This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.
I am a big believer in launching things quickly, and then slowly honing them. Miranda and I chatted last week and came up with a number of ways to improve the burgeoning FriendStories blog. The goals:
- How do we make it immediately clear what this site is about?
- How do we immediately engage you in a story?
Here is the before and after of my work with it this week:
Changes made include:
- Use an entirely new template. The was chosen very quickly,just to get the site live.
- Create a banner that on a visual level, embodies the goal of the blog.
- Develop something akin to a logo, though really it is just stylized words at the top of the page.
- Add a descriptive tagline. We came up with: “Real stories of true friends.”
- Created a brief blog description and added it to the top of the sidebar.
- Changed the headlines for each post to quotes from the stories.
Do these changed make the site perfect? Nope! But they are steps in the right direction.
Thanks.
-Dan