How To Choose a Web Designer For Your Author Website

It’s time to start taking your author career seriously.

And every serious author will tell you the same thing:

The first step is to solidify your online presence, and the best way to start is with an author website.

But who has the time when there are books to be written?

If you’re looking to hire a professional website designer for your author website, we’ve got a comprehensive guide below to help you make a decision that best serves your needs.

Why is Website Design Important?

The internet is over 30 years old now. People are shopping, socializing, dating, networking, learning, and doing business online now more than ever.

There’s an old saying, “first impressions last.”

Virtually everyone is online, and without a solid online presence, you may not be making the best first impression.

How do you think they’ll react if you don’t have a website or your website is a poor representation of you as an author?

Your website, or lack of one, instantly tells your people if you’re worth their time and money.

If you’re struggling with book sales or selling your services as an author, a new website, or a website upgrade may be just the thing you need to reach your goals.

The Role of Your Author Website in Book Marketing

In your digital book marketing strategy, your website is the star of the show. It’s the piece of internet real estate that belongs to no one but you.

It’s also the only place online fully controlled by no one but you.

Marketing online has everything to do with controlling attention.

With all the digital noise of social media and other books on the timeline, your website is the only place you can easily direct people’s attention where you want it.

This is why when you click on a social media or online advert, the first place you get sent to is their website. Digital marketers know that once you are there, there is a much higher chance of you engaging with their brand and becoming a buyer.

Another important reason to have a good author website is so that people can find you and find out more about your books or services quickly and easily.

Along with finding you, your website should take your people one step further. It should inspire confidence in your author brand and authority.

A well-set-up, attractive author website can do this for you while you sleep.

Choosing the Best Author Website Designer

When choosing the best possible author website designer or company, it helps to understand as much as possible about what you really need.

You can then find a provider who best answers these needs.

Your Author Website Requirements List

Before looking for an author web designer, list your requirements.

The list should look something like this:

• What will your website focus on— news? Your books? Your authority? An author website with clear branding has a better chance of leaving a strong impression on visitors.
• What do you want visitors to do on your site— Buy books? Sign up to your author newsletter? Share your content? Get in touch?
• Who is your target audience? Other authors? Young fantasy readers? What are the keywords and topics these readers love to talk about?
• Have you got the copy (text) that will go on your site, or will it need to be written? Copywriting is a skill that will greatly increase how well your website conveys your brand and message. You could always have it professionally edited or rewritten.
• Do you have professional images (photographs, graphics, or illustrations) for your site? Or will they need to be provided by the web designer or agency?
• Will you need any special content created to make your website even more amazing? For example, custom-made videos or animations, infographics to visually display your genre’s atmosphere, etc.
• What special functions will you need? Ability to buy your book directly, online booking, background video, etc.
• How many pages do you think it should have? Think about a rough idea of how your site could be laid out and which different pages it should have. Having some idea of this will help you get correct quotes and good designs more quickly.
• Will you need an easy-to-use blog on your site that you can post blogs to? (Hint: You should have one!)
• What other author websites do you really like that could inspire and help you decide on your own design? You don’t have to do this one, but it helps.
• What is your budget, and how flexible is it? Consider your book marketing budget as a whole as well as the fact that this is an investment in your future, then decide on flexibility.

Writing down all these ideas will help you better understand what you’re looking for.

Now that you know what your requirements are, you can more easily look for an author website designer or agency that can provide these features.

How Do You Know Which Web Designer Will Best Fulfill Your Needs?

1. Their Own Website Design

A good place to start, to decide if you want to use an author website designer, is to look at their own website.

Does it look modern? Is it clean and clear? Do you instantly understand what they’re about and what they offer? Or is it confusing and doesn’t make you interested in using their services?

If a website designer doesn’t even take care to make their own website amazing, how likely are they to make sure yours is?

2. Their Website Portfolio

Take a look through their online portfolio on their website. If they don’t have one, consider moving on.

Check out the other websites they’ve built.

• Do they communicate the author’s brand and genre?
• Do they feel clean with a clear atmosphere throughout?
• Have they created sites with the same or similar features to what you wrote down in your requirements list above?
• Do these author websites look good on any device? If you’re not browsing on your phone, open up the website on your phone. Is it still easy to read?

3. Website Must-Haves

There are certain features you must include in your author website design to make it really effective at marketing your books online.

Make sure you choose a supplier who cares about these features. We’ll go over each of them here and why they’re so important.

Speed

A website needs to load fast. The faster the better.

A study by Amazon found that for every extra second it took their site to load, they lost 10% of their shoppers!

Website speed also influences how easily Google sends people to your page through their searches.

It is easier for your author website to come up in Google’s search results if your site is fast. You want to make sure your site loads as close to instantly as possible.

Mobile and tablet friendly (AKA responsive website design)

We’re sure you’ve come across websites on your phone that are difficult to read.

The text is so tiny that you have to zoom in to see what’s going on. The tiny buttons are hard to press with your thumb. It’s painful, right?

There are so many different types of screen sizes out there today: from phones to tablets to enormous retina screens and everything in between.

In fact, most people today use phones to browse the internet.

Author websites need to be built so that they look good and are readable, no matter what device is being used to view them.

This is called responsive website design. The website’s design responds to the screen size of the viewing device.

Check if a website designer is creating responsive websites by opening up a website they’ve built (or their own website) on your computer.

Take a corner of the browser window and drag it to make it wider and narrower, like in the example above.

Do the images and text on the page still look good and read easily as you change the width of the browser window? Is there a mobile-friendly navigation button, like the hamburger menu above?

If not, do not use them to design your website! You’ll be missing out on book sales from readers who can’t read your website on mobile or tablet!

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means doing everything possible to make readers searching with Google find your website.

The goal is for your website to rank in a top position on a Google search results page for search terms related to your author name.

If someone clicks on your site when they’re searching for “author of X series,” they’re most likely really close to making a purchase!

We’ve found that people who come to our own site from Google spend twice as long on our site as traffic coming from channels like social media.

When someone is scrolling through Facebook, they’re probably not there to find out about a specific need they have.

They’re just checking out their friends and interests. You may catch their attention with a post or ad, but it’s usually just for a moment.

With Google searches, it’s another thing entirely. That person basically asked Google, “show me the author of a book I’m interested in…”

If your website comes up right away and isn’t too far from the top, they’re going to click on you.

Make sure the website designer you select includes SEO as part of their package. We suggest checking this out for yourself.

Even if it says they do SEO on their website, once you get into a discussion with them, ask to see the results they have produced for their clients.

You need to see client websites ranking high on the first page of Google for search words that match what their business offers.

Another way to check if a website designer knows SEO is to ask them about how it works. If they don’t want to tell you or make it seem really confusing, they probably don’t know what they’re doing.

It’s important to check if a website designer or agency actually does SEO and not just take their word for it.

SEO is technical. Some website companies don’t understand it themselves, and they know most of their clients don’t either. So they say they do it, but actually, they don’t.

Email Sign-up

One of the most powerful digital channels for expanding your author business and book sales is email marketing.

One of the biggest challenges in email marketing is growing your email list.

A great website can instantly change how quickly you get email sign-ups on your site.

Ask to see evidence of increased email sign-ups from previous websites built by any designer you’re considering.

MONTHLY EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS FROM WEBSITE SIGN-UPS ONLY

Fantasy author, Melissa McPhail, rapidly accelerated her email list growth from the website we built for her.

E-commerce website design

(Skip this section if you don’t want to sell books online directly)

If you’re looking to cut out the middle man on your book sales, make sure your website provider is skilled in setting this up.

Browse through their portfolio to view any e-commerce websites they have built.

Check out this author’s website and evaluate how user-friendly their online shop is. Would you feel confident buying on this site?

Website next steps… Digital Marketing

Something to consider in choosing a website design company is what other digital marketing tools they offer, other than website design.

Your book marketing campaigns will mostly involve your author website. You may need website changes in the future as part of a book promotion campaigns.

It’s going to be easier (and probably cheaper) for the developers that built the website to make the changes.

If they also offer other types of digital marketing like email marketing, Facebook ads or content marketing it will make your marketing efforts simpler.

You won’t have two different agencies to coordinate with, or have to turn over the website design to someone else who isn’t familiar with how the website is built.

Understanding Website Design Costs

When looking for an affordable website design package, how much you pay depends on several things:

• The number of pages you need on the website.
• The quality and style of the website: world-class, premium, simple but elegant, etc.
• Extra features you need: E-commerce, custom-made content, etc.
• Any copywriting needed.
• If the website needs to be connected to any other software systems.

Another thing that will influence cost is the experience and reputation of the website designer or company you hire. Like with most things, you pay more for quality.

For a more comprehensive break down, check out: How Much Does an Author Website Cost in 2025?

Never Choose a Website Designer on Price Alone

You can pay almost nothing for a website if you really want to. You’re most likely going to get a website that looks like you paid almost nothing.

The best website companies know how valuable their services are and how much money they can make their clients. Their prices reflect this real value.

Consider what your return on investment on a good website is going to be. Consider the message you will send about your own value with an excellently designed website.

Don’t just find the cheapest option available.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”

Conclusion

We hope this helped you understand website design enough to choose a designer that’s best for your needs as an author.

If you’re still looking for the right fit, we’d love to have a chat! We’ve built websites for debut authors and bestsellers, so we know what authors need to improve their online presence.

Inquire here so we can get in touch and help you establish (or boost) your digital brand!