Different authors need different things from their website’s homepage because each author’s readers are different. Not all authors have the same kind of readers, and not all authors are in the same place in their career, so they don't necessarily have the same things to say.

Ultimately, your home page needs to satisfy your visitors' desires. What do they want when they come to your website? What are they looking for? And it needs to accomplish your goals as an author. If you're trying to sell your book, you need a different kind of homepage than if you're building anticipation for a first book that isn't out yet.

Homepage #1 Placeholder Website

Thomas: The first kind of home page is what I'll call a placeholder website. This home page isn't just a home page, it's the entire website. If you're a novelist writing your first book, you need yourname.com, or your name plus your middle name and last name, whatever you're able to reserve, so you can start building some authority and age on that domain. Google likes domains that have been around for a long time.

You want to start that clock as soon as possible. You also want something you can put on your business card, something to give agents, or cover designers if you're going indie, just so you exist. You're not real until you're on Google. This doesn't need to be a big, complicated website with lots of pages. A single page is fine for a placeholder website.

Jim: This is your business card. It's where agents, editors, and potential readers go to find you. They want to see that you exist. Until you have a home page, people won't think you're serious.

Thomas: That's right. Your goal here is to start building your authority for Google and start building your newsletter. As people hear about you, maybe at a Christmas party, and you say, "You can find me at my name dot com," they go there and sign up for your newsletter. It'll be slow at first, but that's fine. Slow is better than nothing, which is what most authors have while they're working on their book.

You want it to look professional enough to impress whoever you need to impress, and the easiest way to do that is to keep it simple. White background, big image, a couple of big buttons, a couple of paragraphs. Don't go crazy, that's actually the easiest way to look professional.

Jim: You also want to link to your social media, wherever you're active. If an editor or agent comes to your page, they'll wonder what your presence is like on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, so you want links to wherever you're active.

Thomas: The next thing you want is a headshot and a bio. A one-paragraph bio is fine, along with a good headshot. You probably already have one, and it doesn't have to be back-of-the-book quality, just a placeholder with good lighting, not something awful, and not something with someone else in it. A year from now, or five years from now, when your book comes out, you can update this. This is a temporary website. You're not committed to this home page for the rest of your life.

Jim: You also want a Mailchimp sign-up form, or more simply, a place where people can sign up for updates on what's going on with you. Keep it very simple. Some people will come and think, "I'd be interested when Thomas comes out with that novel, I'm going to sign up so he can notify me."

Thomas: We recommend Mailchimp because it's free up to 2,000 subscribers, so you can start building your list without spending any money. You're not necessarily committed to Mailchimp moving forward, but it's a good place to start.

Another great tool for your one-page placeholder website is MyBookProgress. It shows the progress you're making on your book and keeps score of whether you're on track to hit your goal. If you miss 500 words yesterday but wrote an extra 250 the week before, it does the math and tells you what you need to write to hit your goal. It's very motivational, and it integrates with Mailchimp so you can build your newsletter while staying on your deadline.

Jim: I want to give a shout-out to my friend David Rawlings. I've been consulting with him, and we worked on turning his website into something more dynamic. David has multiple pages because he's very active blogging, which makes sense for him. He also looks great on camera and has a cool Australian accent, so I told him he should put some videos on his site.

He designed a video specifically for editors and agents explaining why they should work with him. Since doing that, he's picked up an agent he's working with now. If you want to do a bit more, that's a creative idea worth stealing to help you stand out.

Thomas: Play to your strengths. If you can put together a video easily, do it. I've noticed this is a generational thing. Younger people often have no problem putting together a video quickly, they know how to edit and upload, and it's fun for them. Older people can find it terrifying since they don't know how to turn on the webcam, record, edit, and upload. If that's intimidating for you, you don't need a video to be successful.

Website #2 Blog Focus Homepage

Thomas: The second kind of home page is the blog-focused home page, and it's the most common approach for nonfiction authors. This is what I have. If you go to thomasumstattd.com, my homepage right now is just a blog, because that's all it is.

I have a sidebar that mentions my book, but the home page itself is just blog posts. If you blog regularly, and that's the main appeal of your website, this may be the right approach for you. This is the kind of home page that tends to bring in the most traffic, if you're able to deliver the content people want to see. If you look at the highest-trafficked author websites, they're very often blog-focused, and they deliver well on the blog.

Not every book lends itself to a blog, and not every author blogs frequently enough for the entire home page to be recent posts, so this may not be for you. But if it is, this is the one with the highest potential.

Jim: For each of these homepage types, whichever one you fall into, what's the action you want the person coming to your website to take? Thomas, your personal site is more of a blog. Do you want them to sign up for your blog, sign up for your newsletter? What action do you want them to take?

Thomas: Each blog post has its own action. In a blog-centric site, you have to think of each blog post as its own home page, because people typically aren't going to visit your actual home page. They go straight from Google to an internal page. That allows you to call people to different actions on different pages. One post might call someone to buy your book, another to sign up for your newsletter.

Jim: One might say, "take our survey." Let us know what you think of the show at novelmarketing.com. If we're doing too many episodes on websites and you want us to talk about something else, let us know, or if you want more of this, let us know that too.

Website #3 Bookstore Focus Website

Thomas: The third kind of home page is the bookstore-focused home page, and it's ideal for someone with a large backlist. If you've written 10, 20, or 30 books, that can be overwhelming for new readers, especially if your sidebar only has room for your most recent titles. If a reader has finished your latest books and wants to explore what else you have, a bookstore-focused home page is useful. Your latest book sits at the top, your different series below that, and lots of book covers throughout.

MyBookTable, a plugin we've developed, makes this easy. MyBookTable Pro has a grid view similar to Amazon's, but it's entirely controlled by you and focused on you. If you have lots of books on your site, make sure you have your Amazon affiliate set up. Amazon pays an affiliate commission in addition to your royalty if your home page is configured correctly, so you can make money twice.

Jim: What action do you want them to take here? Presumably, you want them to buy your books, so make that very clear on the page. Buy now, buy now, buy here now. Going back to the marketing principle that if I shout it, the person listening hears a whisper, it's not a bad thing to keep giving them a simple call to action: click this button, buy now.

Website #4 Multimedia Focus Website

Thomas: The fourth kind of website is the multimedia-focused website, ideal for someone building their platform on YouTube. Maybe it's YouTube-focused, with your most recent video at the top, or podcast-focused, like Novel Marketing. You can see what that looks like at novelmarketing.com.

The goal here is you want visitors to encounter and interact with your multimedia. You want them to watch your video or listen to your podcast, so a multimedia-focused home page features that prominently.

Website #5 Brochure Homepage

Jim: The fifth home page for authors is the kind most small businesses have. It’s typically a big header with a striking image and a clear description of what they do, followed by three or four columns listing the most common services that business provides.

This isn't necessarily great for novelists, but it can work for authors whose business is supported by their book, or authors in the speaking realm who offer other services that naturally tie in with their writing.

Thomas: Brochure homepages are what most authors end up with, because most templates are built around them. The money isn't in making author websites or business websites, so your typical template has a big hero image and three columns.

There are ways to make brochure websites work. A lot of authors do a hybrid between the brochure home page and the bookstore homepage, where instead of three sections about the services you offer, you have your three series. Here's my sword and sorcery series, here's my romance series, here's my "how to write books" series, if you write in multiple genres.

The challenge with brochure websites, at least for businesses, is they tend to reflect the politics of the company rather than answering the question Jim keeps asking: what action do you want them to take? A brochure home page is often a symptom of a website that isn't clear about its goal. That said, authormedia.com, one of my websites, has a brochure-style home page.

To be fair, the very top of that page is dedicated to MyBookTable, and as you scroll down it introduces you to the rest of what we offer. A brochure website can work, and it may be your next step after a placeholder website. But even with just one book and no blog, a placeholder website is fine. Grow that home page.

You don't need lots of pages to have a successful website. One home page and one page for your book can potentially be all you need.

Jim: One thing I don't see as much anymore, Thomas, is author websites with a whole section for writers, craft advice, and that kind of thing, even when the author wasn't teaching classes. That was a trend for a while.

Very few of your readers who are going to be writers, and you're dividing the message. If you say, "This is for writers, and by the way, I'm also an author," it confuses people. If you have that on your site, I'd suggest removing it, or moving it somewhere else if you really want to get into teaching.

Thomas: As a rule of thumb, don't add a "for writers" section until your readers are asking for it. There's good money in teaching writing, but it's not going to help you sell books. If the goal of your website is to increase book sales, teaching writing doesn't help that goal.

There's a belief in America that those who can't do, teach, so the fact that you teach something can actually undermine your credibility. It's not necessarily true, and not everyone believes it, but it's not going to help you sell books the way you might think.

The ideal author website is a combination of the brochure and the blog, or the bookstore and the blog, with your most recent book on its own row and your blog posts below that. But the right home page for you depends on who you are, how often you're blogging, and what your readers are looking for. If they just want to buy your book, sell your book. You don't need all the bells and whistles. Be easy to find on Google, keep it simple, and focus your energy elsewhere.