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

by Tim Ash

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.

Genres: Business, Design, Web, Nonfiction, Internet, Website Design, Technical

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Bill Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty underwhelmed by this book. It suffers from the same problems as the vast majority of business books. First, it is too long and repetitive. There are certainly some good concepts and ideas related here, especially for a novice in the field, but they could easily have been covered in one third the space. Second, this book contains too much self promotion of the author. A solid 30 to 50 page white paper or series of blog posts would have formed a better treatment of the topic.

[Andrus · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the "I know many technical aspects of something, so I've written them down - and you should buy the consulting services of my company" books. The few great nuggets of wisdom this books has have been hidden behind poor structure, lack of focus and boring writing. All in all, Tim Ash has committed the sin of writing a business book without the aim to help the reader.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book simply because it emphasizes the importance of landing page optimization, a topic that not many typical marketers really consider important. It does end up feeling a bit like a pitch to utilize Tim's company and the other downfall is that every form of a landing page doesn't work for the same client.

[André La Crout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not exactly a fun read, but very thorough

I have a hard time deciding whether to give this 4 stars or 5 stars, so I’ll say 4.5 and round up to 5.

It’s very dry, but it’s one of the most thorough books I’ve ever read for landing page and website optimization.

There are large sections of it that seem unnecessary, especially in the last quarter of the book. There’s even a subchapter for sneakily doing A/B tests in a company that won’t let you do A/B tests lol.

I suppose that’s the price to pay for being thorough. There’s bound to be sections you might not find useful, but someone else will. The book is so long and thorough that you’re bound to find large sections that ARE useful to you.

[Nicholas Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great read. It was an incredibly in depth break down of pretty much everything you need to know about CRO. I found the principles clearly laid out and the structure easy to follow.

My only criticism would be that it was a few pages longer than it needed to be, with certain points expounded upon one too many times in a way that became repetitive without necessarily helping comprehension.

Slightly textbook style which isn’t a criticism but rather good to know before diving in. Solid read.

[Nik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this knowing nothing about landing pages, and came out knowing... some best practices for landing pages and writing content for those pages. I'll be using this as a reference in the future. Definitely worth your time if you can actively practice the content in this book.

[Alejandro Calderón durán · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is outdated and waste of time

The links to the resources are broken, the example are from the 90s, I did not find any useful information to create a landing page, what a waste of my time.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ample valuable information

Tim Ash provides long-term strategies that solve the guessing game of Web page improvement and give you an effective battle plan – but don’t expect overnight, quick solutions. Landing page optimization – a process of diagnosing, tuning and testing – is detail work. Although Ash refers often to his own Web page “tuning” firm, he also shares ample valuable information your business can use. He wrote this book for the team behind a Web site’s design, including those involved with content, user experience, media, marketing, advertising, product management and affiliate management. getAbstract believes that anyone who wishes to do a thorough job of refining a site’s landing pages can rely on this precise, detailed and knowledgeable manual.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book with a lot of detail, including the math and statistical analysis of optimization. My only complaint is, Tim Ash must do a terrible job hiring IT. He spends most of chapter 13 griping about IT professionals which became quite obnoxious around the 10th or 11th page of rants.

[Claire Ragin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book should have been the title...I didn't walk away with many insights into how to optimize landing pages, but learned more than I ever wanted to know about testing methodologies.

[Sab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insights on landing page optimization to help boost online marketing campaigns. The tips and ideas from the author were really helpful in raising the quality scores on my PPC campaigns so I end up with lower bids and ad spend.

[Ryan Underdown · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent read. Towards the end I started to feel like I was reading a marketing pitch to use this guy's "tuning engine" but was definitely worth the read.

[Alan Rothstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good so far!

[Meryl Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

For GetAbstract. Very detailed book on creating effective landing pages. Might be a difficult read for those who haven't worked with them.

[Nate Desmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly dated, but lots of good ideas. Focused on the theoretical level.

[Jacqueline Isaacs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, practical guide to online marketing.

[Juan Jacobo Bernal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yikes was that dense... It got frustratingly info-heavy at times. You will find some gold nuggets in there, if you stay awake.

[Brett]

This is a solid book for the basics. I review and re-read repeatedly. Thanks Tim!

[Wpturkce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book includes an amazing road map for SEO success.
Thanks

[Philip Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone serious about improving and developing their current website, this is a MUST read!!

[Joél Steinmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

great practical optimization book. I would recommend it to everyone working with websites