Usability and Your Web Site — What???
Usability tips for author websites
- Be sure the site visitor knows who you are. Even if your website is designed to mimic the universe created by your story, people still want to know about the person behind it. It’s a way of building trust with your audience, and a way for them to further invest in what you’re doing. — Thank you to outboxonline for this quote
Although I generally agree with Kate McMillan, of Outboxonline most of the time, this time I think IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) that the cart is before the horse in this case.
The client needs to know the users profile before you begin building a single thing - Then the quote works and works well.
In today’s world the author often knows the audience before the audience gets to know them.
This can be critically important as now, not knowing what the users want can kill off anything you do, even if the book has been published. The Harry Potter Series is a case in point.
The author loved the characters, this was obvious but the book buying public had their own ideas so when the directors did the films they were very careful not to put their own vision of what the characters were onto the digital world.
In this there is a lesson — putting your own ideas or personality onto a web site that does not have a personal focus can be a poor idea. Imagine if JK had built a web site only based upon her personality, it would have worked for about a New York minute then the users would have been lost as what they were looking for was good old Harry Potter!
First get a clear idea of who your users are and what they want — provide what they want and you will make conversions from a landing page to a sale and money in the bank.
