It’s no secret—having a website is important. It’s a non-negotiable anymore.

You need a website for visibility, to establish authority, and to showcase your phenomenal books. It is also a place to send publishers, agents, and other professionals when working on collaborations.

In short, you must have a website—even before you publish your first book.

It isn’t enough to just have a website. Your website needs to look professional, be intentional, and keep people interested, connected, and coming back.

As a website designer for romance authors, I come across a lot of websites and see a lot of errors that repeat themselves time and time again.

So before you spend another hour or two on your website, make sure you know the 5 most common mistakes authors make on their website, especially when they are creating them on their own.

01

There Is Not Enough Content on the Home Page

One of the most common mistakes I see on author’s websites is not having enough content on the home page.

I understand a lot of author’s want their home page to be more visual–you just want to show off your books after all (and show them off you should!)

But, from a marketing perspective, you need to make sure you have a lot of copy and content on your home page.

Having more content allows you to create better audience connection, give them specified actions they can take (sign up for a newsletter, download a free chapter of your book, etc), and basically just increase interest.

Basic sites are, well, boring.

And nobody is interested in boring.

I’ll be the first to tell you, talking about yourself is hard—even as a writer you might find yourself victim to some good-old-fashion writer’s block when asked to write about you and your work. If you find yourself struggling to figure out what to say, reach out to a website designer for authors or a copywriter. They can help give you some direction!

As you create content for your home page, think about what is bringing your audience to your site. Why are they there? What are they wondering about? Answer those questions—or create links to pages that answer those questions—in a very obvious way.

You also need more content because of good-old SEO….which leads me to my second mistake authors make on their websites...

02
You Aren’t Focused on SEO

It’s 2022. You need to focus on SEO—even with a large social media following, even with a super niche genre.

First, what exactly is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is basically fancy-speak for getting Google to rank your site, allowing you to show up in searches, preferably on the first page.

It is important because it allows you to be found, organically, by people searching online. Multiple studies have shown that organic traffic is 8.5x more likely to convert. This is huge!

SEO is the bees knees, the golden ticket, the jewel in the crown… you get my drift. It’s important.

Every day there are 1000’s of books published on Amazon (and I am just talking about Amazon, not other publishers). In a sea of so many other authors, you want your website to come out on top.

I totally get it though; it can be hard to gain an understanding of what SEO is. People spend years and years studying SEO and how to best optimize sites. And jumping in to this without prior experience is daunting.

There are a lot of philosophies and a lot of best-practice advice rolling around out there. And while there is truly no one right way to approach SEO, it is VERY important to research and plan out your strategy. Keywording spamming your site and hoping something will stick isn’t going to cut it anymore. It’s basically the equivalent of closing your eyes and throwing a dart. The odds are stacked against you.

You can either spend some time studying SEO or you can hire someone to help you with it.

One site to check out if you are doing your own SEO is this LINK from Hey Digital Marketer

If you are outsourcing your web design, also know that most website designers will include some SEO practices in their design process.

03
Waiting to Launch Your Website Until You are Published

Don’t wait until you have multiple books out to launch your site. Don’t even wait until your first book is launched.

If you are working on a book, you need a website now.

So many authors want to wait until their book is published, or even until they have multiple books, to create a website but this is a mistake.

Like I touched on earlier, but is worth repeating, a website is important for many reasons.

Your website is a place to direct editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. It establishes your authority as a professional and is a way to start networking.

You can use your website to build your email list. An email list is beneficial for making announcements and keeping in touch with people who are interested in your work!

It is a place to go to learn more about who you are—because when your audience feels connected or intrigued by you they are more likely to purchase your books.

You can make publication announcements.

Not only can they be important for your professional success, but very basic websites are also cheap and easy to create. Domains don’t cost much to buy and it is fairly easy to at least have a single home page up. I don’t recommend staying at the single page, simplistic setup for long but it is ok to start here.

04
Your Branding Is Not Cohesive

I encourage all of my clients to invest some time (and money if possible) into figuring out your brand. This not only makes your site easier to design but it will make everything that follows easier - copy, images, etc.

Branding consists of the visuals that you see on your site—logos, colors, fonts, etc — but also goes beyond that and focuses on who you are as a public persona.

The visual aspect of branding is the easier part to figure out. Pinterest is a great tool to look through and get ideas about what look you want on your website. You can also look at your comp authors (authors that are similar to you) and see how they branded themselves to get ideas. You never want to directly take your competitions ideas and branding but it can spark ideas and lead you to your own unique style!

The deeper part of branding—the personality of the brand—can be a bit more complicated but really taking time to dive into who you are, how you want to be seen, and what you want to be known for can help make for a cohesive presentation to the world.

How do you relate with your audience? What are your values? What sort of language do you use? These are all things you will want to consider when working on your brand identity.

One piece of advice is to come up with 5 topics that you focus on in your social media and on your about page. This doesn’t meant you can’t deviate from the topics but if you spend most of your time focused on these topics, your audience knows what to expect and can relate to you easier.

Do you spend a lot of time volunteering at the local animal shelter? Talk about that. Do you love luxury resorts and use them as setting inspiration for your novels? There is another topic point you could use in your branding.

If you have a bit more of a budget, consider hiring an author coach to help you narrow down your voice, persona, and visuals to better create a more cohesive brand. These can be invaluable as you begin your professional journey.

05
Not Having Social Media Links

In this day and age, you need an online presence. Readers want to feel connected to you and if you look like some recluse living in 1988 (read: you don’t actively use social media), it may cause them to loose interest.

People want to know who you are. And as odd as it may seem, they want to see into your every day life.

And you need to link to these on your home page.

It is a cardinal sin for a website not to have links to social media.

And also, make sure the links aren’t broken. Nothing is more frustrating than broken links.

Don’t Make These Mistakes!

Now you know the top 5 mistakes I see authors making on their websites and hopefully you have some ideas on how to NOT make those same mistakes, or at least a greater understanding of why you shouldn’t be doing these.

As a website designer for authors, I’d love to chat about how I can help you jumpstart your website presence with a beautiful website created quickly and efficiently.

If you have any questions about what was covered here, I’d love to help.
Please email me at sarahkilcreative@gmail.com.