Build Your Own Website: The Trouble With Pictures

I created this for my Twitter profile
after an author friend reminded me
how important it was to keep your

book cover on people's minds.
I now use it on Facebook and other
online profiles such as my profile
image when comment on blogs.

By Candy Gourlay

We're almost at the end of our Build Your Own Website series ... there is of course plenty of stuff we haven't covered, but what we have will pretty much get you up and running.

We've talked about audience, we've debated the pros and cons of blogging,we've learned what platforms are out there, and we've learned about bananas and websites. Now here is one of the biggest headaches of running a website: images.

Every website needs eye-candy - images help draw the eye to the important things, images make people stop and stare, images draw people in.

Build Your Own Website: Designing Your Page With Bananas

By Candy Gourlay

Continuing the Build Your Own Website discussion over at the SCBWI message board. We've already discussed WHO you're doing it for ... and we've had a look at the platforms; AND we've talked about blogging ... or not. Now you've got your blog/website, how do you design it so people do what you want them to do?

When you come upon a new website, how many seconds do you hang around before moving to another site? Why do you stay?

Web guru Seth Godin says (and I paraphrase) people on web pages are like monkeys in search of bananas. If they find no bananas, they don't hang around. They just leave.

Check out the design of one of the internet's most successful start-ups, Amazon. The biggest banana of course is the book cover (yeah, why not sneak in a plug about Tall Story, while I'm at it?). But Amazon makes sure to put a bright yellow button on the top right to make it absolutely clear what you should do about the big banana.

Build Your Own Website: Why you should / should not blog

By Candy Gourlay

Continuing the Build Your Own Website discussion over at the SCBWI message board. We've already discussed WHO you're doing it for ... and we've had a look at the platforms available for an author to build a website with as little expense as possible (this is not for the select few who have marketing budgets). Now comes the question that those of us authors and authors-in-waiting wrestle with: should I or shouldn't I blog? 

In 2007, I gave a talk at a conference entitled Who's Afraid of the World Wide Web. I said I couldn't understand why authors didn't take advantage of the wealth of free tools to promote themselves on the web. Like blogging.

In 2007, blog trackers were claiming between 50 to 112 million blogs and authors were still asking me "So .. you're a web designer, what is this thing called a web blog?" Four years later, it's no longer a question ... more of a lament. "I want to start blogging but I don't know where to start".

In 2007 I might have agreed that it was a good idea. Now, in 2011, with so many author blogs in the blogosphere ... is it still a good way to stand out?