If you’re selling a book, you want to drive traffic to your book’s detail page. Ideally, you want traffic to get there in a single click.

Any extra stops along the way are a sales deterrent, even if they are relevant to your book.

Example:

• Authors are tempted to drive traffic to their author pages at Author Central.
• It’s better to drive traffic straight to your book’s detail page.

Why?

Fact: Amazon sees much more activity on a product’s detail page when traffic is driven directly to the detail page.

How do I know?

I learned this firsthand from Amazon’s marketing department. We were discussing advertisements and whether they should link directly to a book’s detail page, an author page, or some other page that highlights the series or imprint.

The author page is a valuable tool:

• It helps to lend you credibility.
• The author photo helps with your branding.
• Readers can find all your books in one place.

However, you don’t want it to be the first stop for a new customer.

Why not? Because you don’t want to risk your author page being the only stop.

What you really want is for customers to make it to your book’s detail page. So send them straight there. Then they are less likely to get lost on the way.

Customers like convenience. A single click is convenient.

What’s one more click?

• More time. Who has that?
• More hassle. Who wants that?
• More risk of internet issues. Everyone has that.
• More distractions for the customer. Ooh, what a pretty flower!

This all sounds reasonable, yet that author page stills tempts you.

• You don’t know which book the customer wants, so you want the customer to see all your books.
• You don’t want to sell just one book. You want to make it easy for customers to find all your books.

Those are all good reasons, but the fact that you will lose customers along the way should make this decision very simple.

Your book’s detail page is a better sales tool:

• An effective blurb will engage customers better than your biography.
• Your blurb is more informative than a list of thumbnails.
• Customer reviews receive consideration from shoppers.
• You have to click to Look Inside. That’s too many clicks.

One click to your author page. Two clicks to your detail page. Three clicks to Look Inside.

Three clicks and you’re out!

Still stuck on that author page. It’s not doing anything that your detail page is doing.

• The customer still sees your author photo and biography on your detail page.
• Your other books will show up in the Customers Also Bought list on your detail page.

Think about the customer’s path to your book:

• Make it easy for the customer with a direct link to your product page. One easy click.
• Pick the most relevant book. Direct new readers to your most reviewed, bestselling book relevant for them, or to the first book of a relevant series. Direct fans to your latest book.
• Include a link to your book at the bottom of your page. If the potential customer reaches the bottom of the page, don’t make the customer scroll back up to find the link. If it’s handy to link to your book higher up on the page, it’s okay to do it a second time at the end to provide this added convenience.
• Are there too many links to choose from? You want the link to your book’s page to be easy to find.
• Does the customer have to click on an image? If so, is this clear? Not everyone will think to do this.

It’s not just your book, but any website you’re driving traffic to. Ask yourself if there are too many clicks? Nothing beats one easy click.

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Psst. You can get there with one easy click. 🙂

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