Last week, Sam Missingham and I talked all about author websites in our Empowered Author Facebook group.
Apart from covering the basic information, like what you need to include on your website, we also talked about some of the questions you need to ask yourself when you are developing, or wanting to improve, your author website.
These are really important to make sure that your website is not only functional, but effective at getting your potential readers to engage with you in some way.
1/ Who are you?
When I land on your website, I should be able to tell who you are and what kind of books you write. This can be conveyed in a few different ways:
- It’s not enough to say that you are a novelist or a poet or a memoirist. What kind of novelist are you? What kind of poetry do you write? Give people the information they need to know if you are for them.
- Just have a line saying ‘I’m Firstname Lastname, and I write books about This Awesome Thing’ is clear enough. It needs to be short and easy for people to digest at a glance.
- As well as using text, you can also use colour and fonts to convey what you are about. If you think about the fonts that you see on historical romance vs those you see on serious historical non-fiction vs those you see on contemporary romance. Or the colours you might find on a thriller vs a light beach read. They are all very different and effective at conveying a mood.
2/ What do you want people to do on the site?
What is the one thing you want someone to do who has landed on your website?
Do you want them to sign up to your mailing list? Do you want them to read about your latest book? Do you want them to follow you on social media? Do you want them to read an article you wrote?
Make it super clear what next step you want people to take, and ideally focus on giving them one specific task. So, at the end of your introduction line, you can say ‘To read more about my latest book, Why I’m So Great, click here’, or ‘To get a free collection of short stories and get the latest news from me, sign up to my newsletter here’, and then give people a big old button to press.
Similarly, look at your menu. If I had never visited your website before, would I understand what your menu items are? I see many authors who have menu items with book titles, but sometimes I’ll click through and will come across a short story, or sometimes a blog article. Make it clear what each page is and what kind of information will be on that page.
Always think about how you can make your navigation as obvious and clear as possible so that people know what you want them to do, and so that it’s easy for them to do what they want to do.
3/ Why would someone sign up for your newsletter?
No one wants to sign up to your newsletter. At least, they don’t when you just have ‘sign up for my newsletter’ wording to go with your sign up form.
Tell people what they are going to get in your newsletters. Tell them how often you will be emailing them. Give them an incentive for signing up – a freebie or a discount or at least the chance to know what they should expect from the emails.
Think about your own experience of signing up for emails. Chances are, there are very, very few you sign up for unless you have a compelling reason to do so. Give people that reason.
What’s next?
Join the free Facebook group and tune in to any future workshops that we host.
Sign up to the membership to watch our author website workshop, along with tens of other great interviews and coaching sessions for authors.
PIN FOR LATER
