Christina Battons | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookAs you know, I’m a web developer by day and author by night. So, this guest post by Christina Battonsa web content expert in Los Angeles, was of particular interest to me. Christina is a creative writer who is able to connect various thoughts into a single theme. She loves to stay up-to-date on the latest content marketing trends. Her works have been published on Custom-writings.net and other resources. You can connect with Christina on Twitter.

5 Ways Writers Can Increase Revenue Through Their Website

Web design | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

A website is an important business tool. Image: Pexels

Are you a creative writer searching for ways of increasing the number of visitors to your website–and your revenue?

In this day and age, it is crucial for you to have a website that will stand out and make you popular. A website is a very important business tool. A well thought-out web page design has a lot of advantages. Making it user-friendly and easy to reach will have a big impact on the user experience.

All business owners want a site that encourages people to either contact or purchase. This step is known as conversion. If there is a lot of traffic on your site but the conversions are not many, you need to figure out why. There are many things that can lead to this problem. A web design that is not done properly is one of them.

For all writers out there, the following 5 things will assist you in coming up with an effective writer’s website that will boost revenue:

1. Clean Design

Clean design | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

A writer’s professionalism and personality should be reflected on his/her website. Image: Pexels

When it comes to creating a successful writer’s website, it ought to be all about usability. The worst mistake that any writer can make is having their online resources in a disorderly manner and difficult to navigate. This disorder ends up distracting your visitors’ attention from the items that are very important: your achievements and portfolio.

Another mistake is the heavy utilization of multicolored boxes, rotating items, and flashing design components. The absence of negative space makes it hard to locate the essential elements on the website. It becomes difficult to put an emphasis on buttons (commonly referred to as Click-To-Action or CTAs), headlines, and other conversion-oriented components. Consequently, it becomes hard to direct the visitors’ attention to the most important areas on your website.

2. The Writer’s Personality

There’s an ongoing debate as to whether a writer’s website ought to be about the writer’s professionalism or personality. In essence, the website of a writer should contain both. We live in an evolving world. Our preferences and trends are changing. People are likely to associate with experts whom they enjoy and trust. If your personality looks attractive and people like your professionalism, then there’s a higher chance they’ll hire you for a new project.

How can a writer present his/her personality on a web page? Presenting your personality does not only mean sharing a photo (even though that’s important). The web page ought to include a bio segment where the writer shares his/her letter to the audience. The personality of the writer can be reflected in the design patterns, colors or fonts. Moreover, one of the best ways of creating a connection with your audience is including social media links to your official accounts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

3. Pinpoint Where Visitors Are Scrolling to and Clicking

It will be great if you know where your visitors are and are not clicking as it will assist you to move your offers from sections that don’t attract clicks to those which do. You can make use of heat map tools such as Lucky Orange or Sumo that will show you where the clicks are occurring as well as what referral source is producing them. Also, this heat map tool will show you how far down your page(s) your visitors are scrolling. This will enable you to test several call-to-action locations and be aware of the ones that are being viewed and clicked on.

It’s not ideal for you to throw various offers on your website and then wait for the conversions to roll in. Knowing where your visitors are, provides you with enough data that can be used to convert more traffic.

4. Research Before You Write

Writing research | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

Research before you write. Image: Pexels

Every writer’s website has its strengths and weaknesses. Even though we would like our web pages to have a domain authority of 100 and contain popular content, it is not easy for both of these goals to be accomplished. In fact, it’s almost impossible without being aware of what content others are offering.

Since developing online content is a competitive process, you need to understand your audience. Know where keyword opportunities are. If not, you might end up investing a lot of resources and time in coming up with content only to see it fail to establish a connection with your target audience. Choosing to create content on any old topic (even if it’s one that you’re well conversant with) without knowing whether your target consumers need content in that field is just leaving success to pure chance.

5. Track Your Progress

If your content is not being read or it’s not leading to other actions such as user engagement, then it contains no value to you. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into developing that content. To help you develop the right kind of content, you need to benchmark the performance of your site content, evaluate your progress over time and utilize the resulting information to make any necessary changes.

As a good content writer, you have to identify your top website content (which type of content that drives the most traffic to your website) and assess its performance against your other content pieces. This should be done on a regular basis.

For instance, what’s the average engagement rate (time on site, visits, page views, etc.) of the best performing content vs. your other efforts? Does the new content that you create have a strong impact on traffic and other crucial elements that drive your business? If not, concentrate on what has made your top content shine – be it the writing style, topic, format or even headlines. Moreover, try to align all of your content efforts (e.g. on social media) so that they also leverage the important qualities that you’ve discovered.

In summary, writers can earn more if they have websites that are professionally built. It’s up to every writer to choose in which style their website will be created. In addition, they will have to choose from a number of custom-made web solutions and ready-made web designs.

Writers can also utilize various WordPress themes and plugins which will save time, money, and eventually assist them in creating great online portfolios. A ready-made theme will allow writers to concentrate on creating content without wasting precious time customizing the theme.

If you want to increase revenue through web design, make use of the tips mentioned above. What’s your experience? Are there any other suggestions which have led to an increase in your revenue?