At Web Design Relief, we can’t stress this enough: Your author website is your online business card—your online identity for your fans and potential readers. Do you want it to be uniquely “you” and show your personality? Yes. Does that mean you should fill each nook and cranny with colors, special effects, and every thought that comes into your head? No.
6 No-Nos When Designing Your Author Website
Unreadable Fonts
Using overly ornate, stylized, or curlicued fonts—especially for the body text—is a definite no-no. Visitors must be able to read what you write. Be sure your font size isn’t too small to be easily legible: 12-point font is a good standard size, but you can also go bigger. Here’s how to find the right font style for your author website.
Invisible Links
Visitors to your author website should be able to easily identify what’s clickable and what isn’t. Make sure that your links are a contrasting color.
Bad Color Combinations
Maybe your favorite colors are lime green and bright yellow. Hey, to each his (or her) own. Just don’t put your green type on a yellow background: it’s one of the most disliked color combinations for a website. And too much bright, vivid color is going to give your visitors headaches and send them running from your site and toward the nearest bottle of aspirin. Another bad choice: putting light-colored items on a light background, or dark on dark.
Big Blocks Of Text
Visitors met with a wall of unending text are NOT going to read it—no matter how intriguing or interesting the topic.
To keep your readers’ attention, offer visual breaks. Bulleted text, subheads, and separate paragraphs will allow visitors to absorb your writing in easy-to-focus-on sections.
If you have a one-page website, include a floating navigation bar with each navigational menu item anchored to a section of the page. This way, when visitors want to move between different sections, you’ve given them the tools to do so. Here are other ways to incorporate user-friendly navigation menu options into your website.
Spelling And Grammar Errors
The quality of your website will be judged by the content and how well it’s presented. You may have the most aesthetically pleasing website on the Internet, but if your visitors feel you’re publishing posts without first proofreading for typos and grammar mistakes, the overall opinion of your site—and your writing—will suffer for it.
Bland Calls To Action
Want to build sales of your new book? Of course you do! Make sure you use a button color that is bright enough to draw attention, but still complementary to your website’s color scheme.
QUESTION: What web design no-nos have you seen? Tell us!
With nothing published yet, see no reason for a website. When I do this info will come in handy. I’ve printed and filed it. Thank you