Book Review: Web Design for ROI

I’m in the process of creating what will be a highly priced learning environment for teaching freelancers how to work from anywhere in the world. Because the site will have a pretty hefty price tag for admission, I felt it was important to make sure the sites design did everything it could to promote the product wisely. This means that I needed to pay special attention to the usability of the site. While usability is key in any good design, it is especially important when your design is trying to sell something.

It is the above information that made me check out this book that I found on Amazon:

Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads

What I Liked About the Book
The first half of the book is really informative once you get past the filler pages on things most designers already know. I found the first few chapters about landing page and home page design to be really useful. It explains why landing page tend to do better in PPC campaigns, how to make a home page that functions as a landing page, and a lot of other cool stuff. It also explains why these methods work and gives some pretty impressive stats on how much a a good landing page design can increase you ROI.

Another thing that I really liked about the book is that it gives you a sample web site strategy. By understanding the strategy of your website, you can be more informed as to how you should design your website. If for no other reason, you should pick up this book just to read this section of it.

What I didn’t Like About the Book
While the first have of the book can be applied to just about any type of website, the entire second half of the book is geared only at e-commerce type websites. So, that was kind of a bummer for me since Im not selling goods. The only other thing I didn’t like was that they didn’t dive much into keeping track of site stats and metrics. The suggested specific metrics to cover, but didn’t talk much about the best ways to track ROI. But in thier defense, that topic is a whole other book.