An instant online marketing classic
Tim truly "gets it" when it comes to landing page optimization. This book is "right on the money".
Broad but extremely thin -- beginners only
If you know absolutely nothing about marketing or web commerce, this may be the book for you. It touches on a great many important subjects, and provides a useful -- if brief -- introduction to each.
If, on the other hand, you have ANY experience at all with basic marketing principles and the concepts and techniques behind optimizing your web site to maximize customer response, you will find this book quite tedious.
Simply put, nothing in this book gets more than surface treatment. Hundreds of very valuable concepts are introduced but none is ever fleshed out in a useful fashion. Practical examples are almost non-existent. Case studies are not used. Techniques are described in the broadest terms so that they may apply to any of a million different contexts or scenarios. This approach renders the book nearly useless to anyone who has even a little bit of knowledge in this area.
After reading a few chapters, I was simply bored out of my mind. I switched to scanning sections and dropping in periodically to see if the level of detail increased, but it did not. I do not consider myself an expert by any means, but there was nothing here that I found enlightening or even useful. It's all too bland and general.
I started the web site for my small business about five years ago, and constantly seek out new sources of insight into how I can improve it. The information in this book was just too generalized to be of any use.
If you are new to web marketing, use this as a primer, but you will soon be itching for a more practical resource. A shorter but infinitely more helpful (and entertaining) primer might be something like Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. From there, you will need individual books on things like analytics, keywords, SEO, pricing, copywriting, etc.
In that vein, I thought I was buying a book about optimizing my landing pages (a very big and complex subject all its own). This book touches on that, but not in a way that I found particularly detailed or useful. A better title for this book might be, "Introduction to Marketing (Web Edition)".
Design websites for visitors & not for yourself...
Tim Ash provides an exhaustive study of design & testing so you can learn how to compel your websites' visitors to take action. This book inspired a paradigm shift in my web design philosophy. Before I really had no philosophy - only designs. Now I am in the process of retooling all of my sites to focus on usability & the needs of visitors. I hope I can maintain the discipline to test for more than just functionality & actually look at testing for conversions.
A Must Have
I immediately digested this book as soon as I got my hands on it. It is a must have for those in the industry as a developer, consultant or merchant. This book provide critical information you shouldn't be without!
Easy to digest and results oriented.
The author has accomplished a difficult feat indeed - explaining the variety of methods and mechanisms of multivariate testing simply, plainly, and with real world application.
I work in the Direct Response space, we've used multivariate testing for a number of years and actively subscribe to a number of newsletters and whitepapers on the subject. I would consider myself an expert on the process and technologies, yet still found a wealth of new and refreshing information in this book.
In particular, the methodology behind calculating the real dollars and cents increases is well executed.
All around easy to reccomend.
(34 reviews)
