Last month, on her birthday no less, we launched Stephanie Tyler‘s new site. It was so exciting for us that had she not been across the country, we would have brought over cupcakes.
The newly redesigned StephanieTyler.com
StephanieTyler.com is a big site. It is content-rich, and not just in the blog. However, two potential problems with a huge site exist:
A) the tendency for the navigation to get out of hand as everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) gets a navigational button and/or some sort of call-out on the home page. When this happens to site I call it the Cheesecake Factory Menu Effect. Have you ever eaten there? Good food, nice ambiance, but the menu is a book. It takes people FOREVER to order. They simply can’t make up their minds. Too many choices and they often get flustered. We didn’t want that to happen to Stephanie’s new site. (We don’t want that to happen to anyone’s site!) Because when you are already parked and hungry and a waitress is standing at your table, you will eventually make a decision. But when you are in front of your computer and nothing from the great mass of choices has a clear sense of importance, you may just give up and go elsewhere to be entertained.
B) To combat the CFME, sites will frequently under-navigate. True, sparseness has a certain elegance, but then content frequently goes un-found. Secondary pages have lots and lots of subnavigation and as a site owner, you are now relying upon the visitor to have a strong desire to keep searching. That is a lot to depend upon, even when you have robust content.
Stephanie is a great content provider. She loves sites that keep giving and wanted one herself for her readers. “I want a site that feels endless,” she challenged us.
Enter the action boxes. Visit StephanieTyler.com and try to resist those beckoning blue and purple right-hand boxes.
Says Stephanie: “I can tell things are easier for people to navigate because I’m getting requests from readers and booksellers for goodies, whereas I never had before and I had the same information up on my site for years!”
We invite you to head over to StephanieTyler.com and explore. It goes on and on and on… And on this blog, Waxcreative and Stephanie are giving away a signed copy of Risking It All to a randomly selected winner. All you need to do is leave a comment telling us what content treasures in Stephanie’s site you found and liked. A winner will be announced here sometime Tuesday. Thanks!
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I like her maps. Sometimes when I read books with obscure-to-me settings I have a hard time following. I mean, New York City and London are easy, right? But I read a book last week set in an tiny Texas town. I felt kind of lost.
Pretty colors too.
I absolutely love Steph’s site. It’s beautiful, clean and everything is easy to find. I need to redesign my site, so I’ll be looking your way soon.
I love everything about my new site
And cupcakes, of course…
Wax was amazing to work with…their design process is so comprehensive, which is why I got such amazing results. What’s great too is that there’s plenty of room to stretch and grow easily within the site, which is important too!
The site is easy to navigate and free of clutter…. favorite treasure was the easy FB friend. It helps me keep up on releases, etc….I wish all my favorite authors had that so I would know when to go to their site for the full scoop, but alas only a few have it, lol. Nice job!
Favorite thing – the simple, clean colors. Finally a site I can spend as much time as I want on, without me head exploding from glaring colors or flashing things.
Another thing I love is the navigational bar. On so many sites,you can go to one page(like contests)but when you are done there you have to go back to the home page before you can look at something else(like excerpts). Not so with Stephanie’s and I love it!
I love music and books. So I must say that I love the “Extras” feature with the soundtracks.
The site is very easy to use and very informative.
Jaci, thanks for the kudos. I’d love to chat with you about a new site for you.
Kelly+Chasity — I am glad you are finding things easily. That was a big goal!
Lillie, I love the colors too! It’s crazy because they didn’t just happen. It took a lot of tooling to get just the right combination…
Steph, we love you too! We have lots more to do on your site — it’s just going to keep getting better!
I like it all! I really like sites that aren’t cramped. Cramped sites make me itchy.
I hope I win! I have never read any of Stephanie’s books. Thanks!
I love Stephanies site….it’s easy to find what you’re looking for, don’t have to hunt and search….I’ve saved her blog, and it automatically refreshes itself, where there are many that don’t. It’s very bright and user friendly….and quick to load, which is a BIG plus.
Thanks for all the fabulous input! I love hearing what is clicking with site visitors! I put all the names in a hat (literally, the hat is deep pink, with a jaunty brim) and drew…. KELLY!
Congrats, Kelly. Please send me a private email (click Contact at the top of the page and use the little form at the top right) with your mailing address. I will get your signed Stephanie Tyler title out to you within the week!
We will be doing this again from time to time… pelase continue to stop by our blog.