If you’re a published author, chances are you have a website. Which is great; people can find you and your books on the world wide web. There’s more chance of selling your books. More chance of being invited to a (virtual, these days!) writers’ conference. But when did you last consider a website redesign? Have you taken a cold, hard look at your website as if you were a complete stranger? I dare you to. It’s OK, I’ll wait. And, I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.
If you created your website years ago, you may notice that:
- The layout isn’t friendly on the eye. Maybe the text is too small to comfortably read.
- Your photo is outdated. In it you still have hair 🤣 .Or it was taken with an old Smart phone and you now realize it’s pretty grainy.
- The menu bar disappears when you scroll down, making it tricky to navigate your site.
- Your latest books aren’t on there.
You take a look at your favourite author’s website and realize that yours is woefully out of fashion. So, you do your research. You find a blog post (actually, quite a few) listing the best author website themes, you make mood boards of your favourite colours and fonts. You realize you’ll need an updated head shot so you try and dig up the business card of that photographer you met at that friend’s party a couple of years ago. Then you land on a blog post telling you about this thing called SEO and before you know it you have a to-do list longer than the latest edits for your manuscript, filled with terms you don’t understand.
Sound familiar? It can feel incredibly overwhelming to redesign your website, let alone create one from scratch. I know, because I’ve been there. And I hear it all the time from clients. However, it IS possible for your website redesign to be manageable. Here’s how:
1. ENLIST HELP
Whether it’s a peer you respect, one-on-one input from a coach/website developer, or an online course, find someone you can bounce ideas around with. You can drive the process and make all the fun decisions, but you won’t feel alone. This is what a recent author-client did and I want to show you the transformation of his author website from outdated to clear and impressive. (Full disclosure, Tony Peake is my dad, but we worked together on this project as client and coach and I’m so proud of what we achieved.)
2. START WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
If you’ve been here any length of time, you know this is my broken record: don’t start with yourself, start with your audience. This is the key to good copywriting, and good communication in general. It’s also how you simplify the website design process. Rather than staring at that intimidating list (host, WordPress vs. Squarespace, SEO, theme, colour, font, copy, menu, photography …) and wondering where to begin, start with this ONE question, and it’ll help you answer all the other important questions:
What does my audience really want to know?
I talk about this in The top 4 questions to answer on your website and I guarantee you, keep your reader (or audience) top of mind with every web design decision you make, and you won’t go far wrong.
At the end of the day, your reader wants to know what sort of stuff you write, where they can get hold of your work and (probably) what kind of writer you are.
That’s it. Start there.
WEBSITE REDESIGN
We took Tony’s homepage from this:
To this:
Look how much more reader-friendly it is.
- The order of the menu items is focused on what I most want to know, and logically guides me from the most important to items I may be less interested in.
- I immediately know where I am and who Tony is, thanks to the tagline. With the previous site I had three logos to choose from at the top, without knowing what each one represented.
- I can see the full extent of his body of work at a glance.
- The design is clean and accessible. The text is legible, the quality of the photographs is high, everything is neat and easy on the eye.
The rest of the website echoes the same simplicity and navigability. Go take a look.
Now, I’m not saying that redesigning or launching a website is easy, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can break it down like we did:
Choose websites you like
Tony chose a few author websites he liked and we discussed why he was drawn to them and what worked well about them, as well as things he’d change.
Pick a theme
From this, I was able to recommend some themes which looked like they’d offer the minimalist look and short scroll he was looking for. There are literally thousands of themes out there, and each theme has hundreds of options within it. So, if you’re going to build your own website, you need a rough idea of how you want your site to look before you start theme shopping.
Map your pages
We then discussed the pages people would want to see on his site (books, events, reviews etc), the ones he wanted to carry over from his old site, and the new ones which didn’t exist. There was some back and forth on the order and structure of the menu items but one thing was non-negotiable: we had to put his publications on the home page and early in the navigation.
Copy and photography
Then it was a matter of Tony filling each page with the words and the pictures. This was probably the most time-consuming and laborious step, but now everything is accessible in logical places.
This publications page on the old site was missing half of Tony’s books, as well as great reviews, TV interviews, radio interviews. It didn’t paint a full picture of Tony’s offering as an author. Don’t let your website sell you short.
If you get that sinking feeling every time you look at your website, it’s probably due a refresh. That can feel like a monumental task but if you keep focused on your audience and make a step-by-step plan, you can take your website from Ugh to Wow.
Would you like help redesigning your website so it attracts the right audience? Reach out and I’ll help you create an actionable plan.
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