8 Things Your Author Website Needs to Succeed

Imagine clicking on an author's website just to do a quick check, only to find yourself hours later, completely engrossed, having pre ordered a book you hadn't even planned to read, signed up for a newsletter, and maybe even bought a course. Now imagine that's what's happening when TV reporters, event and conference organizers, potential clients or influencers hit your website. The power of a great author website cannot be overstated. You need a website if you you're an author and it needs to have certain elements for you to succeed. If you don't know what those elements are or you're not sure you've got what it takes to shine online, well, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad with Book Launchers, your fabulous professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and sell a nonfiction book that will grow your business, your brand and your bank account. Look, you. You need a website. If not a full blown website, you must have a page where people can learn more about you and your book. This can be a page dedicated to your book on your business website. But you need something. Before I dive into the essential elements, let me mention that there are some ways to create a simple one page site that can hold the place while you build the bigger website. There are plenty of options for this from Story Origin, convertkit, Book Funnel and other sites that will allow you to put up a simple one page book promo page or a reader magnet download page. This can be a good stopgap while you create your website. For your author website though, let's go through some examples and give you a checklist to work through. All right, go ahead, grab your pen and paper so you can write this down. I'll wait a second. Okay, now before we dive too deeply, let's talk about what is a priority in your author life. In other words, what's most important to you as an author because this is going to impact your website. If your goal is speaking engagements, let's make sure your website is showcasing that. When your goal is to sell books, you absolutely want to showcase your books, but you also want to be gaining email subscribers. If your goal is to offer consulting, coaching or selling courses, there are different approaches to make your website really work for that goal. But for most authors, I would say your focus should be to create a clean, brand aligned website that will showcase your credibility, create engagement and get someone to take the next step you want. Which is usually to sign up for your newsletter, but it might be to book a call, buy your book, or do some other action like make a purchase. But let me say this one more time because I know a lot of authors desperately want to sell books. But here's why I like to emphasize an email list over a book sale. A book buyer is nice. It's great in fact. But an email subscriber can become a long term relationship where they buy all your books, your products, your services, your recommended resources, and on and on for years and years to come. It is a sustainable business versus a single book sale. Let's just take a fairly well known example to prove that this isn't just my crazy book. Broad idea. Amy Porterfield only has one book but but offers a ton of great value from our website like personalized playlists, free guides and a popular podcast. You can check it out right here. She has a low cost bootcamp offer here and she promotes her book. But her main goal from this site is clearly to generate new email subscribers because that is the first call to action we see on her site and it is here over and over again. As I've said before, building an email list and nurturing that community is is the best way to achieve long term success as an author. At the end of this video I'll link to our playlist on building an email list as an author. All right, so with that bigger picture goal in mind, let's summarize the most important things that should be included in an effective author website. First, the most important thing to think about before creating an author website is to establish what your goals are as an author. That's number one. Even if your number one goal is not newsletter subscribers, you should still have that opt in invitation on your website. Now if your goal is to sell as many books as possible, well then you need to build your website to be your top performing salesperson. Let's take a look at this example with past Book Launchers client Ryan Franklin this book page highlights the book first, showcases all the places it's available and he even recorded a video explaining how the book can help the reader solve their problems and emphasizes all the great reviews he has collected through his book marketing. You can even go a step further and make your book available for sale right right on your website direct to readers. This is a new service we are offering our clients because direct selling is so popular and so valuable for authors. Now I've set up my own online store and am accepting orders for my book on this page. I've talked a lot about selling direct and this is the place to do it. You can see my own direct setup@juliebrod.com if your goal is to become a speaker, then you need to build a website that showcases your speaking skills, provide videos of your past events, and make sure there are easily accessible places for your website visitors to contact. You see Renee Cavallari's website as a good example. She has a speaker reel as the first thing a new visitor sees so that a person can quickly and easily understand that she has experience working with a big crowd before and clearly has something important to share to those audiences. Alright, so next up on the list is a clear call to action. Above the fold. Above the fold means before someone has to scroll down, a clear call to action to subscribe to your newsletter, buy your book, hire you as a speaker. This is why it's important to know what your number one goal is because you want to convey this to a website visitor right away. Above that fold. Next up, include a list of published books. If you've only published one, well, the list is short, but you still have a list. Next, include a blog to showcase your personality and your writing. Okay. Actually these days it does not need to be a blog. That could be a podcast, or videos from YouTube or all of the above. It could even be excerpts from your media interviews. All of this helps with SEO because every piece will give you another chance for your website to rank on search engines. If you're a speaker, you'll absolutely want to have some video like you saw with Rini. An example of using media features for your content is from our client Brent Pullman. You can check out his site right here and see how he's got his media features. It's near the bottom, but it provides more material to get to know Brent, which is the objective of this extra content. Alright, the next two items are things that you've already seen. One, your website prominently displays the new release book. And two, it's easy to navigate. The whole reason you're making this website is to promote yourself as an author who's written a book. So make sure your book is included and prominently displayed. And no one wants to stay on a website that's difficult to read, whether the text is itty bitty or gigantic, or it's just hard to understand or disorganized. So make sure your website is simple, clean, easy to read and easy to navigate. All right, let's look at another example of an author with a lot of books and a lot of offerings. Here's Carol Sanford's website. Again, a multi book author who does a lot of speaking. Speaking is quite prominently displayed along with her books. But it's a great example of the final thing, which is make it easy to find a way to contact the author. You want people to contact you because you want them to ask you about can you come speak? Can I buy 100 books? Can I interview you on my podcast? Oh, and that wasn't the last one. You also want to have a place where people can connect with you on social media. You can even include a spot where they can download your media kit and your media images. So let's recap this really quickly. Here are the essential elements of your author website. Number one. Your author website goal. You must know that Number two subscribe to the newsletter offer above the fold. Number three, include a list of published books. Number four Blog or other content showcasing your expertise. Number five. Display new or impending releases of your book. Number six. Easy to navigate. Number seven provides an obvious way to connect to the author and includes links to your social media profiles and even potentially your media kit. Now, I feel like this goes without saying, but when I'm talking about featuring your book, I mean you need to put your book cover image, your author bio with an author picture and a book description and buying links. Let's call those the book broads for book Bs. One book cover, two. Book bio, three. Book description and number four, buying links. The good news is that there are a lot of ways to build a great website fairly cost effectively these days. And if you want my team to create a website for you, well, we do have a few website options where we'll help you build a lead magnet, a website, a direct sales store, and a little bit more. I'll put the link in the description below. We only do this when the team has extra capacity, but you can always reach out and if you want us to help you with that, we can. Of course our favorite option is to become your full service support with all the things you need from writing, editing, designing, publishing and promoting your book. All right, let's drop some author websites in the comments below so we can see what you've got going on. Yep, go ahead. Put your domain, your author website in the comments. Plus when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our sweet no boring books swag like our mug, our journal, some of our books, and so much more. All right, here's a video on the 7 things you need to know about building an email newsletter right now. And this is the playlist I promised. Click on over. I'll see you there.