How to build an effective author website
Interesting website content
On this page:"Content is king" is a phrase you'll hear from GOOD web developers. A good looking website is important, a website that works is even more important. Content is the most important thing about getting your website to work.
Websites need more than just to have no broken links to be a business success - a websites that works will have clearly defined objectives and everything on it- every word, every image - bears those objectives in mind.
As an author, your website's key objectives will probably run something like this:
- Provide potential readers with the incentive to buy your book
- Maintain a relationship with existing readers
That's it. Get more readers; keep the ones you've got. You should be drafting your content with these goals in mind.
Potential readers will need a blurb, a cover image, maybe an extract, some review quotes and information on how to buy the book. It also helps if the site has a bit of personality to it and information that indicates the flavour of your work. For example, landscape is incredibly important in Russell Kirkpatrick's work and is epic in scope so the copy emphasises how long it took to write Fire of Heaven and his cartography and geography background.
Maintaining a relationship with an existing reader is a bit harder. They need more information, exclusive information. They need a reason to keep coming back so that you can tell them when the next book is coming out. They need a reason to tell their friends not only 'hey, you should read this book' but 'hey, you should read this book and check out the author's great website'. As a starting point this might be a glossary, character sketches, maps and author notes. You might go so far as to include games, quizzes and puzzles.
All of this is content and your content needs to be well structured and updated regularly. A basic content checklist is included, feel free to use this as a starting point when writing and compiling information for your website.
Once you have determined what content you want to include on your website, you need to structure it. Your information architecture (IA) is a definition of where content will be placed on your website and how users will access that information. At its most basic level, your IA will define your navigation items and structure.
A good way of developing an IA is to complete a card sorting exercise. To do this you create an index card (or post-it note) for each content element you want to place on your website. Then group your cards in to piles of similar content. Once you have a pile of content, give that pile a name.
Once all of your content is grouped with a name consider if there are any of THOSE piles that contain similar content that should be grouped together?
For example, Author A is planning a simple website with information about his two books, plus information about himself. He has the following pieces of content:
- blurb about book 1
- extract from book 1
- a map of the world
- blurb about book 2
- a bio
- a contact form
- some news
These might be grouped as follows:
- Bio
- Contact us
- News
- Books
- Book 1
- Blurb
- Extract
- Book 2
- Blurb
- Book 1
- Map
If possible, get others to also conduct a card sorting exercise based on your content to ensure that your IA is as efficient as possible.
Your content should be interesting enough that users want to stay and read it, and change often enough that they keep coming back in case there is something new to find out. This is considered a "sticky" website.
If you have access to your website statistics regularly look at your page view to unique user ratio. Divide the number of page views (or page impressions) by the number of unique users (or visitors).
If your ratio is less than 1.5 it might indicate that you either don't have enough content, aren't adding to it regularly enough or you don't have a clear IA or call to action from your homepage.
If your ratio is higher than 6 it might indicate that your IA isn't clear and that users are clicking around unable to find the content they are looking for.
Aim to review your website at least once a month to ensure it is still accurate and current and to add new content at least once per quarter. An update schedule is a good idea as it allows you to write new content when you have time and to create an expectation from your readers that new things happen on the site regularly.
Keep an exercise book handy that only has website content contained in it. Make notes about characters, quiz questions and ideas for polls as they occur to you and then use that as the basis for updating your website regularly.
Keep a checklist of the content you want to add eventually and chip away at it regularly.
The exception to this is news - if you have a news feature on your site update it frequently as possible. This will ensure that your website always looks fresh and it will also keep your readers up to date with the happenings on your work. Reprints, blurbs or covers being finalised and new releases are good opportunities for a news item; as are con reports and photos of you at events. When you're writing a simple "word count" update is a good way to reassure readers that things are still ticking along and that you are still there and still writing.