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Manda Scott

Internationally bestselling author

The Challenge

Manda’s old site had become outdated, functioning more as a brochure than an active book promotion platform. The blog wasn’t set up to be easy to use or to navigate —  and the whole site was slow to load due to large audio files (the first chapter of each book) being hosted directly on the site.

The homepage wasn’t set up to promote the backlist as well as the latest book and as Manda was keen to promote older books that are still selling well it needed a strategic rethink as well as a new look.

Site security wasn’t as good as it could be due to poor technical maintenance, so for the new site Manda wanted a solution that was easy to maintain and gave her complete peace of mind.

” I wanted a site that actually worked — attracting new readers and keeping them engaged.”
MANDA SCOTT
 

The Solution

DESIGN THAT GETS RESULTS
The design of the site as a whole was conceived with Manda’s primary goal in mind — she wanted more traffic to her site, more sign-ups to her email list and more sales of back list titles.

The magazine-style layout is bold and clean and allows carefully chosen articles (based on phrases that people are searching for on Google) to be featured wherever we want them on a page.  ‘You may also like‘ functionality is employed wherever possible to keep people reading. Each article is optimised for SEO which resulted in a number of them achieving page one Google ranking almost immediately, above broadsheet articles on similar topics.

A SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY IN ACTION
To date, Manda’s piece entitled Drugs, Druids and the Real Britannia has been read 10,000 times and over 10% of those new readers explored multiple pages on the site – including book sales pages. Sales of the first title in Manda’s eighteen year old Boudica series jumped to 3800 in the month we first ran this. Sales have stayed at three times previous monthly amounts.
GIVING THE READER WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR
Many of Manda’s books have over 20 media reviews, but given that readers are often sceptical of these and rely more on Amazon reviews when looking for what to read next, we decided to limit what we displayed on the site to 4 per book. These top reviews, selected to include a range of UK and US broadsheet and magazine articles, are displayed under a big cinema-poster-style heading. Each heading is created using an image relevant to the content of the book so that the title sets the scene to open up the world of the book on the rest of the page.

This frees up key real estate on the page for articles giving more insight into the world of the books rather than long lists of reveiws that visitors are unlikely to read.

BETTER ABOUT PAGES

Because About pages are the second most visited page on any author site, we decided to take an innovative approach with a range of pieces designed to give the reader more than the usual author bio. These articles – Real Life, Political Life, Teaching Life – have proved immensly popular and have shown that getting more traffic to your author website and keeping those visitors engaged  is eminently possible if you put the readers’ needs first.

“Traffic to my website has increased beyond anything we imagined and this, together with some strategic digital marketing, has translated directly into massively increased sales on backlist titles. “
MANDA SCOTT
 

Site Features

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Bold, magazine-style design with cinematic heading using images relating to the books.

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Landing pages to promote free short stories - key to increasing sales of backlist and latest titles

Careful on-page SEO optimisation & full SEO strategy behind choice of articles

You-May-Also-Like functionality across the site.

Blog functionality used across the site (not just on the blog pages) to display book related articles.

QUESTIONS ABOUT A WEBSITE OR PROMOTING YOUR BOOKS?

LET’S TALK!

I’m Faith Tilleray. I’m here at my computer most days and welcome any contact from human beings – particularly the special kind who write books. Pick up the phone anytime during work hours. 

You can call me on 01588 660221 or 07891 449 007

Alternatively, drop me a line on faith@aisforauthor.com