Jul 17 2008
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It’s time for our monthly header update. I’m embarrassed to admit that I drew some inspiration from the writers of the computer game Mass Effect… Continue Reading »
May 29 2008
On May 29, we replaced our old header. We recount the changes and explain some of the editing changes we’ve made along the way below.
May 29 2008
Hi. We’ve revised our guide to making header art. In addition to the standard reformatting and stylistic changes from Cadet Davis, I added a small and not particularly technical case-study on the evolution of Superhero Nation’s headers. If you have high hopes for your website, particularly a writing website, I recommend it.
Yours,
J.M.
Apr 20 2008
Usually, we wait a month before doing major header changes. However, we got slightly new art, so I wanted to rotate that in as quickly as possible.
Apr 13 2008
On April 14, we did our monthly header change. (Note: this post is actually dated April 13– we always date our non-comedy posts a day off so that our top post is always comedy).
Here, glance at the two headers and see if you can spot what’s changed.
Original
Revision
The main change is a slight edit to our caption, from “…guide to superhero politics” to “superhero comedy.” I think “politics” scares potential readers and most of our posts aren’t political. Also, I think that people naturally associate “politics” with “propaganda” rather than comedy, entertainment or anything that would encourage them to stick around. So politics had to go.
This looks like a minor change. If I showed the original to 100 people and then showed them the new version 10 minutes later, maybe 5 would realize what was changed. But I suspect that this will significantly reduce our bounce-rate (5-10%). People are quite good at appreciating differences, even if they don’t consciously realize what they’re doing. I’ll release preliminary Google Analytics results in a week to show whether it’s had an impact. Over the past week, our BR was in the mid-to-high 60s.
By comparison, Google Analytics says that Comics and Animation sites have an average BR in the mid-40s. I suspect that we’ll remain worse than average for some time. Our site is very eclectic. Our audience is highly fragmented between sports buffs, politicos, online entrepreneurs and writing aficionados. When I write articles on, say, designing effective header art, someone who’s casually interested in comedic content is going to bounce. Even the the ISS limits its offerings to comedy, although it also makes tangents into sports and politics.
Other Header Modifications
Kudos if you picked out these aesthetic changes. The heroes have gotten a bit bigger and more spaced-out. Catastrophe’s face is a bit more evenly purple. The blue portions of the US flag are a bit brighter.
It looks like Catastrophe’s face is wider and rounder. It’s not, but we see a wider cut of it because I moved Agent Black (the white guy).
Other Modifications
At the same time I changed the header, I also changed our WWSGD plug-in. Before, new visitors to our site were greeted by this message at the top of the screen. “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site devoted to a superhero novel, sports and politics.”
I changed that to “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site and novel about New York’s second-most inept superhero and a Homeland Security agent that might not be a mutated alligator.
In addition, we are the world’s #1 provider of Lol Gators and occasionally offer noncomedic articles on creative writing, business planning and market analysis, visual design and marketing. In fact, we may be the only site anywhere to offer these things in addition to Lol Gators.”
Mar 28 2008
In a header, text usually looks best when balanced. For example, in our header “a fairly unbalanced” is balanced nicely because it’s exactly as wide as the row below it, “guide to superpower politics.” If you’re interested in learning how to make text look pleasant, this will help.
Mar 23 2008
This site allows you to rank some of your favorite types of colors and then it suggests possible color schemes. What really impressed me was how smoothly it integrated its free features with a gentle offer of (paid) web designing services.
Mar 21 2008
I removed Mallow’s picture from the header. I’d like to see if that’s less off-putting to potential readers. I’ll let you guys know in a week or two.
This is the old header, in case you’ve forgotten.
Mar 20 2008
If you are interested in the mechanics of making an online novel work, you may find this interesting.
Jan 21 2008
For 24 glorious hours following the end of the Super Bowl, Superhero Nation’s going crazy with either a NY Giants or NE Patriots-themed header. You may remember the custom header I prepared in the off-hand chance that the 1-12 Dolphins beat the 13-0 Patriots. (It, uhh, didn’t happen).
Click to see the part that got cut off on the right.
Mercifully, I did a better picture of Brady this time around.
Jan 11 2008
Four days ago, I changed the text’s appearance on my header a little bit.
You can see the original portion below.
The original
I think the revision looks a lot cleaner and more uniform than that. But the percentage of people that “bounce,” leaving without seeing a second page, has risen considerably. Hmm.
Dec 19 2007
This post offers techniques on using header art to market your website, particularly if you’re an author.
Table of Contents
Basic Questions
“What is header art? How do I put it in?”’
In Wordpress, you can use the Paalam theme or any other theme with a custom header. Palaam gives you 900 pixels across and 180 pixels vertically to work with. That’s enough space to introduce your products or books. Our Palaam header can fit 4-5 characters, a brief synopsis and the book’s title fairly comfortably.
“Why should I have header art?”
Header art is your website’s equivalent of a book’s cover. Your header is an enormous opportunity to establish your site’s professionalism and tone/substance. Ultimately, good header art will encourage readers to stick around, browse through your site and (hopefully) make a purchase.
Furthermore, making (or buying) an effective header is fairly easy. You can buy a quality header for $50-150, which compares favorably to other investments you might make in your writing endeavors. For example, business cards or low-cost advertising will cost at least $50, a book doctor or agent will cost at least hundreds or thousands of dollars, and a year of paid membership in a writing workshop will probably cost at least $75.
Using Header Art
Once you have a space for header art on your site, filling it effectively is your next step. I’ll introduce these methods now and eventually offer more techniques on using them most effectively.
Your header absolutely must…
If you’re using your header to sell a novel, it is virtually required that you…
That is a very basic set of requirements. Your header might also suggest what your writing style is like, introduce your characters, suggest any relevant themes, or indicate the setting. But these are generally less important.
Text (Book’s Title/Synopsis)
The title and synopsis probably should not be the header’s focal point or on the left side of the header. The header has to make a visual impact immediately. But text usually isn’t visually gripping. Because of that, text should usually occupy the least valuable space in the header, the right side. (Most Westerners read from left to right, so the left and middle of the header are used best by powerful imagery rather than bland-looking text). A final visual consideration is that text should usually not be placed over other elements of the header. That will probably look cluttered and make readers feel claustrophobic.
Don’t use more than 20-25 words. You won’t have enough space (or time) to describe your plot at any length, but you can convince a reader to look at a “Site Explanation” or “Book Synopsis” page to learn more. Be straight-forward, clear and concise. You have a few seconds to make a sales pitch. Ambiguity won’t work.
Genre/Mood/Tone:
Obviously, the header for a science fiction-horror story should look very different than one for a romantic comedy. What sort of mood do you want your header to convey? Is your story cheerful, gritty, dark, tragic, whimsical, scary, comical, etc? How realistic do you want your book to seem? You can suggest any of these traits with lighting and color. Additionally, readers will also pick up on your choice of font. (Consequently, Times Roman is almost always a poor choice for header text).
Characters
You may want to illustrate key characters if your characters look intriguing or suggest a lot about your plot’s genre, mood or plot. I think that a ninja-masked superhero and a reptile in a government uniform strongly suggest that Superhero Nation is an eccentric superhero story.
But most novel headers probably shouldn’t use character illustrations. If showing your protagonists doesn’t foreshadow the story or help the reader visualize something unfamiliar (like a reptile in a trenchcoat), I’d probably leave them out. If you’re writing an epic fantasy, showing another 17-year-old raising a sword will probably disgust your readers. (As a general rule of thumb, swords (and wands, to some extent) are extremely cliché and should be shunned.) Don’t illustrate banal-looking characters. On the other hand, if your character is a middle-aged woman with a peg leg, that would probably intrigue readers.
Relevant Themes?
You may find it useful to allude to different ideas and concepts from your book. However, this isn’t important and readers might miss the allusion, anyway.
If you look at “SUPERHERO NATION” in my header, it gradually shifts from blue on the left to red on the right. That alludes to the theme of political conflict in Superhero Nation. (In US politics, liberals/leftists are “Blue Staters” and conservatives/rightists are “Red Staters”). Additionally, I’ve positioned the characters with the most liberal on the left and the most conservative on the right.
Setting?
You might want to use a real-world landmark or cityscape in your header, but I don’t recommend it. If your header features Chicago’s skyline, it will probably make non-Chicagoans feel like outsiders. Unless a real-world setting is absolutely vital to your story, I’d avoid that.
On the other hand, if you’re writing a fantasy with a juicy setting, that could be really appealing. Illustrating that would probably be pretty complicated for your artist (and more expensive for you), but you could probably work something out.
Superhero Nation’s Header Art: A Case Study
Over the past four months, we’ve had four headers. I’m going to analyze how our audience has responded to each of these headers (using Google Analytics data). However, this is not a controlled experiment. We made many changes to the site over that time. Even so, I think that it’s fair to attribute most of our audience reaction to the header art specifically because it’s so much more visible than any of the other changes we have made.
These are the four headers we’ve had (shrunken by about 25% to fit in the browser).
Header 1: December 9 to January 14.
77% bounce rate (the proportion of readers that leave after seeing a single page)
1.71 pages per visit
108 seconds per visit
Header 2: January 15 to February 17
69% bounce rate
1.86 pages per visit
105 seconds per visit
Header 3: February 18-March 21
64% bounce rate
2.00 pages per visit
110 seconds per visit
Header 4: March 22-28 (only a week… so take this with a grain of salt)
63% bounce rate
2.35 pages per visit
144 seconds per visit
I’m not surprised that the bounce-rate has changed the most. It’s definitely intuitive that someone who doesn’t like your header art is more likely to leave immediately than someone who is impressed by it. On this front, header-art has clearly had at least some impact. But I’d like to delve into this data a bit more to try to control for the other changes we have made.
For example, if I look at only the week prior to the January 15 switch, it had an 82% bounce rate, 1.6 pages/visit and 90 seconds per visit. In the week immediately after the switch, we had a 65% bounce rate, 1.77 pages/visit and 102 seconds per visit. This strongly suggests that the second header was drastically more successful than the first.
I’m not surprised that the second header performed better; the text is better balanced, it’s slightly brighter and more colorful, the logo looks cleaner, and the synopsis is slightly crisper.
Looking at the week before the February 18 switch, we had 67% bounce rate, 2.06 pages and 121 seconds per visit. In the week afterwards, we had 64% bounce rate, 2.06 pages and 119 seconds per visit. This slight change doesn’t surprise me too much. The differences between the second and third header are fairly slight– I only changed the synopsis and the placement of the logo.
Looking at the week before the March 21 switch, we had a 61% bounce rate, 2.15 pages and 111 seconds per visit. In the week after the switch, we’ve had a 63% bounce rate, 2.34 pages and 143 seconds per visit.
I’m a bit surprised that our fourth header has been bouncing (slightly) more readers. I had expected that its decidedly more cheerful tone would bounce fewer people. Ah well. I think a 2% rise in bounce-rate is an acceptable loss for 30% growth in time/visit and 10% growth in pages/visit.
END ARTICLE.
(If you would like a more exhaustive survey of the changes to our headers, without any statistical analysis, you can keep reading).