You might see a lot of other sites using sliders or a “magazine style” on their homepage. They work for bigger sites with tons of content because they don’t care what readers look at. They get paid per view through advertising – so they just try to hook attention and get readers to stay on the page a few more minutes.
That can be useful, but it isn’t really what you want, and it’s easy to do it wrong.
You want readers to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, and start reading what you want them to read. You also want to control the experience – you need to decide what action you want them to take and you need to guide their actions by telling them what you want them to do (probably – buy your book, or at least sign up to your reading list.
Sliders are only a good idea if you have so many books you want to show them all at once, click here for series one, click here for series two… but even then there are better ways to go about it.
Magazines are just too crowded and busy, and usually require lots of images, which can look great is some places (top of blog) but easily become too bold and messy.
A lot of author’s homepages are a big mess and scare people away, and that’s what you want to avoid. You don’t NEED to “catch their attention” with images and colors – they are already on your site! There’s nowhere else to look or be distracted, unless YOU distract them from yourself.
Hook their attention with strong headlines, a super “about me” section, your amazing book cover, reviews or optin offer.
