Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads [book review]

This book is a strategic and practical guide to building usable and converting websites. It goes over the importance of web design from a financial point of view and provides important insights to succeed on it. The authors are data-driven and show ways to measure web design success while explaining the usability reasons for such.

The book is divided into three parts:

1. Part I presents the business case for better web designs and how to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) for a new website.
2. Part II goes over the most important types of pages of a website and provides design tips to improve their usability and conversion rates. The page types reviewed are: landing pages, Homepages, category pages, detail (or product) pages, forms, and checkout process.
3. Part III provides a number of resources in order to dive deeper into the subject.

Below is an interesting excerpt where the authors provide a short checklist for Landing Pages. If the answer is ‘no’ to the questions, the probability that the visitor will buy in the website is low:

• Is this what I expected to see?
• Does this look credible and trustworthy?
• Does this look interesting enough to spend more time here?

Will your visitor find the answers to these questions?

• Hmm... that’s intriguing. How do I learn more?
• I’m interested, what now?
• What if I’m uncomfortable doing that?
• And if I have more questions?

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Book Description*

Your web site is a business—design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)?

Web design can do more than make a site look good—it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage. It's time to make web sites accountable. It's time to make design decisions based on metrics and business goals. It's time for Web Design for ROI.

In this book you'll learn:

• Why so many organizations think about web design the wrong way
• How small design changes can have a big impact on your bottom line
• Simple tips  to increase web sales/leads by 10% – 50% (or more)
• Concrete design guidelines for:
• Landing pages
• Home pages
• Category pages
• Detail pages
• Forms
• Checkout processes

Packed with helpful examples from a wide variety of sites!

Author Information*

Lance Loveday is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing (CLM). His primary goal is helping organizations rethink and revitalize their approach to online marketing. CLM provides results-focused consulting on the entire 'closed loop' of an effective online marketing campaign, from initial strategy development to execution to ROI analysis, and has earned high praise from Hewlett-Packard, Quicken Loans, SalesForce.com, and many others for engineering results for them.

Sandra Niehaus is highly sought after as a Web design consultant and usability analyst, and is also a conversion enhancement and search engine optimization professional. She has a singular ability to link and balance business goals with design and Internet technology requirements, and has contributed her expertise to projects for a wide range of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, WebEx, Salesforce.com, and Verisign.

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* Information from publisher website