The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better [Paperback]

Seth Godin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2002

YOUR WEB SITE IS COSTING YOU MONEY. IT'S ALSO FILLED WITH SIMPLE MISTAKES THAT TURN OFF VISITORS BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO BECOME CUSTOMERS.

According to marketing guru Seth Godin, a web site visitor is a lot like a monkey looking for one thing: a banana. If that banana isn't easy to see and easy to get, your visitor is gone with a quick click on the "Back" button.

In this supremely practical, cut-to-the-chase book, Godin identifies what it takes to create web sites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. And he's at his prickly stickler best using real-life examples to illustrate the essential truths and ridiculous fictions about how a web site should work. Packed with his inimitable wisdom and compelling hands-on applications, The Big Red Fez is a must-have tool for anyone working on the web.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For those trying to make their Web sites profitable in the lean years, Internet marketing sage Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the Ideavirus, has written a practical guide to making sites more attractive to browsers. The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better offers simple but frequently overlooked design tips (avoid inefficient pull-down menus, don't ask for the same information twice) that will keep impatient users from ditching your site before they buy whatever it is you're selling. Godin's primary mantra is to limit information on each page and offer clear incentives for clicking to the next screen. Each of his concise points is illustrated with an image from an actual Web site, making the book itself a model of simplicity that will be appreciated by busy entrepreneurs and Web designers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

While the average computer book is as thick as the unabridged telephone directory to China, Godin's new Web marketing manual is so slender you'll actually want to read it. Geared primarily toward those designing, building, or owning retail Web sites, the text encourages us to picture the would-be shopper as a monkey (wearing a red fez) whose attention will wander if he can't instantly find a "banana": a simple objective on each page that leads to a reward. (The author insists the comparison is not demeaning, saying we're all monkeys once in a while.) Though he may be part of the insidious gang that seeks the best way to part us from our hard-earned cash, he is also a de facto consumer advocate; it turns out that what we find most annoying in the online world--Flash sites, crappy search engines, Spam--are the very things that cut into revenue. Imagine! After this brisk and humorous read, even a monkey would agree that this is how business ought to be done. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; Original edition (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743227905
• ISBN-13: 978-0743227902
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Direct

More About the Author

Seth Godin is the author of fourteen international bestsellers that have been translated into over 35 languages, and have changed the way people think about marketing and work. His Unleashing the Ideavirus was the most popular ebook ever published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade.

His book, Tribes, was a nationwide bestseller, appearing on the Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It's about the most powerful form of marketing--leadership--and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter.

His book Linchpin, and was the fastest selling book of his career. Linchpin challenges you to stand up, do work that matters and race to the top instead of the bottom. More than that, though, the book outlines a massive change in our economy, a fundamental shift in what it means to have a job.

Since Linchpin, Godin has published two more books, Poke the Box and We Are All Weird, through his Domino Project.

In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth is founder and CEO of Squidoo.com, a fast growing recommendation website. His blog (find it by typing "seth" into Google) is the most popular marketing blog in the world. Before his work as a writer and blogger, Godin was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, a job he got after selling them his pioneering 1990s online startup, Yoyodyne.

You can find every single possible detail that anyone could ever want to know at squidoo.com/seth.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Book or brochure?, May 31, 2005

By 

M. Overweg - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better (Paperback)

I find it difficult to believe so many people liked this book:
The author starts off with 'bad' examples that admittedly have been made on many websites, but are really to obvious to put in a book of which the author is claimed to have 'inimitable wisdom' (back cover).
Then, towards the end, more examples of 'good' design are given, and most of these did not impress me at all. At some point I even got the feeling this was some sort of brochure (given its size, you can hardly call it a book) written to advertise the websites of Godin's friends and clients.

The enormous amount of research the author must have done is nicely summarized in this quote from page 105: 'Find the sites on the web that are working and copy their organization.'

If you're looking for a good book on this subject, look up Steve Krug or Jakob Nielsen.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Appealing Concept, June 9, 2003

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better (Paperback)

Author of several brisk, witty, and informative business books, Seth Godin has a unique gift for locking in on a core concept and then explaining why and how it can guide and inform thinking about an important business issue. In this volume, he focuses on "how to make any Web site better." His dual metaphors explain the meaning and significance of the title. Preferring a marketer's version of a Web site to that of an engineer, he suggests that "One of the best ways to remind yourself about what's really going on [when someone visits a Web site] is to think of a monkey in a big red fez...The best way to motivate the monkey [to take a desired action], of course, is to use a banana. Whenever a monkey walks into a new situation, all it wants to know is, 'Where's the banana?' If the banana isn't easy to see, easy to get and obvious, the monkey is going to lose interest. But if you can make it clear to the monkey what's in it for him, odds are he'll do what you want." Obviously, the monkey is the Web site visitor and the banana is the incentive mechanism.

Godin uses a number of different real-world Web sites to illustrate what is and is not effective; he also explains why. (Presumably many of those responsible for the ineffective Web sites have read this book and made the necessary revisions since it first appeared about 18 months ago.) One of the book's most interesting points concerns the quite different mentalities of the engineer and the marketer. The former assumes that smart people have plenty of time, know precisely what they want from their online surfing, and can make a considered decision if provided with sufficient data. In stunning contrast, the marketer assumes that people are busy, ill informed, impatient, not very thoughtful and eager to click on to something RIGHT NOW. The marketer also believes that if you don't give the visitor the right object (or objective) to click on to immediately, the visitor will hit the "Back" button and leave.

I presume to add another difference: I think that most visually complicated Web sites resemble the front page of the U.S.A. Today newspaper (especially the Friday/Saturday/Sunday edition) whereas the most effective Web sites resemble the most effective billboards along a highway. Percentages vary but research studies suggest that online surfers spend about 90% of their time visiting the same ten Web sites Also, that after a unsatisfying experience, the percentage is even higher; that is, approximately 95% of online surfers never return to that Web site.

One substantial benefit this book provides which I did not anticipate when I began to read it is that the same principles which Godin recommends to increase a Web site's effectiveness are also relevant to the design of marketing and sales collateral materials such as direct mail solicitations and printed brochures. Because of the immense clutter through which messages of various kinds struggle to reach their destination, and because this clutter is certain to become even greater, Godin's concept of what he calls a "purple cow" (explained in a book of the same name) has compelling importance: become and then remain remarkable for as long as possible. Web sites, letterhead, business cards, products, services...indeed contact and communication in any form...must attract and reward attention or are certain to fail. Period.

Those who are responsible for Web sites or who heavily depend on Web sites to help achieve their business objectives are strongly urged to check out all of those which Godin features in his book. Also be alert to various lists of award-winning Web sites, especially those selected by online surfers rather than by technicians. For example, the finalists in competition for the 1st Annual Web Site Award sponsored by WIRED magazine.

One final point: This year's Purple Cow may well be a Plaid Kangaroo in 2004.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Big Red Herring, September 16, 2006

By 

Malcolm Broderick "Kidneys4Lives" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better (Paperback)

Let me first say that I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin. That being said, this is not one of Seth's better works. A better title might have been: The Big Red Herring: A few of my web page pet peeves.

Here's how the book breaks down. There are a total of 111 pages. There are 46 mini-critiques which are comprised of one page with a single B&W screenshot of a webpage or email and a facing page explaining what you're looking at. These pages are usually only about 3 - 4 paragraphs (half the page). Of the 46 mini-critiques, 7 are about emails. This leaves 39 mini-critiques about actual websites.

I think that for the money we should have had at least a few of the screenshots in color, particularly the one where Seth tells us that the buttons are the wrong color, but doesn't mention what color they are. We don't know, we're looking at a B&W picture.

There are only about 13 unique insights. So each insight is repeated an average of 3 times. In the book Seth himself says, "Redundancy is often the enemy of a great web experience". Well, ditto for the book experience.

The first web site listed on Seth's recommended site list is the book's. You'll find that the only content on the web site is directed toward selling you the book that you're already holding. There are no extra web site critiques or examples. What's the point? As Seth himself would say, "Where's the banana?"