A Website Makeover for Canadian Author Kathy Stinson

Kathy Stinson has been a well-known author since the publication of her first book in 1982. Red is Best is considered a children’s classic, and she’s had new titles published nearly every year since.

When I created Kathy’s original website in 1999, the home page looked like this:

It’s gone through many transformations since then – more than I can even remember – to incorporate information about new books and services, reflect changing design trends, and take advantage of technological advances.

Background

As her latest design was implemented in 2012, it was somewhat dated. Since it wasn’t a responsive WordPress theme, a plugin was required to make it mobile-friendly. In addition, design tweaks had been made here and there, resulting in a less than polished look.

By 2017, the site had grown to 110 pages, including several for each of her books. The blog had at least 14 categories and over 500 tags. As a result, navigation had become a bit of a nightmare.

Because each version of the website was built on the previous one, and due to the number of pages, neither of us had ever taken the time to go through the entire site with a fine-toothed comb.

We both agreed that it was time for a fresh start.

Approach

When creating a website or other marketing materials, one of the most important steps is to identify your target market. Kathy has always struggled with this, but an in-depth exploration helped her determine that she should focus on the people who buy her books (teachers, librarians, and parents) rather than the children and teens who read them. This helped her to fine-tune her message accordingly.

Next, we went through the site together, identifying blog categories that were no longer relevant, pages that could be combined, and much more. Kathy also worked on her own to rewrite much of the content.

A review of the blog tags revealed that none of them were particularly useful in terms of helping readers to find related content, so we decided to delete all of them.

The blog was previously featured on the home page so readers could immediately access new content. Although Kathy’s still blogging regularly, we decided that wasn’t the most important part of the site. The home page now focuses on what’s most important: the books, the author, and the latest news. A special section features a selection of her best blog posts from each category.

I also set up a shopping cart to allow purchasers of Kathy’s ebook, Writing Picture Books: What Works and What Doesn’t, to download it immediately. Previously it had been sent out manually by email.

Results

By consolidating information, eliminating pages for out of print titles, and removing material that’s no longer relevant, we were able to reduce the number of pages from 110 to 36 – without losing anything important. Kathy can now spend less time responding to emails, as visitors can find the information they need more quickly and easily. Fewer pages also means less work keeping the information on those pages current!

Having identified her target market as adults meant a more “grown up” professional design than any previous versions of the site too.

I’m proud to show off this latest addition to my portfolio, as well as Kathy’s comments on the project:

“Working together with Janet to create my new website was such a pleasure. How the whole process would work was clear from the start. At each stage she was both ready with ideas for making it appealing and effective, and open to my ideas. And she was diligent about solving technical issues that go far beyond my understanding until everything was just as we wanted it. “Good enough” is not in Janet’s vocabulary!”

Kathy has quite a few new opportunities on the horizon and I’m sure she’ll be sharing details on her blog when the time is right. There’s no question that she’s a highly skilled writer, but I’d like to think her shiny new website may have something to do with it too!

Are you thinking about a website makeover or a brand new website? Let’s talk soon!