Wednesday’s promoting tip for authors

I was really impressed by the number of lessons authors can learn about online marketing and website usability from Susan Postrel’s Dynamist.com website.

Susan Postrel is definitely not your “everyday” author. She’s one of today’s most influential thinkers in areas of cultural criticism, design, glamor, and innovation.

She regularly speaks at events around the world like the Aspen Ideas Festival and the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conferences. (She even has separate speaker’s bureaus representing her for speaking events in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.)

Susan Postrel regularly writes for publications like The Atlantic Monthly, Forbes, The New York Times, Forbes, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, Print Magazine, Texas Monthly, USA Today, and many others. Her books include:

1. The Substance of Design: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness.
2. The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress

In addition, she is also writing a book on glamour and its association with imagination and desire.

The power of website simplicity

Yet, for all of her qualifications as a leading social observer, Susan Postrel’s Dynamist.com website is strikingly unpretentious–yet admirably easy to use. Here are 6 lessons it teaches about website usability:

1. Home page. As you can see from the illustration immediately above, the home page of her site is deceptively short and simple. Susan Postrel introduces herself and provides an overview of website contents in just 136 easy-to-read words.
2. Signature. Note the way her name appears below the 136-word introduction, personalizing the message.
3. Navigation. The site contains dozens of pages and hundreds of links to articles and other resources, yet visitors can quickly locate desired information. Note the way that many of the 10 links arranged in a semicircle at the top of the page lead to portal pages containing links to topic-specific pages on the site and elsewhere. For example, explore the Articles, Glamour, and Variety topics.
4. Speed. As you visit the various pages on the site, notice how quickly they load, encouraging you to continue exploring.
5. Search. The search engine prominently appears at the bottom of the home page.
6. Site title. One of the best ways authors can brand themselves is by coining new words in their books. As described in her Future and Its Enemies, (dynamists believe in open-ended societies where creativity and enterprise, operating under predictable rules, generate progress in unpredictable ways.)
7. Blog. Finally, check out Susan Postrel’s frequently updated blog. As on the other pages of her site, the blog’s design is simple and unpretentious. The posts cover a lot of ground, yet they are united by her core ideas.

Takeaway and invitation

Writing success is often accompanied by slow-loading, bloated, hard-to-navigate self-congratulatory websites. Susan Postrel’s website, however–like many of her messages–is noteworthy because it’s delightfully out of the ordinary.

What’s your take on Susan Postrel’s Dynamist web site?

Share you comments, impressions, and opinions of Susan Postrel’s Dynamist site, below.