Sorry, but I couldn't come up with a better title for this post. *shrug*

I've been following links to various authors' web sites over the past few weeks as I came upon them. Out of curiousity, mainly, because I'm not familiar with most of the writers whose web sites I've visited. I found my initial reaction to each site interesting.

It's obvious that some writers have put a lot of thought into their site. They've either gone to a lot of trouble themselves or hired a professional. And in some of those cases, it's obvious that the designer knew what they were about and didn't just throw a lot of annoying features in because "everybody's doing web2.0 stuff and you have to have it to be current."  There's a difference between having an up-to-date design and having a design that uses AJAX or flash or Java or other tech, but is annoyingly not usable.

It's also obvious that some writers have a web presence because they were told they need one, but haven't figured out that a design that looks like it's from the early days of the web when Mosaic was the cool new browser just doesn't cut it (think white text on colored textured backgrounds with very little actual content, for example). To these people, I'd say, if you don't want to deal with maintaining a web site, make it simple. Black text on a white or off-white background, a few graphics and quotes,  a list of your books (both in print and out), maybe a few *short* excerpts from your books, and a calendar if you make appearances. Yes, you may need to update it on occasion if you have a calendar, but the rest of that info will remain fairly static. Crisp, clean, simple. Doesn't date you or the web site.

There is, of course, the middle ground. No flash, but a bit more sophisticated in design. I've seen a few of these and they can be very effective. In fact, I'd much rather visit a site that's integrated with a stylish header graphic and clean menus, than the sites that go overboard with the flash intros or the Java applets. Thank goodness for No Script for Firefox--I can turn all that junk off and only enable what I want to see.

Everyone has their own opinion about what makes a good web site design and I'm sure that a lot of people would disagree with me. But when I visit an author's site, I'm looking for a few specific things -- what books they've written, when their next book will be released, what they're working on now, and--maybe--a calendar of events they'll be attending. If there's a short excerpt from the beginning of their books, I may use that to determine whether I'm interested in buying. Beyond that, I don't see the point of trailers (I haven't seen a single one that's made me think I'd want to buy a book or that I hadn't wasted my time watching it).

At least this has helped me figure out what I'd want on my own web site when the day comes that I need one.  And you'll notice I used the positive *when* and not the hesitant *if*.  ;-)