Think of your website as your home on the web. Where you invite guests to come hang out with you a while. Just like you would prepare for guests to come to your physical address, you need to prepare to have them visit you online.
You want your guests to be comfortable staying around awhile, you want them to come back and you want them to bring their friends. In order to create such a place, your website should be inviting, easy to navigate and full of the kind of good stuff they will enjoy.
There are a lot of neat add ons you can have on your website, but there are 5 basic things everyone needs to incorporate into their plan for a winning author website.
A Professional Appearance
Take a look at the business websites out there. Stroll through their pages and get a feel for what it looks like. Generally speaking, they will be uncluttered with plenty of whitespace. Don’t add too much color. Keep the font simple – don’t go crazy with this, even if it is fun.
When there is too much busyness, it is hard to know where to go on a website to find what you need. And it can simply give you a headache.
Create an awesome about page: not just about who you are, but what can they expect on your website.
There needs to be blogging activity on your site. Not just quantity, but quality content. This is generally where people will find the good stuff they like. The stuff they want to hang out a bit to consume.
Tools: (free) website building: Blogger, Weebly, WordPress
Quality Images/Graphics
Every image should be sharp and clear. Your author picture needs to be professional quality. Having an image in each post creates visual interest. And according to Buffer, (https://blog.bufferapp.com/blog-images) visual content is more than 40 times more likely to be shared.
Newsletter Sign Up Form
The best thing you can do for yourself is to start collecting emails of those people interested in what you write! When they give you their email, they are giving you permission to contact them directly and they are more likely to buy your materials than followers on social media.
Do this through a newsletter. Offer something of value to convince them to sign up. Then when you send out your newsletter, give them valuable information and share when your books are coming out.
Tools: Mail Chimp, Canva (see link above)
Follow Buttons for All Your Social Media Profiles
Make it easy for people to find you! Put those buttons where they are easy to see.
Sharing Tools
Make it easy for your audience to share about you and your content without leaving your website. Some of the tools available are: social share buttons, Click to Tweet, Memes (make your blog photo something people will want to share), Pin it hover buttons.
Tools:
Bitly to shorten your links
Click to Tweet : How to create
Canva (see link above)
Images (see links above)
Bitly to shorten your links
Click to Tweet : How to create
Canva (see link above)
Images (see links above)
Once you have your basics in place, there will be plenty of bells and whistles to add. Look around at what other people are doing then google how to get it done. There is a tutorial for just about everything!
What tools have you found helpful on your website?
photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net // cooldesign