I was trolling around the interwebs the other day, as I am wont to do when it's FREAKING SNOWING IN APRIL. Sorry for the shouting. Anyways, I came across this site titled The Five Biggest Mistakes Writers Make on Their Websites. So with a keen killer cat curiosity (yeah, say that five times in a row really fast), I decided to not only peruse that page but also do a search and destroy mission to find out what makes a good writerly website and then compare that list to my own site. And guess what? I'm taking you along on my in-depth journalistic mission . . .

MISTAKE #1: NO BIO
Score! Indeedy doody, I do have a bio on mine. Chalk one up for me.

MISTAKE #2: NO SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Ooh. Epic fail. I lose that point I earned.

MISTAKE #3: NO CONTACT INFO
Gimme that point back. You can definitely contact me.

MISTAKE #4: LACK OF WELL WRITTEN CONTENT
What I have is written as well as I can possibly pump out. The problem is I don't have a whole lot of it. I'm thinking that's a half point.

MISTAKE #5: BUTT UGLY
While my graphics aren't all fireworks and unicorns, my site is tidy and book related. That's gotta count for something. Score one.

MISTAKE #6: NOT USING CLEAR CALL TO ACTION BUTTONS
Grr. I'm back one. I don't have any call to action buttons . . . but I do have a plan to remedy that by adding in a newsletter button.

MISTAKE #7: FORGETTING TO LINK BUY BUTTONS
Bingo! Got my point back. I link to Amazon for all my books

MISTAKE #8: HAVING MUSIC ON AUTO PLAY
This one super annoys me. I hate it when I visit a website and music starts playing automatically . . . especially if I'm at someplace like a library and it blares on. So this is a point in my favor because I don't have any music on my site.

MISTAKE #9: FOCUSING ON YOURSELF INSTEAD OF THE READER
There's got to be some takeaway value at your site or the reader feels slighted. Ding-ding-ding. Point for me. I've got book club kits as downloadable freebies.

MISTAKE #10: TOO BLOGGISH
Okay. I'm a little guilty of this one. I need to clean up my home page and delete some old posts on there. Subtract one.

Total: 3 1/2

So, I guess I've got a little authorly website renovations to make. What's your feedback? What do you like to see on an author's site? Leave any additions in the comment section.