by Patrika Vaughn

Created on: November 12, 2009   Last Updated: November 18, 2009

I spent the entire month of August last year restructuring our web site. As a result, sales have tripled not an easy thing to achieve in our highly competitive field.

Let me explain: Our website is a site of resources and services for writers. As you know, there are probably thousands of such sites up, ranging from such biggies as iUniverse to small mom-and pop operations. Competition is fierce and writers are rightly cynical of such offerings.

The problem such sites face is how to gain the trust of writers, who are as protective of their works as they are of their firstborn. Many writers have been burned by sites that promised things they didn't deliver, often disguising their disclaimers in very tiny print. Gaining trust isn't easy when all you have is your web site presence to convince potential clients. We do offer hard product books, audio books and online classes and those have always sold well. The challenge we faced was to create a site that would convince writers to trust us with their works, and to convince them that what they got from us was significant and useful. The services involved are critiquing manuscripts, editing and/or book doctoring them, and, through our subsidiary, Advocate House, to actually turn those manuscripts (once in publishable form) into books. For most writers, this is equivalent to handing their precious newborn child to a total stranger.

Our increase in clients indicates that we succeeded. Here's how we did it:

UNDERSTAND YOUR OBJECTIVE

Once we were clear on what effect we wanted to produce with our site (instilling trust and confidence in us), the rest was easy. We simply had to understand the following elements, and then restructure our site to include them.

TRUST

How do you establish trust with someone who knows nothing about you except what you present on your web site? How do you structure a web site in such a way that it assures people that you are legitimate, competent and trustworthy?

First, by giving them information they can use, whether or not they buy your services. Our site contains loads of information about publishing today, from how to write what sells to knowing today's publishing options and how to choose the one that is best for your work. People are grateful for this, which leaves them kindly disposed toward us. We have clients who chose us over some of our biggest competitors. We also offer free samples on the site, through excerpts of all our products. No one is asked to buy a pig in a poke.

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