Finding a hidden Easter egg is always a welcome treat! But, unlike childhood-favorite Easter eggs filled with jelly beans, chocolates, or trinkets, website “Easter eggs” offer a different fun surprise. These online rewards are usually symbols, messages, jokes, or games hidden on websites just waiting to be discovered by delighted visitors. Including Easter eggs in your author website design is an unexpected, delightful way to connect with your audience. The tech experts at Web Design Relief have some tips and examples of fun Easter egg ideas for your author website.

Easter Egg Ideas For Your Author Website Design

Easter eggs are a great way to attract more visitors and build traffic to your author website. You can drop hints at your book signings and readings, as well as in your newsletter and on social media. This sense of “insider knowledge” will encourage readers and fans to share your secret Easter eggs with others—and word-of-mouth is a great advertising tool!

What are online and website Easter eggs? These Easter eggs are hidden features created by web developers and designers to keep users entertained and engaged. They are typically concealed until a visitor (either accidentally or on purpose) inputs a particular command or clicks on a specific area of a web page. Here are a few examples from the world’s most popular search engine, Google:

When you type askew into the Google search bar, the result will do just that!

Next, search Google for Pac-Man and you’ll unlock a special Google-edition of the game that you can play directly on the search engine itself.

Google also offers an Easter egg that will appeal to writers and readers of Douglas Adams’s book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Google search and type in: the answer to life the universe and everything.

Author Website Easter Egg Ideas

Clues to your personality: Easter eggs can help your visitors, fans, and followers feel more connected to you as a person rather than just as a writer. You might give your audience insights into your personality by sprinkling Easter eggs across your author website. For example, you could hide clues to your favorite sports team or band in a hidden link or on a page that isn’t listed on your menu bar. Or you might embed a video or song that only pops up when a user clicks on a certain word. Another example is the puppies and kitties hidden in the work management platform Asana when you type Tab + B and Tab + V.

Coded messages: Your website developer could also hide messages within the many lines of code used to create your author website. One famous example is the secret duck a few humorous programmers added to Amazon’s code (it even says meow!). You may want to use your website’s code to offer an exclusive line of poetry, a short excerpt, or a brief greeting.

Important Note: This type of website Easter egg should only be attempted by professional designers—don’t try to alter your website’s code on your own. This could result in losing some or all of the functionality of your website.

Animated engagements: Some of the most enjoyable and surprising Easter eggs are animated! For example, see what happens when you type Do a Barrel Roll on Google:

There are many different ways to subtly include animations on your author website. You might feature gifs disguised as jpegs, or you could animate a logo, book title, or your author name so that it moves or changes when your audience hovers over it.

More fun with 404s: Most websites have a 404-error message that appears when the page a user is searching for either doesn’t exist or has been deleted. The standard 404-error message states “Page Not Found” or similar wording. This can also be a great place to get creative and include an Easter egg! You can feature a custom image or playful wording for a small branding moment. Here is an example from Disney:

By adding Easter eggs to your author website, you’ll make it fun for your audience, which will build traffic and your fan base. If you’re ready for a creative, professional author website that suits your style and your budget—and maybe features a few Easter eggs for fun—the experts at Web Design Relief are ready to help! Learn more and schedule a free consultation today.

Along with designing professional, affordable author websites, we’ve also been providing traditional publishing and self-publishing options for writers since 1994. Call or email us to learn more!

Question: What’s your favorite website Easter egg?