couple of tips via email.
Could you please tell me if I should send you these tips?
Thanks again and greetings from Germany!
I would of course be honored to have your feedback in any medium. Or since my publisher is also from Germany, maybe you could just cross the street…
Oy. Exhausting. Now I know why I don’t have a website. 😉
I know, right? ???? I really feel for everyone who just wants to share/sell things online but has to deal with all this website stuff because otherwise they will be invisible. *sigh*
Sometimes I think the world was simpler without internet ????
Absolutely. Simpler.
One of my pet peeves is local newspaper websites. The text is so tiny. i have to put on the reading glasses and lean in to read it. They do it because, essentially, they don’t want people reading the news for free on a website. Someone told them they had to have one, as it is the digital age, but their hearts are clearly not in it. When I write a blog post, I do in in a Word doc. I delete the 12-point in the font size selector, and type in 13-point. I don’t know how that looks on a mobile device, but it’s much easier to read on my own desktop screen.
Ha! Interesting point. I had no idea they use the smaller font so that people won’t read it for free.
That’s my impression, I have no idea what decisions were made behind closed doors. But I copy and paste, and it’s at least readable. My older stories are 12-pt and the difference is easily visible.
Thanks for the truly informed suggestions. I guess I need to get all this on my calendar. Oy.
Thank you so much for reading! I was afraid the most common response to this post would be “Oy!” ???? Which is understandable. But I always suggest taking it slow, especially if many changes are necessary.
Even if you make one little change today your website will become better that it was yesterday. So… baby steps ????
Just a few days ago, someone emailed me about a blog post (it was an old one, and the comments were closed on it to cut down on the spam). She had clearly visited the site. Then she asked if I had published my writing on Amazon. It was a very puzzling comment. I had a menu with all the genres that I’ve published books in–and she apparently couldn’t tell that meant “Books are here!” I just changed it to “Learn About My Books.”
Hi Linda. Replying to your comments about what to do if one has 40+ books here as there there was no “Reply” button on your original comment.
I just had a look at your website. When you have that many books, I would suggest doing the following:
1) Removing the drop-down menu from your navigation under “Learn about my books” and have only top-level link called “My books” that leads to a “My books” page.
2) On the “My books” page, have:
a) a heading “Books by Linda Maye Adams”
b) 1-2 sentences describing what kind of books you write and an invitation for your visitors to explore the categories.
c) 5-7 links to different genres that will take the reader to the corresponding section on the page.
d) The content of the page divided in sections based on the categories above that consist of the section title plus corresponding books (covers of books, a couple of enticing sentences for each and a “learn more” / “buy” link).
You’ll end up with a structure similar to how I structured my “Blog” page: gillandrews dot com / blog, although I have a new page for each category (which you can also do, but it’s technically more difficult to implement).
The idea behind this is to create a dedicated space for your readers where they can explore your books – a web page just for this purpose. A drop-down isn’t the best solution here, as it prompts immediate decision and don’t offer additional information. And if one doesn’t decide right now, the drop-down disappears.
Does this make sense?
An informative post! I plan to revamp my home page later this month and will be referring to these guidelines. While I have most of the suggested items on the home page, I don’t have my author picture there. One question…If I include my author picture and an abbreviated bio, should I remove the About page?
Hi Joanne. Glad to hear you found these tips helpful 🙂
Re your question: You should keep your About page, no matter what.
3 reasons:
#1 You can’t put all the information about you on your homepage, as it would clutter it and leave less space for other important things. So that additional info needs to go on a separate page.
#2 On your homepage, there will be a lot of different content. But many visitors will still expect to find a link “About me” in the navigation. And that should lead to your “About” page.
#3 When you create a separate page on your website filled with relevant content, it helps your website ranks better in search.
You can think of your homepage as a place with many colorful (but clearly marked!) doors that show your visitors where they can enter to find particular things.
So the best way to do it would be to create a “door” to your About page: An include your photograph, an enticing couple of lines about you and a link “Lear more” that leads to the full About page.
Hope this helps.
Gill! Great article and the example site (thanks, Debby) shows how such simple changes can make a big difference. Though my website isn’t an author’s site (writer and editor), I still remember my web designer carefully repeating: nooooo, you can’t have that there, you can’t use that typeface, you need more white space, etcetc. I need to re-do my home page, and now you’ve given me some solid direction.
Thank you for sharing things we can all consider doing.
Maria D’Marco
Thank you for your kind words, Maria! I’m happy to hear you found my tips helpful.
Re redoing your homepage (if I may suggest something): On my blog, I give advice that is more focused on conversions and is aimed towards solopreneurs and small businesses. I have a checklist (which is helpful, so I hear ????) that focuses solely on how to improve your homepage to get more client inquiries.
You can find it if you visit my homepage and click on “Free Tools & Resources”. The one I would recommend is the “green” one: Website content checklist. You don’t need to sign up and can view it right away.
Hope this helps.
Loved your post Gill! Already bookmarked it 🙂
Perhaps taking a leaf out of your own suggestions, you could leave a link to the Checklist? I’m also looking to redesign my blog, and would love to get more tips.
Oh have you got me thinking! Thank you so much!
My pleasure, Kelly 🙂
Great tips, Gill! Thanks for the detailed pointers and real-life examples.
I have two websites – my primary one is a blog (thecynicalsailor.blogspot.com) that I set up on Blogger years ago. It probably suffers from many of the things you point out in your post. My other one is an author site which I recently set up on WordPress. I tried to keep things a lot simpler this time around and I think I’ve ticked off some of the things on your list, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement. Off to review it now with your tips in mind. 🙂
Thank you so much for reading, Ellen. I’m thrilled to hear that you will use these tips to review your website. It’s the best compliment there is ????
Great column Gill! It’s time for me to look at mine again. I run comedy on my blog, which is now combined with my website. My books are all comedies, so it works to bring in the right crowd, some of which have been following me since my standup days (90s). My problem is now I have more series than I have menu items available. Thanks for the direction!
Hi Melodie. Thank you for your kind words!
I was hoping the point of not putting the book names in the navigation menu won’t remain unnoticed as it’s a common but costly mistake: The website visitors won’t check your books because they will be either overwhelmed with choice or not understand what to expect behind the navigation labels (or both).
So my suggestions for featuring the books will be:
* Have “My books” navigation menu (without any drop-downs because otherwise you’ll have the same problems: decision fatigue and lack of clarity). This menu should lead to a separate page where you feature your books.
* On the “My books” page, have a section for each book. If it makes sense, make it a short section for each book (cover + enticing paragraph) + a link that leads to a separate page for each book. Or you can have a “Buy on Amazon” button instead of a link in the previous scenario and skip creating a separate page for every book on your website.
* On your homepage, feature 1-3 (the fewer, the better) with a cover image, enticing paragraph and a link to check them out (one link per book or a single link “View more books” that will lead to “My books” page.
The idea is to lure your readers deeper into your website (and books!) step-by-step, by giving them small bits of relevant information that they can quickly process. This will also make sure you are luring them in the right direction.
If you have more questions about how to feature books on a website, let me know.
The “My books” info sounds fine if you have 2 or 3 or 5 books. I have 40+ up and the list will continue to grow. How do you handle that many? I used to do an actor’s website, and we posted hundreds of his photos. I did separate pages for each one, and there was a point where it got to be more work than it was worth.
Right now I’m divided in subpages by genre (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, general fiction, non-fiction, and one for a series).
These are most excellent tips! I have a blog (and just made some minor improvements!) and will be setting up an author website soon. I’ve bookmarked this for when I attack the task – thanks!
Thank you so much for reading, Jemi! I wish you best of luck with your new author’s website.
Thanks for the opportunity to be the guinea pig here Anne. And I’m with Ruth – Oy! Lol, wow, thanks for the spanking Gill. Yes, I’m a packrat LOL. I appreciate your critique and I get most of it. The trouble is I’m not that savvy behind the doors with themes and such. I originally hired a web designer a few years ago who I eventually had to let go of and have been winging the rest lol. I’m on vacay right now, but will be bookmarking this post to make some adjustments when I return as per your advice. Thanks for outing me LOL. 🙂 🙂
Hi Debby. Thank you so much for letting me do this! 🙂 I hope it wasn’t too bad.
If you’d like, I can send you a code snippet you can copy-paste into your website that will take care of most of the styling changes: Borders around the sections, widget headers in the sidebar, etc.
Just drop me a line at contact {at} gillandrews.com and I’ll walk you through this.
Oh thanks so much Gill, I would so appreciate that! Just make sure there are full instructions LOL, I am not good friends with code. 🙂 And I was told to never touch my theme if I didn’t know what I’m doing. And I don’t! LOL 🙂 I’ll drop you a line. Thanks again . 🙂
Wow- what a wake-up call. Quite a few excellent points here. While I do some of it well, other things are clearly in need of work. I’ll be coming back to this as I tweak my site. Thanks, Gill!
Thank you so much for reading, David! Very happy to hear these tips will be of actual help to you and your website 🙂
Very helpful suggestions. When I visit someone’s website often I find too much of everything and the clutter turns me off. Yes, I leave the website, if it’s not obvious what books the person has written and where I can buy them. I think we try to fit in too much information and it ends up being a “turn off” for the reader.
Thank you for this post.
Exactly! You summed it up to the point, Patricia! That’s *the* reason why most people leave websites almost immediately.
Glad to hear you found these suggestions helpful 🙂
Very helpful blog post – I will definitely keep this in mind should the day come I actually need an author website!
Let me ask you, what are your thoughts on a website for a book as opposed to an author? Is it much the same concept? I’ll be publishing my first book later this year, so I thought it might make more sense to have a website for it with an “About the Author” section.
Hi Irvin. Thank you for your kind words 🙂
Regarding your question on a website for a book vs a website for an author:
The short answer is: A website for an author, unless the book is so famous it has a community around its main characters and plot (think “Harry Potter”).
Here’s he long answer:
Website visitors connect to real people (or the ones that feel real), not things. And if don’t have many people who already connect with the “people from your book” – your main characters – it will be more difficult to have a website that connects with the readers without the personality of the author present (you).
This is general advice, of course. Obviously, creating an author’s website that resonates with your readers is (way) more straightforward. But if your book has extremely engaging characters, if you can create a highly visual website and engaging content, it may be worth a try.
Hope this helps.
Irvin–I’m going to chime in here. I agree 100% with Gill that readers prefer to engage with people rather than things.
Also, almost no author has ever made a career with one book. (Besides Harper Lee) and you don’t want to have a different website for each book you’re going to write. That would drive your readers nuts. So feature this book strongly on the website until there’s another one, but put your own name front and center.
The point of a website is to make you accessible through a Google search. But if your website doesn’t have your name on it, Google won’t find you.
I learned a few things. I’ve always hated websites that scroll on forever. I much prefer a simple multi-layered menu style, but I come from the IT world and that’s how websites were designed back “in the day.” I’ll be looking at mine to see where I can improve it. Thank you for the hints.
My pleasure, Jeanne. Thank you for reading… and hi there from the former software developer ????
I would appreciate a quick suggestion on how to get rid of drop-downs on a WordPress site (not self-hosted). I looked at your blog and see what you did, but haven’t a clue how to do it. It’s my name dot com
I hate cluttered sidebars! And footer for that matter. When there is a bunch of stuff in either place, nothing gets looked at. I believe the footer needs to be really simple. People typically ignore anything past the article and comments. We’ve been trained to think it’s all the “techy-legal” stuff.
My blog is a little messy, but my two websites are very organized. My personal site focuses more on me as a speaker than an author. Dancing lemur Press is set up with all the social sites at the bottom.
Anne, thank you so much for hosting Gill, and Gill, thank you for an *extremely* useful set of tips! Including the ones in the comments about having a My Books page and links to separate pages for different books/genres. I feel mildly relieved that I’ve kept my menu bar uncluttered and that my plan for my book pages matches your suggestion, but I need to work on sidebar stuff and my footer is totally non-existent! Not to mention a generic header. I have a lot that needs re-doing!
My question is about having a static front page or not. My website is centered around my books and my (half-forgotten) blog, and I’ll be adding something for author services as I start formatting books. My gut says a static front page is the way to go and that visitors will click for what they’re interested in, but some people say otherwise. What’s your take on this?
Hi Jennifer. Thank you so much for your kind words 🙂 And thumbs up for your navigation bar and the book page ideas! ????
Regarding your question on a static page vs blog roll for a homepage: It depends on your goals with your website.
Generally speaking, if you don’t care much about making money through your website (selling more books, getting hired by clients, etc.) a blog roll is fine.
It’s also a way to go when you are a news website or if you earn money with the affiliate marketing (you know, those annoying ads that appear on news sites every 3 paragraphs).
But if the precondition of earning money with your website is that people get to know, like (and often also trust) you first – for example, if you are selling books, courses or some kind of one-to-one services like freelance writing, consulting, etc. – a static homepage that steers the visitors’ attention in the right direction is the way to go.
Besides, a so called “static homepage” doesn’t have to be 100% static. If drawing attention to your blog posts is important to you, you can have a section that features your latest blog posts on a homepage that otherwise is static.
So I would say your gut is right 🙂
The amount of tips regarding the websites out there is enormous. So I can imagine it’s sometimes hard to decide whether this or that tip is a good idea on your website. And it can happen that the same tip is a great idea for one website and poison for another.
So here’s a rule of thumb how to decide whether a tip you heard is a good idea for your website:
Ask yourself: If I implement this tip on my page, will it help my visitors to do that thing I want them to do on this page?
In the case of a static page vs a blog roll:
If you make your homepage a blog roll, will it help your website visitors do what you want them to do on the website better than if you had a static homepage?
Hope this helps.
Thanks so much!
Excellent tips. I can see I’ll have to do some website revamping, including getting rid of or moving the book slider. Too distracting to my visitors (and it looks wonky on mobile devices).
Thank you for your kind words, Cheryl! Happy to hear you found these tips useful.
Very true! Great read. Indie author websites seem in worse shape than indie book covers. Way more outdated and less cared for. Sad really.
I think one thing to make websites easier is to look at them not as ‘website’ but as another place to expand your world, build it out, tell a story. It’s another place to show your creativity. Book pages are so boring when author just dumps a description of the book with few links and nothing else. It’s a wasted opportunity to interest a potential reader. Book pages should be more interesting and more intriguing than just a description of the book, some additional DVD Extra-like content would help (and can be fun to create).
Thank you for reading, Adrijus. And yes, if you want people to check out your book, an intriguing description is a must.
Thanks for another informative and helpful post. I think my website did many things right, but now I’m busy tweaking it, using some of Gill’s guidelines.
My pleasure, Kevin. Thrilled to hear you already got to work *thumbs up* ????
Hi Jeanne. Unfortunately, there is no “reply” button under your question about the drop-downs in not self-hosted WordPress. I’ll have a look at your website and will reach out to you with a solution via LinkedIn or Twitter, if that’s ok.
Thank you. Either is fine. twitter is @JFelfe – just my name in LinkedIn
Any thoughts about responsive website? I find that many of my readers access the website via mobile devices (Thank you, Google Analytics) and use a WordPress theme that looks good on small screens. But I do notice that some author blogs don’t display well and aren’t responsive. Do you think this matters?
Hi Carmen. Great question!
Statistically speaking, over 50% of users access websites via a mobile device. So it’s very important to have a responsive theme that makes your website look nice on mobile. Also, a non-responsive theme will negatively influence your visibility in search.
Interestingly enough, among 50 websites I’ve analyzed 43 had a responsive theme. That’s probably because all modern website themes are responsive by default. But there are still bloggers out there with older websites, and they should definitely think about making their themes responsive if they care about their readers (even if they may not care about their visibility in search).
The nice thing about my blog that is less than a month old is that the learning curve is still in effect.
If my blog was three years old lets say, than I’d have some serious problems. For a person just starting out, that would be me, this is an excellent article. The timing is perfect.
Creating a blog was something I did not want to do….for a while that is. But the more I thought about it the more I became invested. Once my ideas came into focus and I knew I would be committed I was ready.
I have a feeling I will always learn something new and that’s the way it should be. We want our blogs to be the best they can be.
You gave us wonderful insight and advice. I know I speak for all when I say we cannot thank you enough.
Oh, thank you so much for your kind words, Bryan! 🙂 You are indeed lucky that your blog is new. It’s way more difficult to comb through many pages and blog posts fixing things afterwards.
I’m very happy to hear that this post has reached you in a perfect time. Wish you best of luck with your blog!
Shoot.
This is crack!
Wonderful idea to have this guest, Anne! Thanks so much!
Thank you, Katharine. Glad to hear you found these tips useful 🙂
I’m constantly battling clutter on my website. Every year or so, I tackle trying to clarify it and make it better, but with each year’s worth of content it just gets more and more tangled, lol. I’m going to print out your steps and try to stay focused the next time I attempt the task. Thanks for sharing these tips – I’m sure it’ll help.
My pleasure, Madison. Happy to hear you found these tips useful.
You make good sense! Thanks. ♥
My pleasure, Billy. Glad you found this useful.
Great tips! It was nice to see that I’m doing some things right, but have some changes to make. I plan on implementing all but one of the tips. I’m too attached to my awards to get rid of them, but maybe I should take them off of my home page?
Glad you found this useful, S.E.!
Regarding your awards: Haha. Something tells me you won’t be the first author blogger to hold them dear 🙂 But if you can find the strength in you to at least get rid of them on your homepage and remove any links to other websites they may have leaving them just as images, I’m sure your website visitors will be very grateful!
Hi Gill,
I found it ironic that your post came out when I was about to begin the changes to my website. My concerns are similar to Jennifer Jensen. I’m a novice writer and blogger (less than two years). I followed someone else’s advice and made my blog page my static page with a menu to “About Me” and “My Book”. I find most people come to my site because I’m following them on their site or on social media. A few come through my post on social media and other sites. So I’m confused when a follower or a new reader comes to my site via a link from another site, shouldn’t that link take them directly to that blog page? If they are interested learning more about me, and if my menu ‘About Me’ or other pages is prominent; would that be wrong?
Thank you for a great informative post. I also thank you in advance for your advice.
Hi Chuck. Happy to hear you found this post at a right time 🙂
Regarding your question:
If I understood you correctly, you’re asking whether it’s better to make your homepage your blog page because people who come to your site from social media probably want to read your blog posts (and if not, they can click “About” link), right?
Feel free to clarify if I got your question wrong.
My take on this is the following:
Imagine, you are in a city you’ve never been to before. You are standing on its main square.
What gives you a better chance to visit more places in that city: A map that has clear marks on it showing what the city has to offer, or a couple of the street signs you see around you?
You can’t possibly know for sure why people come to your website, even if they clicked a link from your social media profile. And if your site has more than 7 pages, your navigation won’t have the links to everything you have to offer.
So, when you have a solid static homepage that has clear scannable sections with calls to actions – links that will lead your visitors to other pages – you’re giving your website visitors a clear map of your “city” aka website. They can see more than two-word navigation labels: Maybe your featured book with an enticing paragraph, a snippet about you, your featured blog posts, etc.
They don’t need to click anywhere and will instantly absorb some of the important bits and get curios. This way whatever their reason for visiting your website is, the chance that they’ll find something they’d like to read more about (and stay on your website longer) is greater.
But if the only thing they can see on your homepage is your blog posts and the navigation, you aren’t giving them a map but trusting them to follow your “street signs”. Which requires more than just scrolling down the page to discover other things, and fewer people will be up to it.
Bottom line:
Is it important to you that your visitors see your blog posts? Have a section on your homepage with 4 latest blog posts. But don’t miss this great opportunity a static homepage gives you to be in control of what other important things you drive the attention of your website visitors to.
Hope this helps 🙂
I’m sorry that I was rude and didn’t reply to your most helpful explanation. I will take your advice. I also got a little confused with sidebars, at the beginning you said avoid them, but then later you say use them for invitation to follow (subscribe) form and listing (link) to recent post. Did I read too much into the sidebar advice? I’m working on my new site and I hope it will be an improvement over my previous one. Thank you again for an excellent guideline.
Hi Chuck. No worries 🙂
Regarding the sidebar: I suggested to remove it on your homepage, not everywhere on the website.
But the most important thing about a sidebar is not whether to keep or remove it but whether it’s helpful for your visitors or is just a cluttered place nobody looks at.
Whatever you do with your sidebar, it shouldn’t be cluttered or contain useless information (for example, links to archives that say “March 2017”, “April 2017”, etc., avatars of your followers, endless images, huge lists of links, etc.).
A good sidebar doesn’t distract from the main content of the page, is scannable and shows only things that your website visitors will also use, for example:
* a sign-up form for your newsletter
* your photo and a paragraph about you
* 5-7 links to your recent posts
* 5-7 post categories
* one featured books
Hope this helps.
Hm, I recently cleaned up my site and have begun blogging more regularly, but it still wasn’t feeling quite right. I think your tips here will go a long way towards helping me make it a better author website — especially the make-it-easy-for-people principle. I previously shied away from the idea of having a static landing page that was all about my work/who I am… but now I think maybe that would be a better approach. I can let people click through to my blog if they want, not force them to dig through a menu to find basic info.
Interestingly, a literary agent was making some similar points on Twitter about author websites (aimed primarily at authors who didn’t have them yet, IIRC). It was DongWon Song, and his point was that all an author website needed to do was tell a vistor, clearly, and easily, who you were, what kind of writing you do, and how to contact you — and that’s it.
Thank you very much for this post and all its good advice! I’m going to take another run at cleaning up my site in the near future….
Hi David. My apologies for the belated reply. Happy to hear that you found these tips useful and will be using them to clean improve your website! 🙂