Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

From the Back Cover

OPTIMIZE YOUR LANDING PAGES TO TURBOCHARGE YOUR PROFITS

How much money are you losing because of poor landing page design? In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, you will learn all the skills necessary to dramatically improve your bottom line:

• Identify mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value

• Define important visitor classes and key conversion tasks

• Gain insight on customer decision-making and make your page friction-free

• Uncover problems with your page and decide which elements to test

• Understand the power and limitations of common optimization approaches

• Develop an action plan and get buy-in from all key players

• Avoid common real-world pitfalls that can sabotage your test

Packed with case studies, practical strategies, a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool, and a comprehensive companion website, this one-of-a-kind resource will help you make your landing pages more profitable.

"Tim has figured out what so many people don't understand: your website can (and should) get better. Every single day."
—Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

"This book is a must-read for the modern Internet marketer."
—Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

"This is the best business-focused, measurement-based guide to website design I have seen."
—Don Norman, cofounder of Nielsen Norman Group and author of The Design of Future Things

"Stop guessing at the best landing page designs and embrace true customer centricity. This book shows you how!"
—Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

"Tim's Landing Page Optimization is a must-have for your bookshelf."
—Bryan Eisenberg, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470174625
• ISBN-13: 978-0470174623
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,862 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important web marketing and sales books you'll own, April 3, 2008

By	Tom Carpenter "- www.sysedco.com" (Marysville, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This is a very important book. It helps you understand why the landing page is so impacting on the final actions of your visitors and what a landing page is for that matter. The book provides you with excellent guidance for analyzing your current website and determining how to make it easier for the visitor to use and, more importantly, easier for the user to do what you need them to do.

I loved the section titled, "Why your site is not perfect". It provides excellent information on how to uncover hidden problems in your site that your users are experiencing even though you may not have noticed them. Let's just say that it goes way beyond dead links.

Finally, "the math of tuning" shows you how to make logical decisions for next steps and make sure you're not wasting time fixing things that aren't broken or don't matter. Overall... a great book.

56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great source yet very uneven book, May 7, 2008

By	Smiling Zee "foreigner" (somewhere USA) - See all my reviews

This book may be the best thing since sliced bread for you, or can be practically useless. It has an extensive focus on Joe web surfer's persona, on why and how he behaves on the web. It also explains basic concepts such as A-B split testing, ROI, and gives a few examples from author's consulting background. There's a few mathematical formulas, which I am sure are excellent for marketing folks.

But what completely lacks from this book is THE WHAT and THE HOW. The "Uncovering Problems" section is surprisingly small and has no real value. It is explainable - the later part of the book is nothing but a marketing promo of author's consulting business. This costs author 1 star in my review.

The second star I remove because this book is completely useless for small to medium business. If you are a company with under $20 million in revenue - which is where 99% of websites belong - this book is not going to help you much.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praxis Oriented and Hands-On, No Blah Blah, May 14, 2008

By	Carsten Cumbrowski "Carsten aka Roy/SAC & Cir... (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The book was written by Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com, a web analytics and site optimization service who does landing page optimization among other things for his living.

It is a real-world and practical guide to landing page testing and optimization without any fluff. It is really for the folks who do the testing and the ones who have to sell it to their boss and need to know about the details of the process of landing page testing, what is involved, what are the risks and how it should be approached and why.

It is very useful and complimentary to the "Landing Page Handbook" by MarketingSherpa, the $500 "bible" for folks who do serious landing page optimization for their business.

They also overlap in a few areas. This means that it is also a good buy for people who are not doing enough business that involves using landing pages to justify and recoup the $500 investment in the MarketingSherpa book. It's not exactly an alternative, but it is a start that cost a lot less.

If you are doing serious business with landing pages, I recommend getting both books. The return (increase in conversion = increase in business and profits) you will get out from it will pay for the initial investment quickly and then over and over again for the time to come.