Inspiration for Your Author Website: Analyzing New York Times Best Selling Author Gretchen Rubin’s Website
Introduction
As an author, your website is your digital home base, where readers can learn more about you, your work, and your brand. A well-designed author website can be a powerful tool for building your audience, establishing your authority, and promoting your books.
But what makes a great author website? To help answer that question, we've analyzed the website of New York Times best-selling non-fiction author Gretchen Rubin to identify what works well and what could be improved.
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A website's purpose is to get visitors to trust you and take a specific action.
Before we start analyzing author websites, let’s go over some basics about the purpose of websites.
The first purpose of a website is to build credibility.
Here are some interesting statistics about websites that should guide how you think about a website:
· 94% of people judge a brand’s credibility based on the website.
· 56% of people don’t trust a brand without a website.
· It only takes website visitors 2 seconds to judge a website and, thus, a brand.
· 94% of website visitors are not ready to purchase the first time they land on a website
This data shows that the purpose of a website is to build credibility with the website viewer. Your website viewer wants to know if they should trust you.
Websites must build the know, like, and trust factor for brands. The know, like, and trust factor is based on the theory that a potential customer must know, like, and trust you before engaging with your content or purchasing from you.
Brands can build the know, like, and trust factor in three ways. First, the brand should offer images of themselves and their products. Second, the brand should provide social proof through testimonials, reviews, and data about their impact or effectiveness. Third, the brand should make the website easy to navigate so visitors can explore the brand and its offerings, purchase products or services, or get in touch.
The second purpose of a website is to get the reader to take a specific action.
The secondary purpose of a website is to get your website visitor to do something specific. This could be asking your audience to sign up for your newsletter, download your podcast, watch a video or a demo, book a discovery call, buy your product, or request a sample of your work or product.
Good websites have a specific ask, called a call-to-action, repeated multiple times throughout the website.
The effectiveness of a website is based on the concept of a conversion rate – i.e., what percentage of people visit the website and complete the call to action that the website is designed to promote.
Conversion rates usually range from 0.5% to 10%. A conversion rate of 2-3% is considered solid!
The best call to action for author websites is to get people onto your newsletter.
For authors, the best call to action is to get your website visitors onto your newsletter. This is because 94% of website visitors are not ready to purchase the first time they land on a website. Instead, they’re most likely browsing an author's website to get to know them and browse all their work.
Once a reader is in an author’s newsletter, the author can warm up the reader and gradually get them ready to purchase. This is why email marketing is so powerful. Email is estimated to generate $36 for every $1 spent. For comparison, social media generates a return of $3 per $1.
Authors should measure the effectiveness of their websites based on how many people sign up for their newsletter.
Conversion rate = newsletter sign-ups / unique website visitors. Aim for a conversion rate of 1% to start with!
Given this background information, let’s analyze Gretchen Rubin’s author website.
Gretchen Rubin Author Website
A few highlights that stood out about Gretchen Rubin’s author website:
Gretchen does a great job of building the know, like, and trust factor on her website. Gretchen builds the know, like, and trust factor by including images of herself, describing her work, and asking website visitors to sign up for her newsletter so she can stay in touch.
The website is focused on conversion – i.e., getting a website visitor to opt into Gretchen’s newsletter list or sign up for her app. Since 94% of website visitors are not ready to purchase the first time they visit a website, getting a potential customer on Gretchen’s newsletter list and nurturing that lead is critical to building long-term relationships and selling more books, courses, and merchandise.
The homepage briefly describes Gretchen’s work to give visitors context.
There’s a photo of Gretchen above the fold, along with the tagline about her work and a call to action to learn more about Gretchen.
The website has a clear navigation bar with 5-8 items that allow the reader to navigate the website easily.
Gretchen Rubin Author Website
Gretchen Rubin is a former Supreme Court clerk and author of several books on happiness, habits, and human nature. Gretchen’s website is a shining example of a well-designed author website. It’s geared towards building her credibility and getting readers to sign up for her newsletter.
The author website begins with a welcoming photo of Gretchen:
Gretchen Rubin Author Website Homepage Image
If you are a personal brand, i.e., your company name is also your name, or you’re selling your services, having a good photo of yourself on your website is critical. Good photos help build the know, like, and trust factor because your audience wants to know who they’re learning from or working with. This makes sense because we humans are social creatures who have evolved to seek connection and community. So seeing a picture helps us build a personal and emotional connection with the personal brand.
According to a study by Adobe, websites with good images receive 94% more views than those with poor pictures. Another study conducted by Stanford University showed that websites that included photos of individuals were rated as more trustworthy. These studies show that using pictures of yourself is much more likely to lead to conversions (i.e., visitors turning into email followers or customers).
Thus it makes sense that Gretchen Rubin has a photo of herself. Immediately on the homepage is a smiling picture of Gretchen in the hero section. This image shows Gretchen with available body language, with nothing (such as a table or a laptop) between her and the website viewer. This image immediately establishes a personal connection with the reader and helps build the know, like, and trust factor with Gretchen’s audience.
There’s a short description of Gretchen’s work on the homepage:
Gretchen Rubin Author Website Tagline
Immediately next to the picture of Gretchen, there’s a short tagline that describes Gretchen’s work. This is a small detail that’s often overlooked on many author websites. However, this brief description helps orient the reader to what Gretchen does.
Immediately below the description, there’s a link to learn more about Gretchen by clicking the “about” button.
The navigation bar on the author website is easy to understand and strategically organized:
Gretchen Rubin Author Website Navigation
An effective navigation bar is also critical to users engaging with a website. A study by HubSpot found that 76% of website visitors say that the most crucial factor in website design is the ease of finding information. Additionally, a study by Nielsen Norman Group found that users spend an average of 5.59 seconds looking at a website's main navigation before deciding whether to stay or leave. This highlights the importance of straightforward, easy-to-use navigation to increase conversions and user engagement.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Gretchen has clear and uncluttered navigation, making it easy for visitors to find what they want.
Gretchen’s navigation includes the following sections:
Books
Podcasts
About
Explore
Shop the Happiness Project
Happier App
Sign up
The magnifying icon for search
Gretchen’s navigation on her author website is clear:
Typically, navigation bars should only have 5-8 items listed, so it’s easy for the viewer to identify the relevant pages. Gretchen's navigation has seven links, so she is within the 5-8 range.
The navigation bar uses precise and direct terms so the reader can easily understand where to find the material they’re looking for. In addition, the call to action to sign up is outlined to stand out more prominently.
Gretchen’s navigation on her author website is strategically organized into left and right side columns:
There is a subtle but common difference in Gretchen’s navigation bar. The left side of the navigation bar focuses on how the reader can learn from Gretchen's books and podcasts and learn about Gretchen. The right side of the navigation bar is about how you can purchase from Gretchen through The Happiness Project and join the Happier app.
The right side of a navigation bar is considered some of the most valuable real estate on a website. So it makes sense that Gretchen places her more lucrative ventures on the right side.
The top right corner of a navigation bar is especially considered the most important real estate on a website. According to a study by ConversionXL, placing a CTA in the top right corner of a website can result in a 9.21% increase in clicks compared to the same CTA placed in the bottom left corner.
So naturally, Gretchen would want a call to action to join her app in the top right corner. This is because engaging her audience on her app likely correlates with Gretchen’s audience purchasing her books, merchandise, and courses.
There are multiple CTAs to join Gretchen’s newsletter on her author website:
Gretchen’s CTA on her author website is to sign up for her newsletter
One of the most important features every website needs is a CTA or call-to-action. The CTA tells visitors how to engage with the website and what to do next. CTAs range from “buy the book,” “sign up for my newsletter,” or “contact me.” Adding a CTA makes it 80% more likely that the website visitor will take the action you want.
The CTA on Gretchen’s website is to "sign up" for Gretchen's newsletter rather than "buy" her books. This is smart, as the call to join Gretchen’s newsletter prioritizes building a relationship with the reader over making a sale. Making a sale through Gretchen’s website is also unlikely since 94% of website visitors are not ready to purchase the first time they land on a website. Selling through email is much more effective for authors.
Gretchen’s CTA on her author website is posted in several places
This CTA is posted in several places on Gretchen’s website. As soon as the visitor lands on Gretchen Rubin’s website, there’s an immediate pop-up to join Gretchen’s newsletter. There’s also an option to join Gretchen’s challenge, which, you guessed it, will get you onto her newsletter. There’s another call to action to sign up for Gretchen’s newsletter in the body of her homepage. Finally, there’s also a CTA in the footer of Gretchen’s website.
To further encourage sign-ups, Gretchen clarifies what the reader will get by joining her newsletter and when they should expect to hear from her. Gretchen specifies, "Every Friday, Gretchen Rubin shares 5 things that are making her happier, asks readers and listeners questions, and includes exclusive updates and behind-the-scenes material.”
This type of language around her CTA is helpful because personalized CTAs perform 202% better than basic CTAs.
Improvements I would suggest for this author website:
Offer a lead magnet on this author website:
First, one change I would make to Gretchen’s website is to offer a lead magnet. Lead magnets are 50% more likely to increase conversion – that is get someone to sign up for a newsletter. Gretchen could create a PDF download of one of her books or create a quiz as a more effective lead magnet for her audience.
A study by Outgrow found that websites that use quizzes as lead magnets have an average conversion rate of 50.9%, compared to an average conversion rate of 36.4% for websites that use other types of lead magnets. Additionally, the study found that the average time on site for users who interacted with a quiz was 3.5 minutes, compared to 2.31 minutes for users who did not interact with a quiz.
Gretchen could create a quiz about one’s happiness style or habit change approach based on her book, the Four Tendencies.
Arguably, signing up for Gretchen’s Happier app is a lead magnet. However, few people might be willing to go through the multiple app download steps. Therefore, a more accessible lead magnet might increase conversions.
Add video content to this author website:
Second, I would add video content to the website, as social media has primed us to expect videos. One study showed that websites that feature video content experience a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines, a 105% increase in time spent on the website, and a 49% increase in conversion rates compared to websites without video.
Gretchen has many media appearances, so this should be easy.
Add social proof like testimonials on this author website:
Finally, I would add testimonials from well-respected individuals about Gretchen’s work. Gretchen is incredibly successful, so she would undoubtedly have many testimonials, reviews, and logos that she could feature on her website.
Overall, Gretchen's website is an excellent example of how to create a cohesive and effective author website.
Conclusion about Gretchen Rubin’s author website:
To summarize, Gretchen Rubin’s author website is an excellent example of a non-fiction author website. A few traits that stand out about this author's website:
Gretchen does a great job of building the know, like, and trust factor on her website. Gretchen builds the know, like, and trust factor by including images of herself, describing her work, and asking website visitors to sign up for her newsletter so she can stay in touch.
The website is focused on conversion – i.e., getting a website visitor to opt into Gretchen’s newsletter list or sign up for her app. Since 94% of website visitors are not ready to purchase the first time they visit a website, getting a potential customer on Gretchen’s newsletter list and nurturing that lead is critical to building long-term relationships and selling more books, courses, and merchandise.
The homepage briefly describes Gretchen’s work to give visitors context.
There’s a photo of Gretchen above the fold, along with the tagline about her work and a call to action to learn more about Gretchen.
The website has a clear navigation bar with 5-8 items that allow the reader to navigate the website easily.
Related posts:
Want more author website examples?
Here’s our analysis of four best-selling fiction author websites.
What do you think?
What do you think about this website? Which features do you like the best?
Action step:
What’s one tip you can implement on your author website this week?
About Powerhouse Strategy
Powerhouse Strategy works with authors, podcasters, and thought leaders to build their online platform through digital strategy, SEO, newsletters, custom Squarespace websites, website maintenance packages, copywriting, and Squarespace templates.
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