Making a home page

This website is a blog. That's always been its function and it operates quite well that way. But a blog is a bit limiting in some ways. 

This became clear to me as I was finalizing the backmatter for my book. I direct people here and I do have a domain name so it looks a bit more professional than a blogspot link. But when they arrive, they would find themselves on a page with tabs at the top and my latest blog post. That's not really what I want brand new visitors to see.

Because here's the deal. All of you fantastic readers are accustomed to coming here and reading my blog about book promotion or working as an agent or any other number of crazy topics I happen to pick. But a brand new reader who doesn't know me as an agent or a marketing lady will probably be a bit shocked if they come to my site for the first time and read the blog. There is going to be a disconnect.

So I decided to create a home page. Nothing fancy, mind you, but something static that would be there to greet new visitors who go directly to sarahnegovetich.com. This serves a few purposes. This create a landing page that allows new visitors to become grounded in the page before dipping into my brand of crazy. 

It also gives me a chance to direct new visitors. There are a lot of tabs here. And I love that. I love that there are so many resources on this site. But that can be overwhelming. By having a home page I'm able to point new visitors to the most helpful areas. For me, I am pointing them to my book page, my newsletter and then the blog.

It took a little finagling to get the page working correctly and keep the blog from disappearing, but if I can figure it out, anyone can. Is this necessary? Certainly not! But I do think it adds a bit more professionalism to the site and allows me to avoid creating a separate static website. And, most importantly, I really believe this will create a better user experience for new visitors who will, hopefully, become new fans.