Revamping My Publisher Site

In Today’s Journal

* Revamping My Publisher Site
* The Process to Effect This Change
* The Upshot
* The Wes Crowley Rebrand Revisited
* Of Interest

Revamping My Publisher Site

Yesterday I mentioned the work process involved with rebranding a series.

After I posted that update, I started revamping my publisher site. That’s actually more of an evolution than a revamping, and it’s a lot more intensive.

But Potential Buyer’s click-through process—from discovering StoneThread Publishing to buying a book—is now streamlined and more user friendly.

Previously, the potential buyer’s experience went like this:

1. Potential Buyer finds StoneThread Publishing
2. PB clicks a genre item in the menu
3. PB is transported to the genre page, which contains images of covers in that genre
4. PB clicks cover image
5. PB is transported to the dedicated book page (but still on StoneThread Publishing.
6. There he sees a slightly larger version of the cover and the book description.
7. If he’s thinking of buying, PB still has to choose a buy link from among Amazon, D2D’s Books2Read (which leads to several stores like Apple, Kobo, B&N, et al), or my online discount store. Then he has to
8. Choose which link to follow, and then
9. Put up with whatever the buying process is at that site.

All well and good. But the point is, the potential buyer couldn’t simply click the cover and go to a shopping cart to check out.

Worse yet, all of those buy links were presented in yet more text at the bottom of the page.

That process was confusing and had way too many clicks. (Not to mention it served as advertising for Amazon and all the other retail stores out there, something they would never do for us.)

Now the potential buyer’s experience goes like this:

1. Potential Buyer finds StoneThread Publishing
2. PB clicks a genre item in the menu
3. PB is transported to the genre page, which contains images of covers in that genre
4. PB clicks cover image
5. PB is transported to the dedicated book page at my online discount store.
6. PB sees a much larger cover, a clear book description, and a Buy Now button. So now PB can add the book to his cart and check out, all from that page.

So the first four steps of the process remain the same. But now the PB is transported directly to my own store as the purchase site. He saves time, and he can make his purchase and save a dollar in the process.

Of course, he can still buy the book at Amazon or elsewhere if he wants, but who wouldn’t rather get the same product for a dollar less?

I expected all of this to take a few days, but I managed to get most of it done yesterday.

Today I have only to upload all of my 5- and 10-story short story collections to Payhip, add the Payhip URLs to the collections pages on StoneThread Publishing, and I’m done.

The Process to Effect This Change

First, for the Wes Crowley saga rebranding, I had to upload the new thumbnails to the Wes Crowley sage page on my publisher site. That took only about an hour, including first copying all the newly branded “180” size covers to a dedicated folder from the larger Crowley folder in my Dropbox.

The bigger task was linking all the covers on the series, saga, or genre pages at StoneThread Publishing to the individual book page at my online discount store.

To get everything up and running, I had to link each thumbnail cover image on StoneThread Publishing to the individual book page at my discount store.

I saved time in the process by first copying and pasting all the discount store’s URLs into separate text documents for Blackwell Ops, Wes Crowley, SF, and so on.

When that was done, I only had to transfer each URL in order from the list to the code on the genre page.

The Upshot

Once I’ve finished this process by adding my short story collections later today, all of my thumbnail covers will be linked directly to my online discount store, making it easier for the customer to buy.

Finally, I’ll also delete all of the individual book pages on StoneThread Publishing and, more importantly, all of the bandwidth-eating 300-pixel-wide cover images from StoneThread Publishing.

Cutting that excess will cause all of my websites to load more quickly and run more smoothly.

The Wes Crowley Rebrand Revisited

If you’d like to see the rebranded Wes Crowley covers I talked about yesterday, visit the Wes Crowley Saga page at my discount store.

All of the covers are now branded to the series with the genre-appropriate cover art and the black ribbon at the top.

Then the ribbon at the bottom brands my author name with the tag “Award-winning author of westerns, SF, thrillers, and more”. And of course, clicking any cover on that page will now take you directly to my online discount store.

While you’re there, you can also browse the menu items, each of which leads to covers in other genres, sagas, and series.

Just a reminder: I’m still wide-open to fielding questions on writing or publishing. Simply email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

8 Outside-the-Box Book Marketing Ideas You HAVE to See

A Brief Botanical Study of Writer Defense Mechanisms Do you belong to one of these “holly” groups? Or do you believe in yourself, trust your characters and love running through their stories with them, and defend your work against all comers?