01 — Project details
The aim for this project was to create an author website with a working online store, selling the author's series of romystery books. The author requested the site have a floral theme, be easy for visitors to navigate, and be easy for her to edit without help. The online store should include product descriptions for each book. There should also be an about page describing the author, a contact page to let visitors know where they can get in touch, and a blog so that the author can update fans with news by posting regular blog posts.
02 — Creative process
I used Google Sites to create the site, as it is easier to edit a website builder than using html if you only have limited experience with that.
I kept to the requested floral theme, giving the site a fuchsia purple colour scheme throughout the landing page, about me, contact and shop pages.
There are 'Buy Now' buttons throughout the website to provide easy access for visitors looking to buy products without having to search for the shop.
To provide the viewer with the most important information (the newest book release) I put a banner on the top of the site which reads 'NEW RELEASE: Strawberry Daiquiri' with a button allowing the visitor to pre-order the newest release. The idea of this banner is that it will be easily edited by the author whenever there's a new book coming out. The banner stays across the top of the site, no matter what page they are browsing.
Using Ecrid, I created an online shop for each of the novels, and included product descriptions.
H J Tarrant author site homepage.
03 — Results
The website did everything that was in the brief, the author was very happy with the ease of editing, and the site is ready to go live when the author is ready.