I’m blogging with thousands of others; we’re up to our eyeballs in the A to Z Challenge. My posts are about inspiration, coaching and all kinds of writer stuff; things I love.
Today we’re talking about websites. Who would think a website would become embarrassingly outdated like square-toed shoes and leisure suits? Not me! Of course, all I know about websites you could stuff into a thimble. I had to be talked into leaving my faithful old blog for this cool site.
My friend Heather at Oxblaze Media and Marketing told me I needed to look professional. Remember, we only get one chance to make a good first impression so I let her counsel me on professional websites.
I didn’t have a clue what looked outdated but after roaming around the ‘net, it was easy to spot things that didn’t work. Seems like way too many authors are looking a little hokey.
What makes them outdated?
Well, they use clip art, glow affects around images, multi-colored fonts and other 90s looking designs. Many use colors that remind visitors of their grandparent’s kitchen. Yeah, remember the avocado green refrigerators? If our kitchen and bathrooms can be outdated, so can our websites.
A real detriment is a non-responsive website design. Google penalizes non-responsive sites from mobile searches. A non-responsive site means it’s not adaptable for mobile and tablets. When someone searches for you on their phone or tablet, Google will rank you toward the bottom. Google made this announcement in 2015, and said it would have a “significant impact” on mobile search.
Here’s an example of a mobile friendly website: mine of course. 
A site that isn’t mobile friendly will receive a message saying so, that text is too small to read, links are too close together or maybe that the content is too wide for the screen.
You can test your website by clicking here.
And if you think you need an update, then check out my friend Heather at Oxblaze Media. (She’s doing her A to Z here.) She also designed these two writer sites:
Believe me, there was a time I loved my avocado green kitchen, but not anymore. Remember, one chance only … good impression!
Do you have a website? If you don’t, let’s talk about why.
I used the analyzer link, thank you. I’m mobile-friendly!
Great, Angie!
Good advice. I like a nice clean website without things blinking or every inch cluttered with stuff. I’m not very technically savvy, but managed to get a blog going (with help) on my website and do the A to Z Challenge. And I’m mobile friendly.
http://www.lorihenriksen.com
Hi Lori, thanks for stopping by. I’m not techy at all. I’d sure like to be.
I had a website on Angelfire for almost a decade, and as angry as I was when the entire site was deleted without advance warning (thanks to a mentally unbalanced blogger and her sycophantic friends), I did come to realize the design was really outdated and not too user-friendly. Thankfully, I managed to save something like 700 of the pages I wrote for the site over the years, when most of it was still cached and archived, though I sadly was unable to recover many other pages. Starting my new blog in 2011 was a fresh start.
Oh my goodness, Carrie-Anne. I hate it when I hear writers lose their work. We do our best (most heart-felt) writing on our blogs. Thanks for popping in to see me. 🙂
Be yourself. It is your cyber-home. If suggestions make sense, go with them. But your blog is to have fun, so have fun with yours. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by, Roland.
The rate of becoming outdated is faster and faster these days
Charles, it’s really pretty frightening!
I visited early this morning, read your post, took the analyzer test and then panicked when it showed that my site was not mobile-friendly, even though it had been upgraded last year to make it mobile-friendly.
I got onto the phone with the guy who hosts my site. He sorted it out for me and showed me a few more features to improve the layout.
So thank you for the alert. 🙂
Michelle, I’m glad you got it all straight. You make me feel so good! 🙂
That analyzer website you mention said my website was mobile-friendly AND awesome. Thank you for posting this. Yes, the technology changes so fast we will continually be climbing that learning curve. But a website? The two you linked here are lovely, nicely visual. The first seems right out of WordPress, but I’m so used to Blogger that most likely I won’t change . . . for now.
Beth, glad your site is mobile-friendly and awesome. I moved from blogger–kicking and screaming! I blogged there for eight years and I still miss its simplicity. However, after doing the A to Z here on WordPress, I’m learning my way around. 🙂 Thanks for visiting me.