Step 3: Build a Professional Looking Web Site

A publisher needs a professional looking web site to attract authors, generate publicity and sell books. If you don't have a professional looking web site authors, book reviewers and customers will go to other sites.

Your web site should:

• Provide information about your product(s).
• Provide a method to order your product, via a shopping cart or by sending the buyer to Amazon (via Amazon's associate program where they pay you a commission on the sale!).
• Provide information for potential authors.
• Provide contact information for book reviewers
• Collect information (name and email address) from visitors to facilitate marketing to them in the future.

To build a professional looking web site, at minimal cost, consider the options presented below:

A. Web Site Templates ($60 to $600)

If you are just starting out and don't have the resources to hire a web designer we recommend that you build a web site using templates.

They don't cost a lot and will give your business a professional image.

Site2You is a user-friendly advanced website builder that lets nearly anyone create and handle a successful website quickly, and at a great price!

Template Monster website templates, flash templates and other products are ready-made web designs, that can be used as a basis for fast and high-quality website. Their website templates, flash templates and all other products are completely customizable and ready for immediate download.

Tip: If you are short on money, consider approaching your local community college. They may have a professor teaching an internet design course who would be willing to assign the development of a site for your company as a class project or he may be recommend a student of his to assist you.

B. Elance Agency ($500 to $3000)

"Your web site is an online representation of your company to millions of Internet users. It’s how your customers and prospects will judge you, your products and your services. You cannot afford to have a poor web design. Elance Agency creates custom web design for companies large and small.

Our custom web design services are affordable. You get agency-quality work but at 30-50% less than what other web design agencies charge. And our turnaround is much faster.

Get more customers. Sell more products. Generate more leads. Get custom web design starting at just $495." Elance Agency

C. Ecommerce Sites ($600 to $4000)

If you want to go beyond having a web site that promotes your titles and sends orders to Amazon (via its associate program) to selling titles online you will need a store that can take credit card orders.

We suggest that you look at this option;

Yahoo Merchant Starter - PC Magazine's Editors Choice (January 2005)

Additionally, there are many Yahoo Store web designers available for hire if you don't want to use Yahoo's template driven store builder software.

"Ydeveloper brings to your footstep a convenient, online shopping facility provided by Yahoo online store. Your Yahoo online store is linked with the Yahoo site. Depending on your needs, we can customize your Yahoo online store to be used for marketing your products also. We aim to make your store's visitors to fall in love with the look and feel, and prefer your store over all the others available on web. We make this a reality through our excellent designing efforts to give it a professional look, easy navigation and an unhindered shopping experience for your valued customers. We develop this Yahoo online store using RTML script, which is promoted by Yahoo Store."

"Anyone can build a website these days. It's easy. But what good is a website if it's not designed to meet your business needs? Colorado Web Solutions has been specializing in Business websites for over 9 years and our clients generate millions of dollars in sales a year. We don't just design websites, we design your business online."

"Welcome to the world of Solid Cactus. As you decide which company you want to help you design and launch your web site we believe you want two crucial ingredients: experience and reliability. Someone who has been there, someone you can trust to get you there.

Experience - We don't just design Yahoo! Stores. We own one. A BIG one! When it comes time to launch an e-commerce web site, you want to choose a firm that not only has design experience, but real-world, e-commerce experience. Solid Cactus is that company.

Reliability - Solid Cactus has a staff of world-class designers, programmers and developers who work side by side sharing knowledge and experience in our Wilkes-Barre PA office."

D. Ecommerce & Book Publishing Software

A book publishing company can have a custom designed web site that will automatically update itself with new or changed title information, send orders directly into your book publishing software (so your staff does not have to key in the orders) and send the customer automatic order and shipment confirmations via email if you are using the ACUMEN book publishing software. The cost is about $5K to $15K.

Is this a lot of money? Not if it is saving you the cost of hiring one, two or three customer service employees to process those orders.

This is one reason why publishers purchase book publishing software. It increases the productivity of their customer service staff.

At Brunner/Mazel they purchased the Cats Pajamas book publishing software. The productivity increases they gained from the software allowed them to save about 3x its cost by not replacing customer service staff who left the company even though sales were increasing.

As Cory Rudl says in his internet marketing course (see Step 2) if you want to make money selling your titles online you need to automate the sales order and follow-up marketing process to the greatest extent possible. This is especially true if your website is generating over 400 orders a month.

Less time and money spent on processing orders and follow-up marketing means more resources are available for book production and finding new customers.