Originally submitted at O'Reilly
Is your site easy to find, simple to navigate, and enticing enough to convert prospects into buyers? Website Optimization shows you how. It reveals a comprehensive set of techniques to improve your site's performance by boosting search engine visibility for more traffic, increasing con...
Diverse, related topics in one place
Pros: Concise, Helpful examples, Easy to understand
Best Uses: Expert, Intermediate
This is a hugely useful read, particularly if - like myself - you have a range of responsibilities for managing online assets ranging from design, deployment and testing to site promotion and marketing.
Much of the information on each vertical section can be found elsewhere - for instance SEO, PPC and performance optimisation - and individually, each section provides solid information which might not surprise.
The real advantage of this book is that it forces the reader to think of each of the diverse threads as being intimately related in the customer's experience. If you are a UML geek, think of it as an answer to an end-to-end use case (find site, load site, explore site): if you are a marketeer it will expand your horizon in understanding how technical, offpage elements can contribute to satisfaction, bounce rate reduction and improved conversion; if you work in application deployment or support, it will give you some useful pre-launch direction to load and performance testing and gain you brownie points with your Sales and Marketing customers.
So, short order review is that while individual sections on their own may not deliver any surprises to someone with existing expertise, the overall remit of the book will expand the horizons of most who read it.
(legalese)
