350pages Makeover - Empires Apart
Whilst 350pages provides the tools for you to
create your own website, there are times when you need the
professional design input to achieve your goals.
Brian Landers of Empires Apart had a problem - his book had
a split personality
Brian and his daughter had created the original website around
the design of his UK book cover. He was lucky enough to secure
a contract in the USA for the sale of his book. However, the
UK publisher (Picnic) and the US publisher (Pegasus) approached
the design of the book cover quite differently.
So we set upon a makeover.
Amongst our first questions were:
- what would Brian like his site to achieve that it didn't
already?
- what did Brian like or dislike about his current look and
feel?
- And most importantly, what did his friends and colleagues
think about his current website?
Part of Brian’s response was:
"Friends have told me they do not find it easy to move
around my site because the buttons are not obvious. I have
mentioned to people that various things are on my website and
even though they had gone into the site they had not noticed
that, for example, information on sources was available."
So our goal was to achieve a professional website with a compatible
dual personality and good navigation for the visitors.
 We chose the melody template because of its design with a top
header graphic and top navigation button bar. As most people
read from top to bottom then it was important to have the our
primary image and clear navigation at the top.
To create a good impression the website needed good strong images
to represent the book in both target markets. We used images
from each book to create a striking set of images which were
used in the headers and throughout the website. We chose a dark
theme which we felt best suited the images.
 We used the clearly visible navigation button bar with its consistent
prominent location under the header so visitors could easily
find their way around the important information. For more detailed
information on the book we created another navigation bar on
the left hand side of the website.
Having set the structure and colors in place all that was left
to do was to take all the content from the current website and
apply it to the new design. Then the website was published and
Brian can edit it at any time that he needs in the future.
 Brian is delighted with his new website and we hope that it
will help him achieve more sales for his book.
“My daughter and I constructed a website to go with
my book ‘Empires Apart’ when it was published in
April. The site has been reasonably successful; it had all
the content we wanted but looked quite amateur.
Recently an American publisher has bought the rights to
my book and will launch it in New York in the spring with a
brand new cover. Clearly I needed a very different website
to match the new marketing campaign. The website that
Mark has produced for me is fantastic. He has taken
the design approach followed by the American publisher and
turned
it into a really
professional looking website which, hopefully, will attract
new readers while not alienating readers who liked the
dramatic, but quirky, cover used by my British publisher. I
couldn't
have hoped for a better makeover.” Said Brian
Landers.
Visit: www.empiresapart.com
Summary:
Empires Apart now has a very professional, impressive website,
suited to both target markets, with images from each of the book
covers.
The 350pages Timesaver service is ideal for those wishing to
have a website makeover or for those with little time to create
their own website. The customer takes over the maintenance for
any future updates, thus making it a very efficient content management
system (CMS)
The cost of a Timesaver varies according to the content and
can be as little as £200 / $350 / €250. Just consider
the amount of new business that you can gain!
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