Looking for Author Website Advice

Look at the websites of your favorite authors and take notes about the things you like best.

Keep bio to the bare minimum, not because of giving yourself away, but because of privacy issues. Less is more, the site is about promotion for your books, not yourself.

Definitely look at the author websites of authors you look up to in your genre. After looking at dozens, you'll come out with a clear idea of what necessary, what you liked, what you thought was useless, etc. Also, what you as a reader were interested in.

For the bio, youtubers like Vivien Reis and Jenna Moreci have a bit on this.

You could always go super basic for your site without putting any money (or the bare minimum for a domain) if you're willing to put the time in and be patient when doing a lot of research.

Having a website could be fun, but if you want traffic, you've got to put the work in to market it. Where are these readers going to be coming from? What's on your site that you enjoy putting out there that's going to make them stay or come back? How are people going to know that you have a site? Announcing it once isn't going to help much. I guess, just have a plan for how you're going you're going to be worth the community's time when you interact with them.