This is a guest post and infographic by Ted of iceCube Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Singapore that helps local small businesses acquire leads from channels such as Facebook and Google. It offers a wonderful examination of what a successful author home page may consist of and can even serve as a great checklist for you when you design a new one or update yours.
How to Build a Landing Page that Markets you as an Author
Title
The title of your landing page is important. It serves as a hook to grab visitors’ attention. It also gives them a reason to look deeper into your website. The title of your landing page may or may not be the same as that of a book. Either, have a title that is benefit-driven and arouses curiosity.
Your First Impression
The first thing visitors should see is an image. The image can be anything from your book to your niche or even yourself. Images are an efficient way to make a first impression, as they’re quicker to scan than words. This establishes your professional image, so make sure it’s friendly and professional.
Contact Info
This is the whole reason why you need a website: so people can get in contact with you. Make it as easy as possible for people to offer you deals or option your content. In the publishing industry, people are very busy and the little things matter.
Ask them to do Something
Always have a call-to-action that is prominent. Prompt your visitors to buy your book, check out your newsletter or find you on social media. Keep it simple and make it easy to do. Authors need fans, and fans like it when they get to interact with their favorite writer in some way. Mark Lawrence can be found on Reddit, David Wong has an active Twitter: have a presence outside of your books.
Unique Selling Points
Why should the client choose you? Why not someone else? Tell them why you stand out from the crowd and don’t be shy about it. Why are your stories unique? How rare is your perspective? Do you have interesting ideas? Don’t leave your tools to rust in the shed by forgetting to sell yourself.
Procedure
Give them a brief description of your work process. Telling people about how you turn ideas into books assures them that you’ve done it before. Let them know that you will be consistent and reliable.
About Section, or Bio
Come up with a quick blurb summarizing your relationship with the craft of writing. Try to keep it short and to the point, a quick and easy way for them to get an idea of who they’re going to work with. It’s extremely important to lend your landing page a human feel.
Awards, Credentials, etc.
Don’t be shy about your successes and skills. Mention any awards or recognitions you’ve received. You’ve worked for these, so use them to make yourself look better.
Testimonials
You should have reviews from past clients in plain sight. Make it prominent and use pictures and names to prove they’re real. Your readers want to know that they are learning from someone with practical experience and expertise.
Frequently Asked Questions
It should easy to figure out what you’re selling and how to buy it. Answer basic questions about your site and your books, so You don’t have to answer the same questions over and over.
Ask them to do Something More Urgently
Repeat your social media links, newsletter pitch, or other prompts with greater urgency. This will be the last thing on the page that visitors see. Use timed and limited offers or book raffles and the like to make it more tempting.
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Thanks for sharing Ted’s informative guest post.
Thank you so much, Mary 🙂
I think that some time in the recent past someone put out in the winterwebz that ‘About Me’ stories/info needs to be in the third person … and terribly, terribly serious. This is a business people and you need to be all business-y about it. No fun allowed.
Be professional, absolutely, but no-one said you can’t have fun doing it, and for goodness sake, unless you’re really, really good at it, drop the third person. 🙂
I guess it depends on your business and your target audience–and on how you go about doing it. I’ve seen a marketer in LinkedIn work wonders with a first-voice narrative that consciously went against all “rules,” even though he was pitching to big companies.
Thanks to Ted for this simple and informative layout. I’m bookmarking! 🙂
Yay! Thank you, Debby 🙂
🙂
Great ! Thanks 🙂
Great article! I think a good landing page is one of the hardest things to pin down. At least for us authors 😉
How true. Followed closely by the blurb 🙂
And then the synopsis.
😀
This is handy, thanks!
Glad you thought so, thank you 🙂
Great info. Another thing I need to do. Ha ha.
Lol-tell me about it 😀
I didn’t even know what a ‘Landing Page’ was. Now I do! 🙂
Thanks as always, Nicholas.
Best wishes, Pete.
Yay! Thank you, Pete 🙂
Great info,here. I’ve shared.
Yay! Thank you 🙂
Thank for the guest post by Ted.
Thanks 🙂
Thanks 🙂