BUILD A STRONG FOUNDATION TO CONNECT WITH YOUR READERS
Establish a connection with your audience, build relationships, and deliver engaging, personalized content to increase ROI. Open source software such as Magento, Drupal, and Life Ray enable you to do all this and much more.
In our blog post, Your Book should be First Seen to be Bought, we talked about how publishers need to make their books visible in the vast sea of content that exists today. Before diving into social media or creating apps to connect with readers, publishers need to check if their very foundation is strong enough or not.
The foundation we are referring to here is your website. Let’s look at what constitutes the building blocks of an ideal foundation.
Responsive Design
This is one of the most basic requirements today. Your readers are not only using their desktops or laptops to access your site, but also their tablets and smartphones. When companies realized the importance of smartphones, most created a separate website that was optimized for mobiles. However, instead of that, you can create a website that is responsive – meaning the same site can be accessed from mobile devices. This design also enhances user experience, increasing the chances of a revisit.
Easy to Discover
Once your site is easy to access from any device, you need to do an SEO check. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that SEO is merely a thing of the past. If you want your readers to discover your brand and your books, you must stay on the first page of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), if not top them. SEO is an investment with long-term benefits. After all, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results, reports an agency. And 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine – if you don’t open the door when opportunity knocks, you will find thousands of others who do so and succeed.
Social Media Integration
As a publisher, you need to make your presence felt on social media and use it as a means to promote your authors’ books and content. Ensure that your website has built-in social media capabilities that allow you to not only engage with your audience, but also “listen” to trends and know what people are saying about you. The better your listening skills, the more you will understand what your readers want to read. Use this data to make editorial as well as marketing decisions that are more profitable. Social media integration also allows you to display you and your readers’ and authors’ tweets & posts anywhere on your website in real-time, thereby increasing online engagement.
Interactive and Engaging
While publishers are beginning to realize the importance of getting and keeping the attention of readers and potential customers, most have not taken much action. While they sporadically post on social media and have built apps, publishers have made minor changes to their website. This is quite a big mistake. Your readers today are bombarded with various kinds of content – compelling stories are accompanied by moving images (literally and figuratively) and/or videos. Do you know the value of one video in terms of words? A staggering 1.8 million, claims Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. So make your website more interactive with attractive images, videos, animation or even augmented reality (AR).
Real-time Marketing and Personalization
Your website should integrate big data and analytics to understand each site visitor’s method of interaction, bounce rate, and browsing and buying patterns. The ability to identify an individual based on data will enable you to give the person a personalized user experience. For instance, if a shopper has previously bought a mystery novel from your site, then other mystery novels should be prominently displayed immediately after the purchase and also when the shopper visits again. You can also utilize the big data insights to send targeted promotions to your readers based on what they previously bought or “liked” on social media.
D2C
The price wars between publishers and retailers have led the former to try the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) model. Instead of selling through a middle man, publishers are attempting to sell directly to readers. If you choose you sell from your website, it needs to act as an effective salesman for you. Your product page should comprise multiple images of your book, a sample chapter that can be read easily, name of your book and other data such as the number of pages, price etc., a compelling review, most importantly – user reviews. Don’t worry about a few negative reviews; they merely indicate that you’re a confident publisher who believes in your work. An online chat system, a chance to chat live with authors, a guest checkout option, multiple payment options, and having the shortest possible route to checkout will boost your sales and generate a new revenue system for you.
What do you think is necessary when you create or redesign your website?
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