Midwest Mary

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ve read of my frustration on the slow progress of getting my newest book, Tranquility. Transformation. Transcendence, published, printed, listed on Amazon, and up on my website. (See the posts, Tranquility. Transformation. Transcendence, Update on New Book, and Sell Sheet. The First Marketing Piece of a New Book.)

At this point, after several extra steps, we have the book in hand, I’m delighted with how it looks and feels, and the major distributor, Ingram, processed its information for listings on Amazon and other bookstores.

My last step was to get the book on my own website. I sent the information to my designer in February, but unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get to it. So, I took matters into my own hands.

I’m not a designer and have limited technical ability. However, being unable to update my site as often as needed and as soon as possible drove me to seek a solution. At the peak of my frustration, I was fortunate to enjoy dinner with my friends, an amazing couple, musician and songwriter, Andy Mitran, and Guided Imagery and Music therapist and composer, Louise Mitran. I explained my situation to them, and Andy told me about the site builder, WIX, and how easy it was for him to utilize.

WIX truly is easy to use. Building my site only took me four days. Most of the time spent was familiarizing myself with tools and creating and deciding on the design. Having a blog on WordPress also helped. There, I learned the basics by designing several blogs. (Transferring the domain from Go Daddy to WIX required a few additional days.)

Not only are the tools on WIX easy to navigate and utilize, their support team is beyond excellent. WIX has a ton of printed information to tap into. “Designers” can request a callback 24/7 to receive the guidance of a helpful representative. Responses can also be provided by email, which was fascinating to me. A Dublin representative responded to my questions with a video showing me on my own site how to solve my issues. In addition, she showed me how to center my columns, a basic I should have known.

If you’d like to try building a WIX website, begin by writing out your content, gathering images, and looking at other sites for design ideas. Then go for it. If you aren’t satisfied, you can always make changes along the way. I purchased a premium site, but free sites are available, if that fits your needs.

Check out my new site, and please, tell me what you think of it. Let me know if you have any problems clicking on buttons or have ideas to improve it.

*Tranquility. Transformation. Transcendence. The Enchanting Promises of Public Gardens is available from the publisher, ACTA Publications (free shipping on orders of $30 or more), my website (free shipping on all orders), and soon, Amazon.

©2023, Mary K. Doyle