The Big Red Fez by Seth Godin

A month or so ago, on my trip to San Jose I brought with me "The Big Red Fez", by Seth Godin, to read on the plane. Sure enough, as I had expected, I was able to read through the entire book and digest its information rather quickly. Hell... the book is only like 110 pages and I was looking at a 4 hour flight. It wasn't all that hard to do.

According to the book, a website visitor is a lot like a monkey looking for one thing... a banana. If that banana isn't easy to see and easy to get, your visitor is gone with a quick click on the "Back" button. In this book, Godin identifies what it takes to create websites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. To top things off he uses real-life examples to help illustrate the essential truths and ridiculous fictions about how a website should work.

Godin points out several common, and some not so common, "problems" that websites face and how, as well as why, website owners should correct them. In fact, just looking back at the book (in order to prepare for this review), I began re-reading the ideas (pages) that I have dog-eared. The following 2 ideas are those that I believe are worth sharing:

• Offer a FREE gift at the beginning of the checkout processes. This will sway most shoppers to buy then by providing them with an incentive to do so, rather than having them leave and buy later (or maybe not at all). This technique is a great way to reward your shoppers, boost shopper moral, and at the same time lower your website's shopping-cart abandonment percentage.
  
  
• Offer a "Save Now" sale on the "thank you" page. Something like: "Thanks! We appreciate your business. Click here to save ten dollars, right now, on any lipstick we carry." The goal here is to try and capitalize on the fact that your customers are in a buying mood (they obviously just bought from you), that they're interested in your products (again, they just bought from you), and that you've already got their credit card information... meaning that the process should be fairly quick on their part. Plus they're now happy because they get a "Special" opportunity to save.

Now if those aren't 2 ideas you can bring back to your marketing department than I don't know what are. They're money... bank them!

Overall... my opinion of "The Big Red Fez" is that it's a rather quick read, but does a great job covering website development from a user's perspective. Many of the do's and don'ts are supported by examples that I see every day. As amazing as it may seem, it is rare these days for a marketer, engineer, executive, salesperson, etc. to look at their business through the eyes of the customer and to think about the customer's experience. As the saying goes, common sense is not so common.

I must admit that at first glance this book does appear to be somewhat basic and not of value, however, I assure you that is not the case. Inside "The Big Red Fez" you'll find over 40 great website design and marketing tips to either implement into your current project or reference on future projects. For this I am giving the book a rating of 4 Klogs (out of a possible 5) in my Book Reviews section.

Is your website filled with simple mistakes that turn off visitors before they have a chance to become customers? Are you sure? Well if you're not so sure, or you know that you need a hand in your website's design and marketing efforts, have a look at "The Big Red Fez", by Seth Godin. This book will help make any website better!

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