I just finished reading Tim's book and want to let you all know that this is by far the best book I have ever read on landing page optimization. I now have 18 pages of notes and ideas to apply to my work as a result. No combination of blog posts, speakers or articles can provide this kind of comprehensive, actionable knowledge.

I work in the search marketing / analytics field in a digital-centric agency setting and will be recommending this book to everyone I work with. This is a must read for any person or company involved in digital media, analytics, usability, web design or any other online field.

Landing page optimization (LPO) is NOT as simple as changing a web page's images, text, or font color and font size to create what you THINK others will like. There are many more pieces to the puzzle, which Tim Ash covers very well.

I firmly believe that this book is a great read for anybody who plays a part in the design and layout of any web page that asks a visitor to do something (i.e. buy, sign up, download, etc.). You'll definitely learn how you can make your mission critical landing pages convert better.

Even the old salty pros out there can learn a thing or two from LPO Jedi, Tim Ash.

Eric Itzkowitz
[...] Phone Cards

p.s. We've already put into place some of the learnings derived from this book. We can't wait to see the results!

I often find that mastering the art and science of conversion optimization is one of the key areas that separates outstanding marketers from the also-rans. Tim's book is an essential resource to help people start to develop that mastery.

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 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.

Though I had given this book 5 stars, I really mean it - this book is everything you need about the topic.
But.
A warning here. Author goes on for a lot of math, theory and things, what can scare you away, in case your mind is prepared to see a lot of pictures & comics style reading like you probably saw in this book:

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

I would say - if you want easy book to read on a topic - take a Steve's book, but of you are ready to serious brain wash with a topics starting from Myer/Briggs personas (same topic is covered by another great book - Waiting for your cat to bark, from Eisenberg brothers), probability theory, quantitative approaches, and other similar issues - then this book is for you.

Just do not expect the easy go read. This is what I wanted to say

Certain types of advice go without saying; eat your vegetables, listen to your mother, look both ways before crossing the street. In his new book Landing Page Optimization, Tim Ash reminds us of fundamental landing page design concepts that seem simple. But we all (at least occasionally) fall into the trap of forgetting them when designing a page.

Landing Page Optimization starts and ends with a very simple premise: you are not the expert in designing an effective landing page -- your customers are. You may feel that you have pegged the perfect message, the right layout and the simplest form. You reason you derived all of these elements from an exact understanding of who is visiting the website and why. Truth is, you haven't. Your design most likely rests on how you see your product or service, how you structure your company, what your CEO likes, or any number of other things that have little or nothing to do with the customer's needs. Swallow your pride, trust your customers to tell you what they want through their actions, and give it to them.

Tim asserts the basic principle that your page must appeal to the emotional responses of the visitor. Make them feel welcome, safe and connected to your site. Unfortunately, you don't have the time to explain to them why they should trust and commit. Visitors devote only a few seconds to your landing page, and you must make the most of these seconds. Assume no one wants to read your lengthy descriptions. Communicate quickly with images and bulleted lists, with your overall goal of maximizing conversions constantly in mind.

Tim has delivered a must-read book for every level of an organization that wants to make its website and online marketing efforts successful. Far from being a book for any one job title, Landing Page Optimization gives everyone in an organization a solid foundation for how to think about customers, how that relates to design, and how to test sites with maximizing conversions in mind. Each person involved in landing page design must think about how each element on the landing page helps or hinders a visitor's ability to understand immediately who the site owner is, conclude there's a solid benefit for them, and trust the site owner with their information.

In all, Landing Page Optimization provides a valuable look at the factors we should consider when evaluating the effectiveness of any landing page. This excellent read will leave you saying, "I knew that! Why haven't I been doing this all along?!?"

Could a book that would obviously be about grabbing a web surfer's attention for commercial purposes be helpful to someone who wasn't particularly concerned about `conversions'? In this case, absolutely yes. If you can allow your mind to think outside the box just a bit, this book can really provide some helpful advice which can be easily translated to your particular goal.

Mr. Ash assumes you know what you want to do but nevertheless gently nudges you with reminders of the many things which you should be considering. Complex - but necessary - concepts are explained in context and without boring definitions so that you can smile smugly with the sure and steadfast knowledge that you've always understood things like Full Factorial Non-Parametric Testing. After a few pages, you'll be eager to make meaningful changes to your own website!

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.

Creating a website, even with a great looking initial landing page, is not nearly enough in today's increasingly competitive marketplace. Tim Ash's book is a simple, practical step-by-step guide to effectively win your target customers' attention, their purchases and, ultimately, their loyalty. A "must read" for anyone with an Internet presence.

If you're serious about the strategy of war, you must study Clausewitz and Musashi. If you're serious about LPO, Tim's book is on the must read list.

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.

Tim uses his own experience and real-life examples to illustrate the necessity of a good landing page. Each chapter details steps you can follow to fine-tune your own website and get results.

If you're serious about increasing your conversion rates, here's a comprehensive guide, as well as a good read.

I was asked to write this book by John Wiley & Sons Press because there was a gap in the available knowledge on the topic of landing page optimization and testing. Sure there are lots of books on web design, web usability, and persuasive web copy-writing. But these topics are just a small subset of the knowledge that is required to have a successful landing page testing program.

Many books by so-called online marketing "experts" will purport to know the "right answer", and tell you what you should do in a particular situation. This is valuable as far as it goes. But in my own extensive experience with TESTING landing pages, my opinions and ideas are very often wrong. No single expert or company can be right all of the time, and understand exactly what your particular website visitor audience will respond to. That is the whole point of testing (as opposed to conjectures or guessing).

My book tries to fill in the holes around testing in particular: how to identify problems with your site, how to decide what page elements to test, how to understand the math and statistical assumptions behind testing, and how to select the right testing method and understand its limitations. In addition, I cover real-word considerations such as the company politics of tuning, how to create an action plan for your testing program, and how to avoid common testing pitfalls and problems.

So if you are looking for good books on website design or usability in general, you should get them as well. In fact I list several additional recommended titles on this book's website (LandingPageOptimizationBook dt com). But this book should be useful to you if you are interested in learning the additional topics that you will need to understand in order to be successful with landing page optimization and testing.

Here's to higher landing page conversion rates, and your continued online marketing success!

This book is "meaty". Although it has many screenshot examples of landing pages issues, the book also has a lot of comprehensive and detailed discussion of important and diverse background materials. At times it reads like a graduate business school textbook on the subject, but a very readable one.

It is not about specific "one size fits all" landing pages. It shatters a lot of common assumptions about how to approach landing page design. Instead, it delves into the fundamental principles that allow you to design and test the best landing pages for your specific situation.

This book gives you new eyes with which to see opportunities for increased landing page efficiency and conversions. As a search engine marketer, this book is critical to my job success.

Highly recommended!

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.

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.

Tim is the go-to guy in the landing-page optimization/multivariate testing field, and this book is the most thorough and well-researched work on the subject to date. The style is relatively easy to read, though he does get very technical in some parts for those who are interested in regression analysis and the math side of things in general.

Tim is often the featured speaker at major web marketing conferences, and he clearly knows the subject of LPO better than just about anybody. Highly recommend his book if you want to learn from the master.