Set-up:
Jane has always made a concerted effort to bring in a lot of fun content to her site. She regularly posts to her blog, adds oodles of snapshots and interview links, and she keeps her active events schedule up to date. Her readers feel a real connection with her as an author and person. But it’s easy to lose the books in all that, and Jane is great about providing one or more Extras to accompany each book. Whether it’s an Egyptian recipe to support the setting of Harlequin title King of the Desert, Captive Bride, or a photo album from the movie set of Flirting With Forty, Jane delivers additional content to support the reading experience.

Challenge:
When Jane redesigned her site with us in 2005, she had two specific goals in mind. The first was straightforward and exciting: to visually re-brand her site in conjunction with her new career trajectory into Trade Paperback Fiction. For us, that was straightforward.

The second goal was the challenge: how to provide value-add for this new audience. Instead of books that would have a one-month shelf life (Harlequins), her books would be on shelves for years and potentially go into multiple printings. How to provide extras that would keep giving?

Strategy:
First we tackled the value-add content that would be interesting and meaningful regardless of whether the reader had read the book yet. And we went big. Lots of photos from book events and extra book-related content — content that was instantly accessible.

With each book we got more streamlined, adding smarter in terms of timing, and choice of features to support and enhance the Jane Porter reading experience: Recipes of cocktails the characters might drown their sorrows in, fun things to do if you travel to where the book is set, a fictitious interview with the characters… These easily accessible are highlighted throughout Jane’s book pages with several bright and fun headers (two examples below), and a visual cue: Catch this FUN janeporter.com Book Extra!

But it was one feature in particular that gave a particularly valuable bang for the buck: READER GUIDES. These content-rich downloadable pdfs were displayed on the book pages in abbreviated forms, so as not to be immediately overwhelming. (Use these links to see the readers guides for Mrs. Perfect, Odd Mom Out, Flirting With Forty, and The Frog Prince). This value-add feature ended up having a wonderful extra effect: it opened more communication between Jane and not just individual readers, but book groups. And it provided readers with a means to continue to experience the book they had just read, whether they used them in a book group setting or not.

Post-launch, in her own words (and the words of others):
“The feedback has been great,” Jane says. “Readers have told me they like my guides because it gives them a launching point for discussing my books. My guides are on the long side, too, with an average of twenty questions, so there can be a wide variety of questions hopefully leading to a variety of discussions. Not all questions will appeal to everyone and I don’t expect readers to go through the guide from point A to point B but rather to jump around. I think of it as ordering tapas, lots of little plates to share. In the case of my reading guides, there are lots of different questions so everyone can focus on an aspect of the book that they liked.”

Author Stephanie Tyler (new site coming soon from Waxcreative) summed it up quite well when she used Jane’s Readers Guides as a segue into discussing the online visitor experience and how it tied back to the books. “I love the way Jane Porter’s site has all the little boxes and extras,” Stephanie said admiringly. “You’re never done visiting that site – there’s always some little hidden link or feature to discover.”

Audience connection accomplished.

Jane Porter is the author of twenty-four novels and one novella, including Mrs. Perfect and Flirting With Forty (Airing in December in Lifetime). Please visit her at JanePorter.com where you can catch excerpts (follow title links to read right now), a regularly updating blog, and of course, oodles of book extras, here, here, and here, for starters.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Set-up:
Susan had been writing sweet, Americana historical romances for well over a decade. Two RITAs, twelve novels, one novella, and a gazillion fans after her Golden Heart in the early nineties. Then she suddenly shifted focus, and was excited about her new directions. But her site fit her backlist, not her new books – not even a little bit.

Challenge:
Present the new Susan Kay Law and her new books – contemporary set women’s fiction with sophisticated themes – in a manner consistent with her new brand, but a big challenge would be to do it without alienating her existing audience or compromising the still-available previous product.

Strategy:
We conceptualized a subsite for the historicals that would preserve the bright visuals (cheery colors and quilt-like textures) from the outgoing site that represented Susan’s backlist so well. The problem would be making the user path into the world of Susan’s historicals seamless.

We built “historicals” right into the main navigation of the new site so that established fans could see right away that they were in the right place, and we created the new book titles their own navigation buttons to make them stand out. And then before jumping into the subsite, we created a gateway page, complete with a note from Susan and a screenshot of what the page would look like upon entering.

Once inside the subsite we made sure that the masthead was clear – you were not at the Susan Kay Law site, per se, you were at the Susan Kay Law Historicals site. To continue the connection between the subsite and the main site, we included a link on each of the historicals pages to the home page in the redesigned site’s visual style.

Post-launch, in her own words:
“The big challenge was going to be drawing in the new audience,” Susan says. “I knew that. But I was adamant not to lose my established historical romance audience base. Loyalty works both ways. And how to tackle that challenge was less clear.

“Since the new site was launched in Spring 2007 I have received a lot of emails from fans of my historical work praising my new work. I have received virtually no confused emails – no, ‘Are you the same Susan…?’ and this is testament to how well the site is working in easing the existing audience into this new writing phase.

“If I have one gift,” Susan says, “it’s knowing when to call in the experts. This shift in my writing was too much for my old site to encompass. And I’m not visual, nor could I conceptualize the thought-progress of the site visitor; I am too close for that. I’m not creative about anything but writing, but luckily my web team is.”

Susan Kay Law is the author of fourteen novels and one novella, including The Paper Marriage (modern fiction in trade paper) and A Wanted Man (the more recent RITA winner for historical romance, in mass market). Please visit her at SusanKayLaw.com where you can catch excerpts (follow title links to read right now), a regularly updating reader-based contest, and blog posts from over the years.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Set-up:
Diane had been maintaining two sites, DianeGaston.com and DianePerkins.us. Both names were attached to Regency-set, fast-paced romances with edgy underworld themes. There was virtually no difference in reader expectation between Diane Gaston’s books and Diane Perkins’ books. The difference lay only in that the names were each attached to different publishers. What seemed like good advice at the start of her career was becoming increasingly difficult to promote, especially online. Increasingly stretched and repetitive, Diane was feeling ineffective at promoting either name.

Challenge:
Diane wanted to consolidate — one site for both names. This would help Diane focus her resources. But addressing reader confusion and promoting the two names as a single brand would be paramount. Additionally, Diane had the added challenge of promoting simultaneous Gaston releases in both the UK and North America — same title, different cover recognition promotion, and different ordering pathways.

Strategy:
Obviously intimately involved with both names, Diane requested our assistance to decide how to relegate one of the names to “second fiddle.” Not wishing for either name to be diminished, we first analyzed which name would require more screen time. Riding on Diane’s RITA win for a Gaston book, and considering that the Gaston publisher produced faster than the Perkins one, and that there were more books extant under the Gaston name, it was an easy decision to select the Gaston name more prominently. (The dot-com vs. dot-us also played a deciding factor.)

We then suggested Diane write a detailed explanation that we could put right at the top of her FAQs. We developed a rollover button lure to strategically sprinkle throughout the site leading visitors to this explanation. We imagined what a visitor looking for Diane Perkins would latch onto, and several options were tested. “WHERE’S DIANE PERKINS?” made the most sense.

But what about people typing in dianeperkins.us? We decided to create a nearly identical masthead for the Perkins name, simply replacing the “Gaston” with “Perkins”. That one page site would welcome visitors to a Diane Perkins landing page, with a clear and concise note stating that Diane Perkins also writes under the name Diane Gaston, and then direction that the visitor would be redirected to the Gaston site. Within 5 seconds we would ease the Perkins reader into the Gaston site.

In the middle of development however, Diane phased out the Perkins name anyway, so she decided that the second home page wouldn’t be necessary.

Post-launch, in her own words…
“My new website has been everything I hoped it would be and more,” Diane reports. “Not only is the waxcreative team a joy to work with, but the site itself is a wonderful showcase for my books. It reflects my personality. And the planning prior to the design phase ensured that the double name issue became a non-issue. I had been having to do all this explaining and since the new site launch I simply haven’t.

“I wanted a site that readers would remember and one they would visit often. I now often receive glowing comments from first-time visitors. Other comments have indicated that readers do check the site regularly.

“I consider my site my primary marketing tool. And I know it is helping me grow my name and sell more books.”

Diane Gaston is the author of seven novels and one novella, including The Mysterious Miss M (the Golden Heart and Readers Choice Award Winner) and A Reputable Rake (the RITA winner). Please visit her at DianeGaston.com where you can catch excerpts (follow title links to read right now), or an array of her online articles and postings.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.