I reviewed Malcolm Gladwell's website to show you how to create a great author website

I truly love Malcolm Gladwell's website. It's an exemplary model of how an author's online presence can be strikingly simple yet immensely powerful. Just as Malcolm consistently teaches us through his writing, "less is more" and "beauty resides in simplicity" - this website perfectly encapsulates his philosophy. If you're an aspiring author creating your first website, this piece will contain numerous gems you can apply. There's an abundance of praiseworthy elements to Malcolm's site, so let's begin by examining what I admire most about it.

Featured Book Section

Many author websites don't bother to have a section where they feature their "upcoming" or recently published book. This section is often referred to as the "Hero" section. It's the first section at the top, right below your navigation bar. This area is also known as a hot zone, where users spend most of their time. You should always shove the high priority information at the top, and the low priority information, such as your footer, at the bottom. The goal of a website is to engage your readers, and to drive SALES!

Good Performance & SEO

Separate Book List Page

For many authors who are using sites like Wordpress, Wix, and Squarespace to create their website, this part is often left out (among other things). The reason is that sites like Wordpress would restrict you to using their templates, or force you to design a whole new page yourself. Although this offers you much flexibility, the truth is.... authors don't want to spend all day designing 100 pages. WHY WOULD YOU?! You should be spending your precious time writing instead. Sites like Wordpress and Wix is great if all you need is a single web page. You can choose from an existing template, and spend 1 to 2 hours lightly designing it. Or design your website from blank, and spend 5 to 10 hours. It will get the job done.

There are many reasons why you would want a separate page for book list. First reason is that you have a separate URL path, for example 'https://www.gladwellbooks.com/landing-page/malcolm-gladwell-books/'. This is beneficial since it offers more semantic, and makes it easier for web indexer like Google to pick up. It also allows your readers to share specifically your book list. Another big reason is web page real estate. As you write more books, poetries, blogs...etc If you throw everything on to your landing page, it will grow to be very long. Then you will be forced to create a separate page. Which means that if you are using Wordpress, you need to spend that extra 3 hours creating a separate page and designing it.

Separate Book Detail Page

For the same reasons you would want to have separate book list page, you also want separate book detail page. Take a look at how much rich information this detail page provides. There's not only book description summaries, but also links to where readers can purchase the book. You can also add excerpts here as well. What about reviews? Those are important too! You can't fit all these on one landing page. This book detail page is clean and simple!

Areas Of Improvements

This is a pretty good example of what a good author website should look like. If you just keep it clean and simple, you've already won half the battle. However, there're a few minor areas of improvements that I would like to point out.

This is the mobile view on Iphone XR, and as you can see, there is just too much padding in the about section. It squeezes the about me to the point where each row is only 4 words. Though this is not a major issue, it is also very easy to fix.

On mobile, the books appear way too small. There are also no titles on any of these books, which means that readers must try to read the title off of the small image of the book cover.

Another minor issue that is easy to fix is the padding of the navigation and the featured book section.

Try Myauthor.space For Your Website

We are not perfect as well, but we try our best everyday to create the best platform for authors. If you are creating your new author website, why don't you give us a try for free? If there's a bug, we will fix it. If you offer us feedback, we will improve. If there's a feature you really need, we will work hard to make it happen.