Introduction and advice sought.

Well if you think about it, books are products.

So much can be corrected in business by using landing pages to sell specific products, rather than having visitors arrive at a mishmash home page and be greeted by the uncertainty of what to do next.

One of the few times the mishmash approach is good is an instance like my own home page, which is designed to get the visitor lost in consuming content...which they do. They know they're there to learn more about me and they're not sure how to do that--so they click on lots of things and start consuming. That "I know why I'm here" starting point factor is the key difference.

In an ecommerce situation, on the other hand, that's a bad idea. Having a visitor appear on a home page displaying a bunch of physical products, and not knowing why or how they arrived there, is a recipe for instant confusion...and therefore departure.

Start thinking in terms of solving a specific problem for a specific person, and that will lead you to the right solution.

Hi Robert,

Cracking advice from Jason, and I think he's spot on. I'll just add some of my own thoughts.

For well over two decades, I've been writing novels, novellas, shorts, and screenplays. Recently, I began writing marketing eBooks.

So let's look at the details.

1. You've written the first in a series of books.
2. I'm guessing that you write for the fiction market.
3. You have an author website.
4. You want to know if you also need an eCommerce website.

My advice?

You just need the one website - your author website.

The trick is to marry Jason's advice into the design of your author site. In other words, you need the usual suspects (biography, blog, bibliography, videos, images, events, and so forth) coupled with a means of removing the clutter and focusing the consumer on making purchases.

When Joe Reader arrives on your website, you don't want to present him with information that will get in the way of you making sales. That's Jason's major point. The trick is to dilute the experience (and funnel Joe) so that you take his hand and walk him over to the Buy Now button.

If you present unnecessary information? Joe will bounce away.

The general solution here (in terms of an author website) is to use a combination:

1. Focus the homepage on your latest book.
2. Use landing pages for each of your other books.

This way, you can present everything on the one website. It's efficient marketing.

It sounds like you're off to a great start. All the best!

Cheers,

Tom