Problems:
* An author now has a manuscript of her first book, a practical guide for helping people who have recently lost their spouses.
* She has been published in journals in her field but has not been published outside academia.
* She needed a landing page that would not only attract interest in the book but also help her find a publisher.
* It was not clear which segments of her audience this landing page should target.
* Authors of related books tended to not use best practices for landing page creation but had sold 50,000-100,000+ copies of their books on Amazon.
* There were no testimonials yet to put on a landing page.
* An author now has a manuscript of her first book, a practical guide for helping people who have recently lost their spouses.
* She has been published in journals in her field but has not been published outside academia.
* She needed a landing page that would not only attract interest in the book but also help her find a publisher.
* It was not clear which segments of her audience this landing page should target.
* Authors of related books tended to not use best practices for landing page creation but had sold 50,000-100,000+ copies of their books on Amazon.
* There were no testimonials yet to put on a landing page.
Solutions:
* I created a landing page based on BornThemes' Conversion WordPress theme, using the same principles I have seen on SaaS and web design landing pages. I wrote custom CSS where needed to achieve the desired look and feel.
* I created provisional personas to help the author identify the main targets of her design. In the process, we uncovered two more large target markets that could buy her book (people recently diagnosed with terminal illnesses and extended families of widows and widowers).
* I had the author offer a free chapter of her book in exchange for signups to a book launch email list.
* I created a landing page based on BornThemes' Conversion WordPress theme, using the same principles I have seen on SaaS and web design landing pages. I wrote custom CSS where needed to achieve the desired look and feel.
* I created provisional personas to help the author identify the main targets of her design. In the process, we uncovered two more large target markets that could buy her book (people recently diagnosed with terminal illnesses and extended families of widows and widowers).
* I had the author offer a free chapter of her book in exchange for signups to a book launch email list.
* I wrote most of the copy around the personas' goals, aside from the FAQ and About the Author sections, which the book's author contributed.
The top section of this landing page is based on the Sketching with CSS landing page, which has the "Here's what's in the book" section. The Pre-Order button skips to the bottom of the page.
This is an overview of all non-supplemental provisional personas that I created for this project. It includes a middle-aged widower (representing the book's main audience), an elderly widow, a young widower, a divorcee, a terminally ill patient, a caretaker for a spouse with a serious illness, the adult son of a widower, the granddaughter of a widow, a publisher, and two businesspeople who can offer bulk discounts on the book (a funeral director and a lawyer).
Without a strong consensus on who should be the primary audience for the site, I went ahead with a site design that assumed it was for middle-aged widows and widowers and also addressed the needs of our many secondary personas.
Goals for most of the main personas
Pain points for most of the main personas
I took these behavioral variables into account when deciding on the primary and secondary audiences and the site's design.
This section of the site, toward the top of the page, allows the audience to select what they are in order to get a short message that is relevant to them. There is a similar I Am dropdown option in the site's main navigation bar.
The widow's section speaks to a common pain point that is mentioned in the book (unexpected bills) and the free chapter. Each of the persona-specific sections talks about how the book can help them in particular. It was prepared based on my reading of the book's entire manuscript.
People with terminal illnesses are not mentioned in the book's pitch as of right now, but I thought of this audience while reading the book. People with terminal illnesses want to make sure that their family has what they need in order to manage life without them. This was informed by the fact that two of my family friends have died of Stage IV cancer in the past year, less than a year after being diagnosed.
The book has 19 chapters as of this writing, but presenting the facts of all of these (as I did in the initial draft of this design) is overwhelming.
To brainstorm on this, I created my own OptimalSort study to determine what each chapter had in common. I also shortened the copy. What is in this section resulted from what I came up with in the study. The right column lists the experts interviewed for the book.
The free chapter giveaway is designed to be the only content in view when people scroll to this part of the page. My selection of stock photos for this site has a very "before and after" feel to it: people experiencing loss and chaotic situations at home transitioning to people who are more fulfilled and homes where everything works.
The Publish This Book section, accessible from the main navigation menu, stands out uses progressive disclosure to keep potential readers of the book from being overwhelmed by copy that is not for them.
I used a similar approach on the Bulk Discounts section.
After getting the FAQ copy from the author (I wrote most of the copy for this site), I realized that users who were shown all of it would be overwhelmed.
This design draws more attention to the questions themselves and allows people to focus on the information that they find relevant. It also links to a page with a contact form.
This is the final call to action on this landing page. The section also establishes the author's credibility. This is the other piece of copy that the author contributed.
The site is responsive. Here, it is shown at mobile width. Given more time, I would have adjusted more of the spacing on mobile and added "Menu" in front of the hamburger icon.
This section for widowers shows how the images relate to the target audience. The headlines for each section speak to pain points that I thought each persona had.
The first call to action has a similar approach on mobile to what it has on desktop: helping people to pause, focus, and get the free chapter.
I adjusted the background images between sections at mobile widths so that they would behave differently, allowing users to see the full image.
First part of the For Publishers section, expanded at mobile width.
The "For publishers" section expands to give publishers enough information to want to contact the author about her pitch, without just giving the pitch away without the author knowing.
