More and more authors are taking control of their careers by selling books directly to readers. For many, it’s both exciting and liberating, but it can also feel overwhelming. Even after you’ve built your store, created your landing page, and started running ads, you may find the numbers just aren’t adding up. Visitors click through, but sales don’t follow. Often, the problem isn’t your copy, cover, or price. It’s something far simpler that most authors never think about.

In this week’s post, Ginger reveals one of the biggest hidden obstacles to successful direct sales, and what you can do about it. Slow-loading pages can derail your sales before a potential reader even sees your offer, with every second of delay leading to a steep drop in conversions. The good news is that once you know how to test your site’s speed and pinpoint the issues, the fix is simple. This one improvement can dramatically increase your book sales without raising your ad spend, which makes it one of the smartest upgrades you can make to your direct sales strategy.

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I’ve been going on about Direct Sales for a while now, and it looks like I’m not the only one. I’ve noticed more and more authors following in the same direction and I’m here to cheer them on: Vive la revolution!

While Amazon and other major retailers once dominated the conversation, more and more of us who self-publish our books are taking the plunge to sell our books directly to readers because it gives us so much more control over our publishing. 

Direct sales can potentially mean higher profits, we get ownership of our customers’ data, and we’re finally free from having to chase the platform algorithm changes that dictate how easily potential readers can find us on platforms like Amazon. 

However, this independence comes with a new set of challenges that many authors aren’t prepared for, and one of them is optimizing your sales page.

The Direct Sales Revolution

When you sell exclusively through Amazon, you’re paying for convenience. Amazon handles the website, the payment processing, the hosting, and the customer service. In return, they take a significant cut of your earnings and control your relationship with readers. In many cases, you never know who bought your books or how to reach them again.

Direct sales flip this model. You keep 85-95% of each sale instead of 35-70%. You build an email list of actual readers who’ve purchased from you. You control pricing, run promotions whenever you want, and aren’t subject to sudden policy changes that can tank your visibility overnight.

But the catch is that you have to build the infrastructure yourself, and that’s a challenge to even the most technically adept of us. When I launched into direct sales, I invested in Steve Pieper’s AMMO course and it still took me over a month to get my website and store up and running—and even longer to get my sales running profitably.

Part of this was because the convenience we pay for with Amazon goes beyond just access to a popular platform. Amazon is the king of ecommerce and every page on their sprawling website is optimized to within an inch of its life. When we go rogue and start creating websites of our own, we have to go through that process ourselves, and it’s something that many of us aren’t even aware we have to do in the first place!

But this optimization can make the difference between profit and loss. And even if you’ve already managed to get your sales funnel to run profitably, you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t squeeze even more performance from your landing page. 

Building Your Sales Funnel

Transitioning to direct sales means becoming more than just a writer. You need to understand marketing funnels, payment processors, and web design. At the center of this ecosystem is your landing page—the dedicated website where readers land when they click your ads, social media links, or email promotions.

Your sales funnel typically looks like this: 

A potential reader sees your ad on Facebook. They click through to your landing page. There, they’ll decide whether or not to buy your books, and then complete the purchase. 

Simple in theory, but each step presents opportunities for potential customers to drop off, and nowhere is that more prevalent than on your landing page. The landing page is where the magic happens (or doesn’t.) This single page needs to:

• Showcase your books
• Provide convincing copy to get your readers excited about them
• Include reader testimonials as “social proof”
• Explain what readers should expect when they purchase directly from you
• Provide a clear call-to-action button so that visitors have no doubt about how to follow through with your offer

Get all those elements right and visitors will become customers. Get one, some, or all of them wrong, and you’ll be burning money on ads that lead to disappointing sales.

The Conversion Rate Challenge

The success (or lack thereof) of your landing page is determined by something called your Conversion Rate. Your conversion rate is the percentage of landing page visitors who actually purchase your book. If 100 people visit your page and 3 buy, you have a 3% conversion rate. This number determines whether your direct sales strategy is profitable or just an expensive hobby.

Industry averages for landing pages typically hover between 2-5%, though top-performing pages can reach 10% or higher. With direct sales of eBooks, you should be aiming to be in those double digits to be profitable. 

And even if you are profitable, you should always be working on optimizing your conversion rate. The difference between a 2% and 4% conversion rate isn’t just academic, it literally doubles your revenue from the same advertising spend.

But there are a lot of variables that can impact your conversion rate and for those of us who aren’t ecommerce professionals, many of them are simply not on our radar. Authors obsess over cover design, book descriptions, and pricing strategies—the things that make the biggest impact on whether or not we’d personally buy a book. 

And obviously these elements matter a lot, but there’s also a technical factor to take into account that can sabotage even the most beautifully designed landing page: Loading time.

The Hidden Conversion Killer

Here’s what many authors don’t realize: If your landing page takes too long to load, visitors will leave before they ever see your gorgeous cover design or compelling testimonials. They’ll bounce before your page even finishes rendering, resulting in you paying for ad click that will never convert.

To those of us who aren’t trained in ecommerce, the speed it takes for a page to load might seem inconsequential. We might have even tested out our own pages on mobile and desktop and figured there was nothing wrong with how long they took to load.

However, the statistics are sobering. Google research found that as page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32%. When load time hits 5 seconds, bounce probability jumps by 90%. By 10 seconds, you’ve lost everybody.

Portent’s research on conversion rates tells a similar story. They found that a site loading in 1 second has a conversion rate three times higher than a site loading in 5 seconds. The first five seconds of page load time have the most significant impact on conversion rates, with each additional second of load time costing you approximately 4.42% in conversions.

This stuff is important! If you’re investing hundreds of dollars into Facebook ads driving traffic to your landing page, slow load times are like pouring money into a leaking bucket.

What’s Slowing You Down?

So, how do you know if your landing page is slow to load? And what can you do about it if it is?

The good news is that the culprit is usually easy to identify. It’s probably your images. 

Images aren’t the only reason your website is slow to load, but they’re normally the biggest reason and the one you can improve the most. As creative people, we usually load up our landing pages with tons of images but don’t spend much time thinking about how large they are.

But that beautiful hero image on your book cover? It might be 5MB if you’re using the same file you uploaded to Amazon. Your author photo? Another 3MB if it’s high resolution. Background graphics and design elements also add to the load time.

Custom fonts can also slow things down, though images are typically the bigger offender. When someone visits your landing page, their browser has to download every image and font file before displaying the page. Large, unoptimized files create delays that cost you sales.

So if you want to improve your conversion rate without changing another thing about your landing page, look toward optimizing your images. Here’s how.

Testing Your Page Speed

Before you can fix the problem, you need to measure it. Google offers a free tool called PageSpeed Insights that analyzes your landing page and provides specific recommendations.

Here’s how to check your page speed:

Step 1: Open your web browser and go to pagespeed.web.dev

Step 2: Enter your landing page URL in the search box and click “Analyze”

Step 3: Wait 30-60 seconds while Google tests your page on both mobile and desktop devices

Step 4: Review your scores. Google provides separate scores for mobile and desktop, each rated from 0-100. Scores of 90+ are excellent, 50-89 need improvement, and below 50 require immediate attention.

Step 5: Scroll down to see specific recommendations. Google will identify large images, render-blocking resources, and other issues slowing your page down. Pay special attention to the “Opportunities” section, which shows potential time savings for each fix.

Most author landing pages score poorly on mobile, where the majority of traffic originates. If your mobile score is below 50, you’re likely losing half your potential customers before they even see your offer. That’s a massive waste of money if you’re running paid ads!

Optimizing Your Images

Discovering your landing page score can be pretty disheartening, but I have good news. The solution is straightforward. You just need to optimize your images for web use. 

This means reducing file size while maintaining visual quality, using modern image formats, and sizing images appropriately for how they’ll actually be displayed.

Here’s your step-by-step optimization process:

Step 1: Determine Proper Image Dimensions

Right-click on your landing page images and select “Inspect” or “Inspect Element” in your browser. Look for the displayed dimensions. If your book cover displays at 400 pixels wide on your page, you don’t need to upload the 2000-pixel source image. Most landing page images display at 300-800 pixels wide on desktop and even smaller on mobile.

Reducing the size of your images can make a massive impact on their file size. Reducing a 2000-pixel graphic to 400-pixels instantly cuts the time it takes to load it by 50% or more, and you can optimize your images even further once you’ve done that.

If you’re a graphics expert, you can make these changes with Adobe Photoshop, but the good news is that you can also use a variety of free tools to accomplish exactly the same thing.

Step 2: Choose an Image Optimization Tool

Several free tools can optimize your images. My personal favorite is Squoosh.

• TinyPNG (tinypng.com) – Simple drag-and-drop interface, excellent compression
• Squoosh (squoosh.app) – Google’s tool with advanced options
• ImageOptim (imageoptim.com) – Mac application for batch processing
• Canva (canva.com) – Can resize and export optimized images

Step 3: Resize Your Images

Upload your original images to your chosen tool. Resize them to approximately 2x the display width (for retina displays). If your image displays at 400 pixels wide, resize to 800 pixels. This reduces the file size significantly while still providing sharp quality on high-resolution screens.

Step 4: Convert to WebP Format

Most of us use JPEG or PNG graphics files, but ecommerce experts know there’s a better way. WebP is a modern image format that provides superior compression, and the optimization tools I’ve suggested offer WebP conversion for free. This single change can reduce image file sizes by a further 25-35% with no visible quality loss.

Step 5: Compress Your Images

Next, use compression settings to reduce graphics size even further. For most landing page images, aim for 70-85% quality for JPEGs and high compression for PNGs. The tools will show you before/after file sizes. You’re often looking at 60-80% size reductions.

Step 6: Download and Replace

Finally, download your optimized images and upload them to your landing page builder to replace the original files. Make sure to use descriptive filenames like “fantasy-book-cover.webp” rather than “IMG_1234.webp”. Not only will this help you know which images are which, it’ll also help with SEO! (That’s a topic for another blog post.)

Test Again and Compare

After uploading your optimized images, return to Google PageSpeed Insights and run another test. You should see measurable improvements in both your score and load time. Many authors see their scores jump 20-40 points after image optimization alone.

Compare your before and after load times. Even a 1-2 second improvement can significantly impact your conversion rate and ultimately your sales. It’s that easy!

Important Warnings and Best Practices

Having just told you how easy this process is, there are some guidelines to keep in mind:

Don’t Over-Compress: Aggressive compression can make images blurry or introduce blocky artifacts. This is especially problematic for book covers where text needs to remain crisp and readable. Always preview your optimized images at full size before uploading them. If you notice quality degradation, dial back the compression slightly.

Mobile vs. Desktop Considerations: Modern landing page builders create responsive designs that automatically adjust for different screen sizes. However, they typically use the same image file for both views, just displayed at different sizes. This means your images need to look good at the smallest size (mobile) while being large enough for desktop displays. The 2x display width rule handles this well.

Some advanced landing page platforms let you serve different images to mobile and desktop users. If yours does, create separate optimized versions: smaller file sizes and dimensions for mobile, slightly larger for desktop. This is the gold standard for performance but requires a more technical setup. However, if you’re already building out a direct sales funnel, you’ve got what it takes to figure these steps out.

Maintain a Master File Library: Keep your original, high-resolution images in a separate folder. Never optimize your only copy of an image. You may need to create different versions for different purposes or re-optimize with different settings later!

Test Across Devices: After optimization, view your landing page on actual mobile devices, not just by resizing your browser. Colors, sharpness, and quality can appear different on various screens. Ask fellow authors or beta readers to check how it looks on their devices (or do what I do, and borrow your friends’ phones to visit your website!)

Moving Forward with Confidence

While the process of optimizing your images isn’t easy, it’s fairly straightforward. It just involves taking the time to go through the process picture-by-picture. 

But you should be up for the challenge! After all, switching to direct sales already represents a significant shift in your author business. It requires learning new skills, investing in tools and advertising, and taking responsibility for technical details that platforms like Amazon normally handle for you. But the rewards (higher profits, direct reader relationships, and independence from the whims of the algorithm) make this challenge a worthwhile one. The key is approaching it systematically, addressing one challenge at a time.

Image optimization is one of those small technical improvements that can deliver outsized results. You’re not redesigning your entire marketing strategy or learning complex coding. You’re simply ensuring that the traffic you’re paying for actually sees what you’ve created.

A few hours spent optimizing images could genuinely double your conversion rate, which in turn doubles your revenue from every advertising dollar you spend. When you’re operating on the thin margins typical of book sales, these improvements aren’t just optional—they could make the difference between profit and loss.

So start with page speed testing, figure out what you need to change, and move through image optimization one picture at a time until you’re ready to test again. 

It’s actually one of the most satisfying things you can do to improve your sales funnel. You’ll see the numbers improve almost instantly—and more importantly than that, you’ll see more sales coming in through your landing page once you start running ads again. 

Ultimately, optimizing the images on your website is like a microcosm of everything that drove you to direct sales in the first place. Instead of trusting another platform to do things for you, you’re taking complete responsibility for your future success, one optimization at a time.

Good luck! And if you undertake this project, don’t be shy about letting me know how it went in the comments section down below.

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