We have you covered.

Transcription

1 We have you covered.

2 Introduction This guide is not meant to be a in-depth how-to tutorial on building a website. Instead, I have provided more general information that focuses on features you need to have in a website to make it successful. I have also provided information on important considerations when planning and creating your website, as well as explaining the importance of search engine optimization and other website features that will make your website a powerful marketing tool. You will find I have included many useful tips throughout the guide as well. If you have questions or feedback on this guide, please feel free to contact me by phone or . Vann Baker Elegant Book Design (888) vann@elegantbookdesign.com 2017 by Elegant Book Design. All rights reserved. This publication may be printed for personal use, but may not be altered, sold or reproduced in other publications or websites without permission. 2

3 Why do you need a website? You need a website for the same reason every business needs a website. An author website will help you to build your brand, offer information, news, links to your books for website visitors, help you grow your readership with an list and connect you with your readers with a blog. We live in a connected world where information is easily accessible. A new reader may learn about you or your book from a podcast, Amazon.com, word of mouth or another source and then do a search on the internet to find out more about you and your books. Having a website means you can easily provide potential readers more information about yourself as well as links to sites where the visitor can purchase your book. Your website can contain press releases, news and information about speaking, book signings or readings. Last but not least, blogging can be a great way to connect with your audience and engage your readers while expanding our website content. 3

4 Plan before you build Clearly define the goals of your website, then make sure your website supports your goal. For example, if your primary goal is to engage your current or potential readers, your website will need much more than a page or two about your book. You may need a discussion page where you can write about your characters or ideas behind your book and allow readers to post comments. Building a website is like building a house. All houses do the same thing they create a protected space for the occupants. But there is a world of difference between a weekend getaway cabin and a six-bedroom mansion. Your website can be simple or complex, depending on your goals and budget. Keep in mind that while you may think you only need a few pages for a good website, having more web pages creates more opportunities for different keywords to be associated with each page, yielding a better ranking by Google. Planning your website begins with setting realistic goals and marketing objectives for your website, then building website content and adding specific features which will support those goals and objectives. Looking at what other author websites and the content they provide is a great way to get ideas and to see what is working for other authors. 4

5 Website navigation Create a simple outline of the pages your website will need based on your goals for the website. If you have more than seven or eight pages, you will want to group some pages together, so you can have a few navigation links that are arranged logically. These days, website visitors may be using a tablet or smartphone to view your website, and most websites will collapse your desktop navigation from a horizontal format to a vertical format, so having main pages and sub-pages is very practical and effective. If you have a large website with dozens of pages, consider offering a search-by-keyword feature so visitors can type in a phrase and find what they are seeking. Use call-to-action graphics, homepage slideshow links and other visuals to help guide your visitors to their destination within your website. Visitors will not automatically follow your navigation links. Some website visitors are more visually oriented, and others may want to use a keyword search. 5

6 Designing your website for success Visit at least five author websites and look at the use of whitespace and color, as well as how animation is used. Keep in mind that what you like may not be what everyone visiting your website may like. What should your website look like? Obviously, the website should showcase your books and grab the visitor s attention. In terms of design, almost anything is possible, from having a slideshow with large images in a contemporary setting to a more conservative website look. Keep your website goals in mind when thinking about its design and layout. Ideally, your website will be easy to navigate, but not so simplistic that it feels cheap or the work of an amateur. While you will have several website pages your home page will be the primary landing page for most visitors. Ideally you should give the visitor a taste of everything you have to offer and offer clear call to action graphics to help your visitor find exactly what they need. Some website visitors may not go past your home page if they don t see what they are looking for, so make sure your home page is attractive, uncluttered and easy to navigate. 6

7 DIY vs. hiring a website designer Consider what your time is worth and whether or not you really have the time to create a professional-looking website yourself. Working with a seasoned professional can save you time and help make sure your website s search engine optimization is spot on. Self-published authors are do-it-yourselfers, but does that mean you should design your own website? There are many website publishing platforms available, with many being very low cost or billed as free, so it is tempting to many authors to build their own author website. Working with a professional website designer is a lot like working with a book cover designer. You can share with the designer your design goals and collaborate with him or her to create a great website. A website designer will be able to take your ideas and make it happen quickly, saving you hours of research, trial and error, and putting out something that s not quite professional. Website designers can bring more than an eye for design to the table. A good designer will have the technical skills to help you navigate search engine optimization, hosting, domain registration, and tweaking the website so it does exactly what you need it to do. Working with a website designer allows you to step back from the website and look at it critically before you launch, which is almost impossible when you are doing it yourself and caught up in the process of building the website. 7

8 What CMS should you use? If you are working with a website designer, talk with them about hosting and the best platform for your website. An experienced website designer will have experience with different content management systems as well and can explain the pros and cons of each. WordPress is the most widely used open source CMS (content management system). Open source means that the software is community created and owned and it free to use on servers connected to the internet. Alternatives to WordPress is wix.com and squarespace.com, which offer a hosted website platform. Keep in mind that you don t actually own your website and premium features will cost extra when you use these platforms. One of the great features of WordPress is that there are several thousand plug-ins available for free or at a very low cost. Plug-ins are similar to apps for smartphones, in that plug-ins give WordPress powered websites many different capabilities. There are also thousands of design themes or templates available. Design themes provide a general look and feel which can be customized with your branding and your desired color scheme to create a unique design for your website. WordPress can be hosted just about anywhere, but if you don t want to deal with hosting it yourself, you can go to wordpress.com and get a free account. However, the free account will have limited plug-ins and design themes, and if you later want to move your website, you can t easily do that. 8

9 Must have website features Avoid website designers who will not let you make your own updates. You should always have full access to your website content. Regardless of what website platform you decide to use, you need to be able to add content to your website whenever you like. Even if you work with a website designer, you should have access to your website s dashboard or administration area. Most website dashboards will allow you to easily add a page, make changes to existing pages and add blogposts. Every website should have a slideshow on the home page. A slideshow allows you to combine images with text and to show off all your book titles. Individual slides can be linked to specific website pages as well. Call-to-action graphics are a must-have feature. Not everyone will read website page text then click on a text link, especially if website visitors are using a tablet or smartphone. Having an subscription form that links to MailChimp or Constant Contact so you can send out periodic s to subscribers is another must-have feature for your website. Last but not least, your website needs page caching so your pages will download quickly. 9

10 What s in a (domain) name? Be careful when registering your domain as many registrars will immediately try to upsell you with hosting services and other services. All you need is the domain to be registered first, then you can add other services later on if needed. Selecting a domain name is easy, but it can be frustrating if you find that someone has already registered the domain name you want. There are many domain registrars, which are services that let you register and purchase domain names. Register.com, Enomcentral.com, Name.com, Godaddy.com and Hover.com are just a few of the many companies that you can use to register your domain. All domain registrars offer a search option where you can type in your desired domain name and search to see if anyone has registered it already. If it hasn t been registered you can then purchase the domain. If the name you want is not available, it s time to get creative. For example, if you are wanting something like johnsmith.com and it is taken, you could search to see if johnsmith.us or johnsmith.net is available. Keep in mind that.net and.org are designed for networks and organizations, but it is possible to register and use alternative domain extensions. Another approach would be to try something like johnsmithauthor.com or john smith.co. Hyphens can be used as well, so you could use john-smith. com or john-smith.us, or try other variations of your name such as johnhsmith.com, john-h-smith.com or johnsmithauthor.com. 10

11 What is hosting? Work with an experienced website designer. He or she will help you understand all the technical issues and will be able to recommend a good hosting company and guide you through the process of setting up hosting and more. Hosting simply refers to a server that s connected to the internet where your website files will reside. There are thousands of data centers around the world and each data center has dozens, if not hundreds, of computers called servers. When you use the internet, your browser makes requests to various servers, and the servers in turn provide text and graphics so website pages can be displayed in your browser. Each server will house many websites. Websites are typically hosted, or housed, through hosting services, which charge a monthly fee that ranges from $5 to $30 per month. If you are building your own website or if you work with a website designer, you will need a reliable and responsive hosting company, that will maintain the server and make sure your website is available 24/7 to the internet. Not all hosting companies are the same. Some are more responsive to website issues or problems than others. Going with an inexpensive hosting service may be okay or it may mean poor service or response when you need help. 11

12 Website content Website content can be text, images, graphics, video and audio. Content is added to a website typically using a content management system s administration are, also referred to as a dashboard. With your WordPress website, you simply log in to your dashboard where you will have the ability to change existing content, add new pages and images or add new blogposts. Adding and editing text is easy using a built-in text editor. With the text editor you can format text, create subheads, upload images and more. Care must be taken with your website content in that search keywords that website visitors may use to find your website should be included in your website pages. Be sure to edit and proofread your text before publishing your content. WordPress allows you to save pages in a draft version, so they are not visible until you are sure you have finished and have published the pages. 12

13 Search engine optimization Search engine optimization, also called SEO, is extremely important and will make the difference between search engines finding and recommending website pages or not. WordPress has many SEO plug-ins that can be added to your website, which will make adding metadata to for each page or website post easy. Metadata includes a description of a page or post s content, keywords and a descriptive title. Metadata works behind the scenes to help search engines to properly index and understand what a particular webpage is about. Care must be taken to use keywords, descriptions and meta titles based on what a page or post actually contains. Using the same metadata on all pages will hurt your rankings. There are many factors that go into SEO in addition to metadata. When creating your website, be sure to work with your website designer or do research into best SEO practices. 13

14 list building Many authors use list building as a primary marketing strategy. Think of all the s you receive from various stores you have patronized online with offers, discounts and new product offerings. As new readers find your books, you can encourage them to subscribe to your own list. You can also have special offers in your books along with a link to your website in your ebooks. Building an list will give you a powerful marketing tool that can be used to announce presales or to tease readers with the publishing date of your next book. Seek out authors who write in the same genre and have lists so each of you can promote the other. Cross-promotion is easy to do and will mean increased sales for both of you. You can include an image of the author s book and some intro text along with links to where the reader can purchase the book. 14

15 Calls to action Place calls to action in high visibility places on the page, such as upper left or right, and use color and graphics to get the website visitor s attention. Calls to action are simply what you want the website visitor to do once they are on your website. Calls to action can be graphics, images, text and links that will get the visitor s attention and prompt a response. If your goal is to build a subscriber list, your call to action would be a graphic or larger text that would say, Subscribe Now or Join Our List. Ideally, next to the call to action will be a simple form field where visitors can add their addresses and click on a Submit button. Other calls to action on your website might be a notice about an upcoming event you will be attending such as a book signing or reading. The call to action might link to a page with all the event information including directions, time, place and date, and might include an RSVP form so the visitor can register to attend. Take care not to place several call-to-action graphics together as this will make the page too busy and may confuse the visitor with too many choices. 15

16 To blog or not to blog... Blogging is a great way to continuously add content to your website and engage your readers. Having ongoing new blog content added to your website is also a great way to boost your search engine rankings. With WordPress, it is easy to set up a blog area so that as you write your blogposts they will appear in your blog. Blogposts can be short and sweet, or more detailed it s up to you. Blog content can be anything you want it to be, from teasing readers with what you may be currently working on to providing insight into ideas, places, and characters in your books that have been published. You can let readers subscribe to a notification list so when a new blogpost is published, subscribers will receive it via or will receive an notice with a link to it. Work several weeks ahead on blog posts unless you like having a routine of writing and publishing posts on a regular basis. With WordPress you can write your blogposts and set a future date for them to be published. 16

17 Ecommerce 101 If you publish on different platforms, be sure to list each platform/link using a URL that goes right to your book product page so visitors can click once, then purchase. While Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ibooks, Kobo and other publishing platforms make it easy to buy your books, your readers have to first find their way to your book listing in their website. Think of your website as a marketing tool that can directly link readers with book merchants. Perhaps new readers are searching the internet and your website shows up in the search results and they go to your website first, and not directly to Amazon. Providing a page on your website where a visitor can click on a link or button and go right to Amazon and purchase it would mean more sales for you. If you are selling printed books or downloadable files directly to the public, your website must become the storefront for making direct sales. Your website will need a shopping cart so that visitors can buy your books right inside your website and you will need a gateway for credit card payments to be made through your website. 17

18 Social media While social media is often treated as a separate marketing tool, it should be integrated into your website, so they can work together. Authors should, at a minimum, have a Facebook page, and there are plug-ins for WordPress that allow you to post to your blog and to Facebook at the same time. Social media tends to be much more fluid and inthe-moment, with short bursts of information that have a short shelf life. Websites, on the other hand, have a long shelf life and offer the visitor far more information and details. In addition to Facebook posts, video book trailers can be posted on Facebook where your followers can view and share with their friends, reaching new potential readers. Depending on what your readers want, they may prefer to follow you on social media, but go to your website for more detailed information. Be sure to add social media links to your website and get in the habit of posting to Facebook once or twice a week. 18

19 Website security If you use WordPress, be sure to install the WordFence plug-in. This plug-in works as a firewall and allows you to block certain countries and IP addresses, and will warn you about updates needed on your website and more. It goes without saying that you need to make your website as secure as possible, and this starts with your user ID and password. Never use admin as your user ID or user name. Use an ID such as LoGin-93x15- #2Ma, which is random and difficult for hackers to guess. Always use strong passwords that combine special characters, so they are difficult or impossible for spam bots or hackers to crack. For example, Jenny1984 is weak, but J#eB7%2cApi9Q3 is quite strong. Write down your passwords and logins for reference, but most browsers will remember user names and passwords for you, so you don t have to type complicated user names or passwords. It is also a good idea to make regular backups of your website and keep a copy of the website so that if your website does get hacked, you can easily restore the website to a recent backup. 19

20 Website updating Just as you must make periodic updates to your computer or mobile devices, your website will require periodic software updates to keep everything working properly. If you are using WordPress, you can easily make updates to plug-ins using your dashboard. Neglecting needed plug-ins or WordPress updates will decrease your website security, so keeping your website up to date is vital. Website updating also includes keeping your website content fresh. Search engines like Google track how often new content appears on websites. If you are adding new content on a regular basis you will have better search results. Google rewards websites that work to provide new content to visitors and punishes websites that have the same content month after month or year after year. If you are not comfortable making updates to your website yourself, many website designers will provide support services. Get in the habit of adding new content to your website regularly, at a minimum monthly, and checking your website for software updates as well. 20

21 About Elegant Book Design Elegant Book Design offers a wide range of services to self-publishing authors, including: Author website packages Book editing and proofreading Custom book cover design Cover makeovers Ready-made book covers FREE book cover consultation FREE author website consultation For more information about any of our services, please contact Elegant Book Design. We have you covered. Toll Free: (888) Atlanta Area: (678) vann@elegantbookdesign.com Website: ALLi, IBPA and Writers Boon members will receive a 15% discount on all book cover design, editing and author website services. 21