- by Judd Lyon
- Aug 19, 2008
- Filed in: Book reviews
- 2 comments
“The best way to get visitors to act is to appeal to their fundamental emotional motivations.” Chapter 1, p.17
If a good portion of your income depends on the performance of a website, then chances are that you've spent some serious time and effort trying to figure out what works. Good news for you, Tim Ash has written a manual on how to objectively test and improve your website with Landing Page Optimization, The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.
What is this book about?
Landing pages (where visitors initially arrive on your site) are crucial to the success of your site. Regardless if your user arrived from a search, by clicking an ad, or from a site linking to yours — you have a limited amount of time to make your case. Landing Page Optimization is a comprehensive look at how you can systematically improve your conversion rate.
Landing Page Optimization is broken into three sections, Background, What & How to Tune, and Getting It Done. The book is written clearly and professionally, although the sheer density of information included makes it best suited for reading at intervals. For those wondering, yes, there are plenty of pictures and sidebars.
Who wrote it?
Tim Ash, President of SiteTuners.com, a frequent speaker on Internet marketing who comes from a scholarly background in Computer Engineering and Cognitive Science and it shows (in a good way).
Who should read Landing Page Optimization?
- search engine marketers
- direct response copywriters
- web designers & developers
- affiliate marketers
- if you're reading this site, probably you
What are some of the key concepts or takeaways?
A few especially salient ideas to me were:
- your visitors should design your site (gather feedback in multiple ways, including offline)
- never underestimate the importance of trust (display trust indicators and reduce anxiety wherever possible)
- quickly discard non-performing assets (don't get too attached, be clinical)
- simplicity can be powerful (avoid info overload – see graphic)
There is a wealth of compelling material in the book, including a short chapter at the end of the book dedicated to understanding and using Google Website Optimizer, Google's free testing tool (part of the Google Trifecta).
What were your favorite parts of the book?
As a student of marketing, I appreciated Chapters 3 & 4 which are titled Understanding Your Audience and Understanding the Decision Process. This sets a great foundation as Tim transitions into more advanced concepts and statistical analysis (there is ample math in this book for you data wonks out there). He also dedicates the latter part of the book (Section III) on how you might actually get this done in a work environment, which demonstrates that Mr. Ash is in touch with the needs of his readers. How refreshing!
What could be better?
There were patches where the math befuddled me and I imagine it might lose some others as well (apologies to my quantitative statistics professor). If he omitted some of the formulas, Tim would likely hear it from the math pros out there, so it's understandable. He did a great job covering a litany of topics, not unlike Aarron Walter in Building Findable Websites.
Would you recommend it?
Absolutely. In addition to the web design and usability advice, there are thoughtful quotes from philosophers, non-cheesy marketing strategies, scientific explanations of the mind and human behavior, specific use cases (one small change resulted in a $48M increase in one instance), and the book is packed to the gills with statistics (anybody for full factorial parametric multivariate testing?). If you're interested in purchasing a copy, consider buying it through the author's official site:
Buy this book at Amazon.com
Landing Page Optimization Book (Official Site)
Other Reviews
Book info/chapter listing:
Landing Page Optimization
The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
Tim Ash
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Wiley Press - Sybex (January 29, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0470174625
ISBN-13: 978-0470174623
- Part I - Background
- Chapter 1 - Setting The Stage
- Chapter 2 - Understanding Your Landing Page
- Chapter 3 - Understanding Your Audience
- Chapter 4 - Understanding The Decision Process
- Part II - What & How To Tune
- Chapter 5 - Why Your Site Is Not Perfect
- Chapter 6 - Selecting Elements to Tune
- Chapter 7 - The Math of Tuning
- Chapter 8 - Tuning Methods
- Part III - Getting It Done
- Chapter 9 - Getting Buy-in & Assembling Your Team
- Chapter 10 - Developing Your Action Plan
- Chapter 11 - Avoiding The Pitfalls
- Appendix A - A Closer Look At The Google Website Optimizer
About the author
Judd Lyon is the Principal of TRIF3CTA, a web design and Internet marketing company in Austin, Texas.
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