Soft Launching my Website
Finding the right platform, writing copy and checking it works on mobile!
Since I first went on submission to publishers, I knew that — someday — I would need to have a website. I started planning what I wanted straight away, but between feeling overwhelmed by actually building the website, having to draft the copy and sort out my branding, the whole process has taken about fifteen months.
However, my author website — www.helenjonesauthor.com — is now live!
At the moment, there are a limited number of pages (Home, About, Blog and Contact) pending the announcement of my publishing deal, at which point I’ll be able to add a few more.
So, without further ado, here’s my (and my husband’s) experience of building and launching my own author website…
Writing Copy
I started writing copy for my website either just before or after Christmas 2025. I had the intention of getting it live in March 2026, although that was very much the latest target date, since the goalposts had been steadily moving to the right since a whole year before.
I found the copy to be relatively straightforward, but I looked at a lot of other authors’ websites and advice on web design pages to see what sort of thing people said about themselves and their work.
In the end, I kept the text for the Home page pretty simple, and it basically only exists as a landing point and to redirect people to other pages. The only extra thing I really needed to do here was also include a Privacy Policy, which I’ll admit I largely based on policies on other people’s pages.
The About Page largely has the same information that I gave to my agent and publisher for use on their websites, although I do have two versions that differ slightly depending on whether their use is formal or informal. This was probably the hardest bit to get right, because there’s a balance to be found between sounding fun, approachable yet professional, or being aloof and cold.
After that, I only needed to write copy to promote this blog and create a contact page; both of which were pretty straightforward.
I did, of course, also create copy for several pages that I don’t intend to make live at the soft launch: Books and Events.
Events is, by definition, pretty easy as it’s just a list of places I’m going to be visiting in an official (I’m there because my publisher has asked me to be) versus unofficial (I’m there because I wanted to go). Safe to say though, that the latter doesn’t include anywhere that I’m going to as ‘Helen the person’, just those where ‘Helen the author’ will be in attendance.
Finally, I had to write the page about my book. My publisher made this pretty easy for me by including a blurb and recommendation from another author on their website, which I mercilessly borrowed for mine. It saved me a bit of time and having consistency between my website and theirs is always good!
The one thing I would say about writing your copy is: have fun with it. This is your website, and while it does exist to drive traffic and generate sales, there’s nothing wrong with being human and allowing a little bit of that humanity to shine through your branding, your colour scheme, the photographs or the wording you use.
Just remember to check it from the POV of your reader before anything goes live. While an author writing for adults can get away with dropping the odd F bomb or using a bit of salty text, a children’s author absolutely cannot.
Top Tip: Look at other authors’ websites to see what you like and use these as a template to follow. You could also check with your publisher in case there’s specific wording they’d like you to use. But above all, make it your own!
Building the Website
Once the copy was done, all I needed to do was decide how I was going to build the website. This question actually came in two parts: 1) do I want to do the build myself, or did I want to outsource it to someone else? And 2) what platform did I want to use, assuming I didn’t want to create something entirely from scratch.
For the first question, I had a couple of key concerns and criteria:
I didn’t want it to cost a lot, so getting someone to build it for me was going to be tough. I know several authors who also build websites for other authors, and while their prices are very fair and entirely justifiable, I also need to know how much money I have available and what else I could spend it on. So, I decided to build it myself1.
I needed to be able to manage the site myself, without relying on anyone else to update it for me. For example, if my book went on sale, I wanted to be able to promote it immediately, not wait for someone else to get my support ticket and do the updates whenever they had time, potentially losing the sales opportunity.
Whenever I’ve outsourced things in the past — whether that’s getting work in the garden done, or designing bespoke jewellery, etc — I’m never 100% happy with the result. So I’d really just rather do it myself, because being happy with something that’s correct but not highly polished, is preferable to having something with all the bells and whistles, but doesn’t actually work for me.
With the decision made to keep the build in-house, I just had to decide where I was going to host my website. Squarespace and Wordpress were the two main competitors since I have neither the expertise or the patience to craft something from scratch, and in the end Squarespace won out. Mostly, this was due to the amazing amount of guidance available (on their site, but also from Charlotte Duckworth). I gave it a go one afternoon with nothing to lose and ended up making a draft website in just a few hours.
I also managed to get a deal on the website hosting costs and the domain earlier in the year, which made the whole thing much more affordable.
Although, while I’m on that subject, it is worth mentioning domains. If you’re an author and want a website, get your domain as early as you can, especially if you have a fairly common name. When I looked, helenjones.com, helenjones.co.uk and several others along the same time were already taken. Thankfully, helenjonesauthor.com wasn’t so I went with that. But there is a little bit of my gutted that I can’t have just my name on my website like other authors whose names are a little bit more unique.
Top Tip: If you’re not confident building your own website, there are a number of great companies who specialise in building websites for authors, or can provide specific training to help you along. Some of those providers are also authors too!
Testing on Mobile & Search Engine Optimisation
In a delightful example of the Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule), writing the copy and getting the desktop version of the website sorted didn’t take anywhere near as much time as getting everything working on mobile devices and sorting out search engine optimisation (SEO). Both of these felt very much like dark arts.
As it turned out, getting everything right on mobile devices actually wasn’t that bad. There were a couple of instances where I hadn’t formatted the pictures correctly (fill versus fit, in the Squarespace settings) and where text didn’t wrap in the way I wanted. But it was very much a case of playing around with things until they worked. This was actually something I really liked about Squarespace; because I could fiddle with the mobile layout as much as I liked and it didn’t bugger up the desktop layout at all.
We ended up testing this pretty thoroughly both before and after the website was live, across multiple mobile devices (phones versus tablets) and platforms (Windows, Android and Apple) and, so far, it’s behaving pretty well.
SEO, however, was another thing entirely. I’m still not sure I fully understand how to make this work well in practice, but after sorting out all my page headings, page descriptions, alt text for photos and a whole host of other things, my website now appears third on the list if you type ‘Helen Jones author’ into Google. In fact, four of the top five are references to me across various sites. So I must have done something right.
Top Tip: SEO is a bit of a dark art. There are inbuilt AI tools in some platforms that will help you with this, otherwise think about what keywords other people will use to find you, and make the most of them!
Next Steps
As with all websites, this isn’t the end. I’ll be keeping the site updated regularly, but specifically there are four specific steps I’ll need to take in the near future:
Adding a ‘Books’ page (including pre-order links) and an ‘Event’ page so any lovely people who would like to say hello know where to find me. These pages will be added when the deal is announced, which will hopefully be soon.
Reviewing the Privacy Policy and potentially changing site photographs in either late 2026 or early 2027.
Adding a ‘Shop’ page when the book is published, to include the book, series merchandise (i.e. bookmarks, mugs and tote bags) and gift bundles. This page will be added shortly before publication.
Expanding the ‘Book’ page to ‘Books’ in anticipation of the second book in the series being published. This change will happen approximately six months after first publication.
So there you go. If you’ve never built a website before, it’s not quite as scary and overwhelming as it looks, and it can be a lot of fun. Please do take a look at my new website and let me know what you think!
While I’ve been getting the website ready, I’ve also been watching a lot of TV and reading a lot of books — it’s all research, honestly! In any case, here’s what I enjoyed watching and listening to in May…
TV: Death Valley (BBC), The Copenhagen Test (C4), Hidden Assets (iPlayer), Under Salt Marsh (NowTV) and Saint-Pierre (Now TV)
Film: Jurassic Park in the cinema!
Podcast: In My Good Books with Susie Green (Spotify) and But You Look So Good with Sally Shaw and Seona Ilalio (Spotify). Their recent interviews with crime writers Jo Callaghan (IMGB) and Chris Bridges (BYLSG) were excellent.
… and a small selection of what I’m looking forward to reading in June, ‘cause there’s a lot of excellent books out this month:
Thanks for reading. See you next time!
What I actually mean here is that my husband agreed to help me build it (he’s a software architect) and I get his time for free, or at least in exchange for home-cooked curries and a ready supply of chocolate.