Your author website is the online destination for anyone interested in learning more about you and your writing. Typically, you have less than eight seconds to capture your visitors’ attention, so you want to feature as much of your best information as possible on your home page. While you may be tempted to immediately hit your visitors with all the bells and whistles, having multiple visuals, topics, and calls-to-action competing for their attention can backfire. Your viewers will be too distracted and won’t know what to focus on.
The trick is to get all your important promotional efforts in front of your viewer—without creating a busy mess that will make visitors bounce off your website. Here’s how:
Create An All-Inclusive Home Page Without Clutter
Smart design elements: Use an overall design that lets you present your information in a way that’s clean, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. Along with having consistent branding across your entire author platform, choose one color that you’ll consistently use on your website wherever you want visitors to take action. And make sure all links look clickable.
Your name, author info, and contact info: Prominently display your name in the header and introduce yourself with a brief bio to reassure your readers that they’re in the right place. You can even incorporate a headshot so fans will recognize you at events.
Make sure your visitors can easily see how to get in touch with you—but remember to safeguard your privacy. Learn more here.
Current project or book: Mention details about your newest project, or have an image of your latest book with a link that navigates to your book page and “buy now” button.
Testimonials: Showcasing a few testimonials about your book or your writing will help instill trust in your readers and convince them that you are a talented writer with a book worth buying. You don’t have to include paragraphs of praise—one or two key sentences will do the job.
Link to your media/press kit: If you have a media kit or digital press kit, include a link on your home page to boost your marketing efforts.
Social media links: Make it easy for your followers to stay updated about your upcoming events or recent publications. Add buttons for your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts on your home page so people can easily connect and keep up with your latest posts and activities.
Your blog: Websites with blogs typically get more traffic than those without. You can feature the title and opening sentence of the article on your home page with a link to read more on your blog page. But if you’re including a blog on your author website, make sure you consistently post new articles. A blog with old, outdated posts will seem abandoned and actually have a negative effect on visitors.
By following these tips, you’ll create an author website home page that brings attention to all your important information in an easy-to-navigate presentation that your visitors will love coming back to again and again. If you’d like help deciding what design elements look and work best, schedule a free consultation with the experts at Web Design Relief today!
Question: What other information do you think belongs on your author home page?
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