Personal comic website, webdesign and SEO

[globuline]

Hi guys,
I would like to know if you had a personal website for your comic and how much attention you gave to the webdesign?

I have the overall impression that most comic websites look like 1 comic on the main page and you need to click on a previous or next button to read the others. A few examples : the very famous Cyanide & Hapiness, Doghouse diary, Everyday blues, My website and the list could go for hours.

Some exceptions like the Oatmeal and the Tapastic website itself (well at least the home page) are more grid based and the Oatmeal pretends to receive millions of views every month (the last link video is a bit long but it's worth it).

Do you think part of the success is due to grid webdesign (or any other format), or it doesn't matter how the website looks like?

I personally think that you need good content anyway, but grid websites seem to naturally make you wanna click more because you see more content in one page.
Also, there are tons of infos (1 example here) for effective webdesign, so what would be the best for a webcomic?

What do you guys think? Also, I'd be curious to know the Tapastic staff opinion on that one.
@michaelson @minzinger

[elixiadragmire]

First of all, that design tips link, LOVE! I love that stuff! The rule of third, the golden ratio, closure, white space hmmmmm good stuff

as for the different design setups for webcomics I think it truly depends on the nature of the comic. For example a grid wouldn't work for a serial since you could skip pages to view the 'prettiest' pages and get lost on the plot (like Fox showing a show out of order cough Firefly cough) It would kill it. scrolling or page turning would be best for those. The grid can (and preferable) used for its achieve though, since I remember would i saw last not the page number.

[PotooGryphon]

I have a personal website for my comic, OopsComicAdventure.com, that I give a lot of attention, and with my limited coding knowledge, try to design effectively. It could use a redesign and I've been wanting to add infinite canvas and other elements to my site, but I just don't know how yet. It's something that, when I find time to learn, I'll be able to do. I use Wordpress for my site.

Good content is very important and can keep readers going to a less than perfect site, but having a good website is also important. In general, internet users have a low attention span and the more clicks to get somewhere on the site the less likely the reader will be willing to get there. I like how on Tapastic, you don't have to click next and go to a new webpage page to get to the next page of a comic. It's a very quick design where you can easily breeze through pages of comics. Perfect! Yes, I think some of Tapastic's success is because of it's streamlined and clean website design.

I'm not sure what you mean by grid. Do you mean how on Tapastic's front page they display multiple comics?

That might not make sense for people with personal webcomic sites to implement on their own sites. The most important element on a personal webcomic site is the latest page, and that's why on most you see the similar design of the 1 comic on the main page.

[minzinger]

@globuline - I think you read my mind. I wanted to write a pretty extensive post about this topic, perhaps on Medium.com. Let me give you a short version here.

I want to give my two cents and I hope anyone who reads this don't take my words the wrong way. Some might criticize me as being biased because I do work at Tapastic, which is a self-publishing platform somewhat similar to your owned-and-operated publishing websites. However, as an insider who talks to experts in the fields of both comics + technology, I think I have a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities of our industry.

Game Theory
Have you watched A Beautiful Mind? The movie popularized the game theory. Basically, the whole web comic industry is worse off because a majority of comic creators are individually trying to drive traffic to his or her own website. To use the example from the movie, every wants the dream girl, but if everyone gives up the dream girl for less popular, everyone wins. Similarly, most comic creators today want to be the next theOatmeal.com, xkcd.com, and Cyanide & Happiness, so everyone loses.

Competitive Advantage & Specialization
Basically, it's very difficult for someone to create comics + build a website + run a shop + do everything else. In order to maximize production/output/quality, it's better if you do more of the things that you're good at (making comics) and do less of the things that you're not as good at (making and maintaining websites). A decade ago, one person may have been able to get a website up and running. Today, it's much different. There are specialists for web, iOS, Android, UX design, etc. Technology is moving fast.

Personalization
I highly respect and understand creative people and their desire to personalize their website. But, is that really what readers want or is it what you as a creator want? From our users studies and feedback, there are differences with what readers and and what creators want. There's a reason we continue to push Mobile/Vertical Format. Oh, and everyone wants a better and faster Andriod and iOS app.

Platform Power
I believe that the comics industry in the digital age started off on the wrong foot. What benefits can platforms like Tapastic bring?

• Discovery - I think most community members are already realizing this.
• Advertising (+ other monetization) - We are able to go to advertisers and demand higher rates. Can you? Your 100,000 views are worth more on Tapastic. As we get bigger, we can command even higher rates. As technology develops, better rates.
• Deals - Juju's Diary was picked up and now publishing in South Korea. Golf Star was a collaboration with a gaming company. We want to do more but currently don't have the time and resources. However, more cool things will come. Movie deal? We could see something like that happening sometime in the future.

These are just a few examples. Are we dreaming? No. Our investor Daumkakao is already doing it in Korea including movies and Korean dramas. We believe that we can do something similar globally.

[elixiadragmire]

hehe this is all so true. Actually the reason I joined tapastic! I'm not a website designer and I've done it before and it a ball ache. I'm a one man band just trying to share my story with like minded folk and hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do and so far I'm having fun.

Insightful stuff!

[globuline]

@elixiadragmire I know right!! This is a goldmine of seriously interesting stuffs. Sometimes I wish I was a webdesigner...

I agree with both you and @CyndiFoster about the fact that grid websites are not working for series that need to be read in order. By grids, I guess the best example is The Oatmeal, but yes, I also meant Tapastic's home page.

I'm not entirely convinced with infinite canvas. I've looked a bit on the web for examples other than Tapastic, and I didn't really like the result. I guess I like when a page stops and when I can click on another. I also think it doesn't make it easy for SEO but maybe I'm wrong about that.

@minzinger Haha!!! I have telepathic skills!!! More seriously, That's because I don't think there is a lot of info about that topic and I'm convinced that a better website would help develop a comic's notoriety.

I haven't watched that movie but I get your idea. I agree with you on all the points you've made. I think however that a personal website can complete platforms like Tapastic :
- by showing more of the author's work
- by being his or her business page / CV page
- by getting a target of readers that are not on the platform yet (people who don't speak English, people who don't want to sign up, people who weren't even aware platforms existed...)
- ...

Then, it's just a question of finding time to update everything on all platforms AND on the website, AND to adapt the comic format to each of them, AND to find time to do your comic, AND to advertize it, And if you are an awesome webdesigner it's even better...

The point is not to become like XKCD or the Oatmeal because, like you said, there ain't enough room for everybody at the top of the mountain, but more to give a good impression from the start and to make your readers engage more or to get discovered more easily.

From our users studies and feedback, there are differences with what
readers and and what creators want. There's a reason we continue to
push Mobile/Vertical Format. Oh, and everyone wants a better and
faster Andriod and iOS app.

I love learning that stuff. Are there any other things you've noticed?

[yuliusefferven]

Heey I just want to express my agreement to this, I had thought about making my own website for a while, and I tried, but I agree, trying to do n number things is just really hard, it's hard enough just doing art, story line and promotion. It takes so much time away from content creation when you're trying to get a website to work.

[dglisson]

I use a personal website, go here if you'd like to check it out. I have it self-hosted and use Wordpress. A lot of people use the Comic Easel plugin which I hear is good because it makes things easy and comes with lots of templates, however I chose to go with the "Webcomic" plugin because it was much more easily customizable (I paired it with the Inkblot Theme).

The downside is it's a lot harder to find information on the "Webcomic" plugin (I mean seriously, try to google that and you get nearly nothing) but once I did and put in some elbow grease I got it to look like I wanted. It's nontraditional but since I'm doing a narrative comic it helps people figure out where the first comic is instead of going to the last one directly.

I haven't added any advertising or monetization yet because I have just started but I do mean to do it through Project Wonderful or something similar, I'm still researching. (I found a great post about that right here on Tapastic!)

Another good thing about having my own website is, once my issues are done, I am going to add pages in between each chapter that will offer to sell folks the tablet or e-book version of each issue.

[maryvinnickaya]

Thanks for the advice about avoiding spammy links but It's too late already
I will call on these guys, they seem to be not so bad

[Meroi]

I know an excellent service https://zen-promo.com/instagram_analytic, which has a large number of settings and additional functions like likes on new publications of subscribers! 7 free days for promotion, so you can take and try for a week and see if you need it or not

[DominicRutherfo]

Ahah, great idea, but it's doomed to fail. It seems to me that every person on earth has dreamed of creating his own website. In fact, this is a cool idea and it is quite easy to implement it. It doesn't even take a lot of time and effort, but if you don't have experience, your site will be just shitty. You may not believe me, but you must believe my experience. My first sites were terrible just because of the design. Even when I started taking private orders for website development, I faced this problem and I had to urgently look for a web design company and I came across a web design company san diego. These guys are real talents in the field of web design and I am glad that I still work with them. Thank you for listening to me!