If You Have An Author Website, Can I Ask A Question?

Mostly, I work with corporations but I love working with creatives. Because they burn with a passion that’s rare in the corporate world. And I think creatives struggle with this stuff more.

On Wednesday night, my client called. Can you build us another wordpress she asked. Sure, I said. Um, but there’s a little issue, she said. Okay, I laughed, what’s the issue? We need it by end of day Friday, she said and then we both laughed.

So that’s how I spent Thursday. Building a wordpress site.

First thing that happened after installing the wordpress on the hosting account is that the login didn’t work so I had to open a support ticket. Ugh.

Then I updated a pre-installed plugin and the homepage changed to one line of text that said this website has a critical error, please contact the administrator. Since I’m the administrator, I just fixed the stupid thing because I knew why it happened.

Right now it’s sitting there, pretty but empty and I kind of want to make a joke about knowing people like that but I won’t.

So, today I’ll add content and my client will be happy and I will be happy that she’s happy because I really and truly adore her as a human being and isn’t that such a rare and wonderful thing to find in the work world?

Most people who have a website stop when the front end is visually compelling and has content because conversion tracking and performance metrics aren’t their thing. Sometimes, they even stop before it’s visually compelling because the art of applied aesthetics is not their sphere of knowledge, nevermind response rates.

But here’s the thing. It’s like running blind. A tone deaf person walking into a room and just talking, talking, talking, without ever once reading the room. You know?

Like, if you stood in front of a podium and started talking and the minute you opened your mouth people got up and left, it would give you some pause, you know?

You wouldn’t just say send in more people. You wouldn’t keep talking when the last person left, talking at the walls oblivious that they all left. You’d stop and think about who the right people are and how you can get in front of them. You know?

But that blindness? It happens on the internet all day, every day.

And I get it. Not everyone knows this stuff. Most people don’t know this stuff because they know other stuff that I don’t know. They know how to play music that makes me feel so deeply I lack words. Or write books that keep me awake long after the entire neighborhood has gone dark and I don’t care. Don’t care. Reading in the dark.

They make art or grow coffee or design handbags or do something I don’t.

Mostly, I work with corporations but I love working with creatives. Because they burn with a passion that’s rare to find in the corporate world. And I think creatives struggle with this stuff more than corporations, mostly due to lack of budget.

People always think they need traffic. Traffic, traffic, traffic.

If only they knew how to get more traffic and I want to grab them by the shoulders and say no, stop. Look, 60% of the people who come to your website are gone in under 30 seconds and of the few who remain, less than 5% look at more than one page and even if they do look at three pages or five, only one out of every hundred signs up for your list and despite that they didn’t bail instantly you are still never going to see them again. We’ve got to fix this first.

But look. Look at this one page. This is where everyone that sticks around comes from. See? We need to tap into more of what this one page has. If that page exists. It doesn’t always, but it’s like finding a tiny bit of magic when it does.

For the most part, people who have websites are oblivious to all of that. Because they don’t use stats or they look at them and see a confusing jumble of information and they don’t know what matters and what doesn’t, so they think the number of visitors they have is what matters. It’s not. Not yet.

And to throw yet another match on the bonfire, I read an interview with a guy who works at a a successful publishing company. He said they don’t really want their authors to have a website. Because most of them don’t reflect well on anyone.

I felt that. Felt it in my damn bones.

This is stuff I’m going to be writing more about in the new year.

But for now, I have a question. If you have a website, do you have a stats program you use and understand? Maybe that’s two questions. Do you use a stats program? Do you understand what’s important in stats and what isn’t?

Maybe we can add a third question. Do you feel like your website is actually working for you and why or why not? Talk to me. Tell me where you’re at.

---

On Medium…

• A Beautiful Little Book About What’s Really Important In Life

• Stunning Writing And A Little Boy Named Bird

• If I Could Go Back and Tell Myself One Thing, This Would Be It

---

Monday is New Years. Can you believe another whole year is gone? Time just marches on, doesn’t it? As they say, seize the day. Here’s to great things in 2024.

If you enjoy my writing, please click the heart or share this post. And thanks.

xo,
Linda