Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
| 2008-01-29 00:00:00 | | 0 | SEO
How much money are you losing because of poor landing page design? In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, you?ll learn all the skills necessary to dramatically improve your bottom line, including identifying mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value, defining important visitor classes and key conversion tasks, gaining insight on customer decision-making, uncovering problems with your page and deciding which elements to test, developing an action plan, and avoiding common pitfalls. Includes a companion website and a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool.
User review
Not the best one out there
It's nice can be used by 30-40% for someone who is not optimization PRO but does not cover much about other pages and spend way too much pages on promoting author's paid testing methods. A bit like advertorial. Much better bet is `web design for ROI` covers landing as well as other main pages with way more examples and % or ROI increase for each.
User review
Two starkly different books in one
This book is two starkly different books back to back under one cover. It consists of three Parts, with Part 1 being the first book.
Part 1 consists of four chapters. The first two Chapters are Conversion 101, information that anyone in e-commerce should already know. Chapter 3 is some marketing info that is not especially useful and is a detour in the book. It should be in an Appendix, if it's included at all.
Chapter 4 is good. This is information my company has been focusing on for the past year, with great results from that effort.
The next four chapters comprise Part II. Chapters 5 through 8 exist, it seems, to convince you of how difficult it is to assess and tune your conversion issues so you really need an expert.
In Part II, Mr. Ash describes and prescribes methods that are suitable only for very high traffic Web properties. Almost none of what he talks about applies to the kind of people who would buy a book on this subject. Almost all of what he talks about does apply to the C-level person who has a big budget for hiring a conversion consultant. Guess what Mr. Ash does for a living.
For further evidence of the goal of Part II, we need only to turn to Part III. The audience of this chapter is a large company with many departments. Again, we're talking about the C-level person with a big budget for hiring a consultant. The general message I read between the lines here is, `Here's how to sell our services inside your company.`
Had I bought this book when it first came out, I would have found it useful because of what's in Chapter 4. For many e-commerce site operators, it would still be useful. Very useful.
If you haven't spent much time and energy on optimization, you need the information in Chapter 4. What's missing from this Chapter, though, is any discussion of the techniques being used (e.g., sliders, content tabbers, etc.), a discussion of graphics (a huge area for conversion), or much else beyond the basics. He does make some key points about eliminating things that don't need to be there (especially in checkout), and more discussion on that would have been good. In short, he gives a surface discussion of the key issues.
I still see sites that could double their revenues simply by applying what Mr. Ash discusses in Chapter 4. If your conversion rates are less than 2% or not even known, then buy this book for Chapter 4 alone.
The other 10 Chapters don't seem useful to me.
User review
LPO: Tim Ash's detailed guide
Tim Ash, a self-proclaimed `internet thought leader`, gives the world his thoughts and expertise in relation to the world of Internet conversions. Conversions are simply when a web user takes a desired action (whether it be signing up for a news letter or purchasing a product). The book begins with Ash's theories on Landing Page Optimization and explanations of his terminology. The book is based around Ash's three keys to internet marketing; acquisition, conversion, and retention. Put simply, getting users to your site, inspiring them to take a desired action, and keeping them coming back for more.
The book then shifts gears towards more information about the actual process of landing page optimization. Readers first learn how to recognize common problems in landing page design. This starts with identifying what is really important to have on a landing page. The book then covers the testing aspects of web design. This section includes examples of how to run `User-Centered Design` tests on sample subjects. It then goes on to cover everything from brief examples of how to conduct a test, through the development of personas and roles. The problem with this section, as with many others in the book, is that it leans more towards theory than practical implementation. The theories are solid and explained very well in the text, but it would be more helpful to readers to have more detailed examples.
Ash then moves on to actually `tuning` for conversions, the real reason why anyone would want to read this book in the first place. Ash covers multiple phases of tuning including page structure, information architecture, presentation, and emphasis. This section does include some examples of good and bad website design, but again, focuses too heavily on the theory behind everything he talks about. Examples of the best forms of website navigation for instance would be more helpful than detailed explanations of how the human eye moves around a webpage.
The last big chunk of this book explains the web analytics side of landing page optimization. These final chapters explain in great detail everything involved with tracking the success of the changes that have been made to the readers website. This is really the only place where Ash gives a lot of detail in the right places. I felt his advice with regards to web analytics were sound and can be helpful to both those with zero experience and those who have dealt with web analytics before. It is clear that Ash has a great deal of experience in the realm of tracking a websites analytics throughout the course of this section. This is a good thing, because as Tim Ash explains, tracking your changes is as important a step as any in the process of landing page optimization.
In all, this is a very thorough book on the subject of landing page optimization, but it may have had a little too much theory to be really helpful. I would give it 3/5 stars simply for the fact that it didn't deal enough with how to implement Ash's theories in the real world. The content is certainly top notch, I am just not sure that the entirety of the book will be really helpful to most people out there. Specifically those without several years of experience in designing and running a website.
Pros:
Mine came with a $25 Google Adwords Gift Certificate (offsets price of book)
Good layout, easy to read
Tim Ash clearly knows what he is talking about
Cons:
Too much theory
Very few examples/ pictures
No color, dull to look at
User review
Tough to read, but worth it
This is a hard book to swallow and digest, but the investment in time and frustration is worth it. It's jam-packed with good information, worthy of the term 'Definitive Guide', and if you're serious about testing, you simply have to have it.
User review
A Great Resource Book with Actionable Information
Landing Page Optimization is a must-have resource for both large and small businesses that want to fine tune their website to drive sales, customers and conversions.
The content is organized, and easy to understand. Most importantly, Tim's extensive Internet knowledge provides the reader with a deep understanding of how to test and tune your website, and how to develop an actionable plan to improve results. Definitely a keeper!