Andrew B. King - Website optimization

"How do we make our website better?"

I've been answering that question for 15 years and had to write eight books on the subject to lay it all out. But I could not have written this book.

"What should we measure on our website?"

I've been answering that question for eight years and had to write a book on the subject, create a category-dominating conference, and start a professional association to lay it all out. But I could not have written this book.

I wrote about strategy and philosophy. I blazed a trail of logic and common sense, bringing marketing and technology together in the service of customer centricity and increased profitability. At least that's what I told myself.

I spouted opinion, conjecture, perspective, and punditry. To others, I said that this was a Brave New World and that although the jury may be out, the insight was obvious. I created 10,000 PowerPoint slides showing the good, the bad, and the ugly in an attempt to diminish the quantity and grief of aggravating encounters with electronic brochures laden with bad electronic penmanship.

When pressed for examples and case studies, I pointed to the newness and shininess of the art and practice of Internet marketing and declared that companies that had a clue and had figured out best practices were not talking. It was all too secret sauce and competitive edge to give away to potential competitors.

Today, we not only have examples, but we also have experiments and documentation. The result is scholarship.

One of the things that sets Website Optimization apart from the articles, white papers, blogs, books, and pundits is that it taps all of those to deliver a well-considered, well-researched, well-organized treatise on how to get the most out of your online investment.

This book brings philosophy, strategy, and tactical advice together, dressed up like avuncular guidance but incorporating a decade of emergent research. It lays out all the issues to consider and cites seminal sources. When you come across a passage that intrigues or something you need to implement right now, you can follow the thread to the source, drill down, and dive deep.

But that's just one of the things that sets this book apart. The other is its scope.

The history of online marketing started with the technology. Business people first had to understand what the Internet was and how it workedtechnically. Then came the difficult task of understanding Internet culture. The gift economy, Permission Marketing, The Cluetrain Manifesto , and the desire of web surfers to share and commune all had to be assimilated and folded into marketing programs and web development efforts. But something was lost along the way: marketing. Good old-fashioned advertising, marketing, and sales skills that have been around since John Wannamaker invented the price tag.

A whole generation of web designers, information architects, and customer experience engineers missed those classes in school and haven't been in their careers long enough to have absorbed the lessons that those who did not grow up with their own domain names have lived and breathed for generations.

Those who can code Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in their sleep and use Twitter to update their Facebook friends about the most viral YouTube videos are not familiar with phrases such as "unique sales proposition," "risk reversal," and "solution selling." They are in need of this book.

Those who remember three-martini lunches on Madison Avenue are still uncomfortable with link equity, robots.txt files, and Google analytics page tags. They need this book.

Website Optimization brings together the science, the art, and the business of Internet marketing in a complete wayif you'll excuse the expression, in a textbook way . From persuasion paths to search engine algorithms, from web page load performance to pay-per-click campaign management, and from organic search-ranking metrics to multivariate testing, this book is a resource that goes from soup to nuts.

My advice? Do not read this book. Spend a day scanning this book with a pad of yellow sticky notes at hand. You will repeatedly find topics that you want to explore in depthpassages you will want to read again and pages you will take to the copy machine to spread liberally around your company.

Website Optimization is the book that will help you make the case to your bossand her bossfor more resources to help you make the most of your online investment.

How do you make your website better? Start on page 1.

Jim Sterne

Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his 25 years of experience in sales and marketing on measuring the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written eight books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service, including Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success . Sterne is the producer of the annual eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (http://www.emetrics.org/) and is the founding president and current chairperson of the Web Analytics Association (http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org/).