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

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.

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.

Website conversion rates are the key to my job. In the past, the only landing page guidance I could get was from books that talked about web design or usability, or specific case studies that were not helpful for my field. Many of them were fluff or too generic. This is the first comprehensive book about TESTING landing pages. This is a very different beast than just DESIGNING them. Ash is right when he says that your audience should "vote" for the best design - it does not matter what you like best as the site creator. The book covers a lot of material in depth. I was a bit in over my head in the chapters about statistics in math. But at least I understand the limitations of different testing methods now, and won't buy into the hype anymore. This was the densest part of the book, but absolutely essential to anyone who is actually setting up and running multivariate tests. This book is not a quick read. You will have to spend some time to get the most use out of it. You will probably come back to it again and again because there is so much good material in there. I wish the screenshots were bigger and in color, but that is only a small formatting gripe. Overall this book is very solid - there is no other one out there that even comes close in terms of the ambition and scope.

I believe Landing Page Optimization will become the bible for Internet marketers who wish to dramatically improve their online sales. As a frequent internet shopper, I am constantly frustrated by confusing, difficult-to-use and uninformative sites even though I want to buy a product. Here is a clear, logical and often humorous tutorial on how to assess, test, improve and verify your site's ability to generate sales. Mr. Ash gives examples of actual sites with poor landing pages and contrasts those with sites with effective pages. He also fills in important background about the psychology and math of testing that most people are not even aware of. This book illustrates just how sophisticated landing page optimization has become and is a must-read for everyone in the online marketing business.

Most books on improving landing page conversion rates are very tactical. They give you specific prescriptions for how to change your site, without providing a comprehensive framework first. This book is very broad and deep at the same time. It covers human psychology and decision making, identifying problems with your website, usability and writing style for the web, the math behind landing page testing, as well as extensive chapters on how to assemble the right team and create a whole landing page testing program within your company. If you are looking for a quick fix, this book is not for you. But if you want a deep understanding of all issues that are critical for landing page testing success, then you should definitely read this.