Wayne Stinnett

As soon as we met Wayne and saw the state of his existing online presence we knew we could help.  His website, shop, and blog were all on separate platforms and none of them were performing well.  It is exciting when you find a client that you can really help in big ways.

This project was a big undertaking.  We did a complete website redesign along with logo and branding package.  We drew our inspiration from his book covers and the tropical setting of his stories.  We chose yellow as one of the primary colors because it is a complementary color of blue which was a predominant color in book covers and there were some yellow accents in most of his book covers as well.

We took his three separate online properties the website, shop, and blog and brought them under a single website presence.  Now the user stays on a single site and has an easy time engaging with his content.

The LaLa WordPress Theme 3.0 was used as the base. From there we added a number of custom features.  We built a BOOKS custom post type, so he can easily manage and add new books from within the WordPress Content Management System (CMS).  We created custom categories for book series and characters.  We also added a custom post type to manage the reading order and published date.  All of these data points are used to create a dynamic filter on the BOOKS page.  This helps the readers to find books and understand the book series.

In addition, we used the books data to create dynamic content throughout the site.  The book data is auto-populated into not only the BOOKS page but also the book slideshow, the last works book teaser used on the home page and within the blog.   So when he goes to add a new book the content will proliferate out to all of these areas of the website without any extra work.

We also used the book data to create a custom module used within the blog articles.  This gives him an easy-to-use feature to quickly add a book to any blog article.

We created other custom modules as well, such as the ‘Library Module’, this is used on the Jesse page to feature other books not written by Wayne.  We create the ‘Recent Blog Articles’ to create a teaser section on the home page, to help funnel website users to his blog articles.

From a website users perspective, we wanted to help readers buy books as quickly and easily as possible.  From Wayne’s perspective, we wanted to help increase book sales.  Given that Wayne sells all of his books on Amazon we wanted to help funnel his website users to Amazon, dropping the website user into the exact page they need to buy a given book.  Each book links out to a corresponding Amazon page.  These links are everywhere on the site that a book is featured, making it very easy for the user to get to where they need to go fast.

We would like to mention the new illustrations we created for Wayne. Wayne worked closely with our graphic designer to create custom illustrations of his fictional boats, maps, and islands.  This was an exciting new challenge for us.  She truly enjoyed the work.  These illustrations will not only be used on the website, but they will also be used in his printed books.

Overall this was a rewarding project, we loved collaborating with Wayne to bring his fictional world to life so he can share it with the world.

The nice thing about a custom website is that you can always add features as needed or as you dream them up.  We added the Beard-o-Meter about a year after the website was originally published.  Wayne wanted to draw attention to his pre-orders.  We started talking about how he grows a beard every time he starts a new book, so we built on that idea.  We added a new beard-o-meter and pre-order module to the home page.  It’s the cleaver and draws attention to his upcoming release in a unique and interesting way.  Visit his home page to check it out.