Author Website Designs

Websites (should) contain clear goals (known as call-to-actions) for their visitors. An author’s website typically has a call-to-action focusing primarily on promoting and selling the author’s book/s.

No, it will not.

Having your own website will make selling books easier. It will make connecting with new readers easier. However, if a website is built and then forgotten about, it will not be of much use.

There are 3 main costs levied in the design of your new author website.

1. Domain renewal. (Paid yearly)
2. Website hosting. (Paid monthly.)
3. Design costs. (Typically paid for once-off.)

 About website costs

The domain and hosting costs are both recurring costs, paid for as long as the website remains active.

The exact amount paid each month, or year depends on who helps you. An author could safely budget ZAR 320/ 19 USD each month for hosting of the website and a similar amount paid yearly to retain the domain name.

Our once-off website design costs start from R10 700 or $670.

These are the “hidden” costs that often surprise the author, after the website is completed. Rather than think of them as dishonesty from the designer, see them as somewhat technical topics that many authors may not have considered.

• Updates to the website content of any kind, after the website has been completed.
• Regular, essential maintenance of the website backend.
• Technical SEO setup.
• eCommerce setup. 
• Measurement of website visitor traffic using Google Analytics.

Think of your website as a living platform. Content (new books, blog posts, events) often needs to be added, removed or updated. Not many authors have a website that is set up and left to fend for itself. Adside from these regular updates, there is also a need to “maintain” a website. Regular maintenance to your website’s “nuts and bolts” (core theme and plugin files) are essential to ensure the website operates both smoothly and safely. Regular maintenance helps mitigate risks or bugs that may unintentionally provide bad people access to your website pages.

Here is my suggested layout for an author landing page design.

You can see examples of my author website designs here.

• What domain name do you want? (Please check that it is available.)
• Can we also host your website? (Charged for monthly.)
• Please share up to 3 examples of website designs you would like us to draw inspiration from? What do you like most from each of the provided examples?
• Do you have all the text that we would need? (Think blog articles, About the Author, About the Book text etc?)
• Do you have all the images needed? (Higher-quality or resolution images are recommended.)

We typically ask for up to 4 weeks to complete our standard designs. Work will only start once we have everything needed from you. (Pictures, text and website examples etc.)

Our website design services do not include copyrighting or graphic design services by default. All images and text should be shared by the author before we are able to begin our work.

Also see our “Hidden Costs” FAQ item.

Our monthly website offering rolls the domain, hosting, updates AND maintenance fees into a more manageable monthly instalment option. This is perfect for the author who is building a busier online platform that will need regular updates.

Instead of paying for several invoices, a single monthly payment will ensure your growing website receives regular maintenance, support and updates. This is perfect for an author of several books, or with a growing business behind the book, such as a business or life coach.

About monthly billing

• Updates carried out to your website will need to be carefully managed and won’t include major changes such as adding new pages, services, eCommerce functionality etc.
• Opting for monthly billing of the website will be a minimum 12 months period.
• Only an option for websites that are hosted by us.

By default, all our websites are designed using WordPress. Want us to design in something different? Please check this with us first, just to be safe.

Yeah, I love and recommend it. It’s free and simpler to understand than many other CMS (Content Managements Systems) such as Joomla or Drupal. Easy to navigate, WordPress also has a host of free tutorials online for an author looking to upskill.

My favourite template for building author websites is the paid-for Divi template created by Elegant Themes. All our website examples shown are built within the Divi template. (Note, this is my affiliate link for the theme.)

Of course! Once our design work has been completed and signed off, you are then free to access and edit the website with full or “administrator” access. With great power comes great responsibility: If you break something we may need to quote to fix it.

We do offer website design training (charged per hour), should you want to polish your skills.

Sure, we can help you improve a website, even if we didn’t build it ourselves.

Yes we can! Apart from designing websites, we can reserve a new domain and host the website for you too. Please note that our hosting fees are charged for monthly for as long as the website remains active.

We are happy to start your website process with a deposit of just 60% of the quoted total. The remainder of the fee will fall due before the final handover of your website.

Yes! We offer WordPress website design training for those of you who want to get your hands dirty. This will be quoted for by the hour.

Yes. We can include ecommerce functionality as part of your author website, this will be quoted for separately. It will require that you create an account with a local payment gateway such as Payfast. Let us know upfront how many products you intended to sell from the website.

Not by default. Whilst we can help shape your website with SEO fundamentals in mind, this will need to be quoted for separately.