5-star praise for Convert!

Great resource that is to the point.

I’ve been developing web application for 10 years and the one area that I have always been weak in is reliable conversion rates for my clients. I can deal with the complexity of the software, but the presentation and flow of the message for the audience is a different animal all together.

For those of you who work in the online industry, you are probably aware of the wide array of skillsets required to take a concept through the entire lifecycle to completion. I’ve only read through a portion of this book, but so far, Ben is conveying the right message for professionals in my field.

Having to deal with servers, development frameworks, existing applications (cms/ecom), design opinions and copy can make any web project way more complicated than it has to be. The focus on simplicty in design, copy and analysis that Ben has put together will definitely help bring me into the minds of the visitor for a better conversion rate and ultimately successful projects.

I highly recommend this book to all online professionals of all backgrounds.

– Joshua Martyn

Uncommon commonsense – easy to read, lots of examples, solid advice.

I’ve been building websites for 12 years and have long believed that most sites are a waste of money; they look pretty but don’t generate profits for the client. I tell prospects that if no one can find your site – and they don’t do what you want (buy, donate, sign up, order) when they get there – it’s money down the drain.

Still, web design courses have focused on how a site LOOKS (“graphic design”) or the technical aspects of building a site. Ben Hunt goes beyond that. He marries technical knowledge with solid marketing fundamentals in a clear and compelling way. And best of all he provides examples of sites he’s redesigned, explaining the reasoning behind each revision.

If you design websites, if you do copywriting for websites, if you simply want to understand how “online marketing” is SUPPOSED to work – get this book!

– Diana Ratliff

This book will become a classic.

What a pleasure to have Ben Hunt’s work finally available through a conventional publisher, in a form that will make his ideas available to more readers.

Hunt’s first book, Save the Pixel, is a self-published document that has been available only online.

Until recently, Hunt and his business, Scratch Media, have been best known for their contribution to thinking about how to create simple website designs that focus on achieving well-defined goals with great economy.

Convert! broadens the scope of Hunt’s prior work. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in improving the effectiveness of a commercially oriented website.

Hunt presents an excellent synthesis of ideas from many interrelated fields, including design, copywriting and search-engine marketing.

The ideas he shares are far from commonplace today, though I believe in the not-too-distant future better marketers will apply them almost universally. Someday reviewers may write that the ideas in the book are not new. If so, it will be only because the book’s influence promises to become so pervasive.

Hunt’s writing is clear, readable and accessible. I read it once in a few hours and have been rereading it with pen in hand to note all of the great ideas I can put to work immediately.

This book is a treasure for marketers who want to create a standout presence on the Web. And its price makes it an absolute bargain.

– D. Vranicar

A Genuine Masterpiece…

Ostensibly this is a book about web design and conversion optimization. Indeed, in my opinion it is a masterpiece in both of these categories – a genuine double category killer.

Alas, that is only the beginning. Recognizing that for a commercial website it is somewhat meaningless to talk about web design separately from market research, search engine optimization, advertising and copywriting, the author proceeds to provide an excellent, integrated overview of all of these subjects. The end result is what I suspect is the first successful attempt to articulate a unified theory of Internet marketing.

What is most impressive is the quality of the discussion on so many related topics. For example, although many of the points on copywriting are familiar from other sources, in my opinion the end result is a book with copywriting insight at least the equal of the excellent books on the subject by Bob Bly and Drayton Bird.

A couple of chapters are devoted to a discussion of the “awareness ladder,” by which people climb through various stages of awareness of your product or service on the way to becoming a customer. While some might argue that this concept is not entirely original, I believe that the depth and clarity of the author’s descriptions in this area break important new ground. Do some Google searches on the subject after reading the book and you’ll see what I mean.

If you aren’t familiar with the “awareness ladder” and think it sounds like a bunch of hokey marketing theory, think again. After reading this book you’ll know exactly how to link the elements of your website together according to stages of awareness in such a way as to maximize conversions.

Page for page and dollar for dollar, you’d be hard pressed to find a better book than this one. This book deserves to be on Amazon’s bestseller list, not number 200 thousand and something on the sales list as it stands now. It was just recently released so perhaps it’s just a matter of time…

– Delirium

No other book teaches you how to convert more of the users you already have to revenue generating customers.

As the CEO of a well trafficked apartment rental site, I used Ben’s Save the Pixel as our guidebook to redesign our site to present our clients’ apartment properties in the best possible format to encourage users to contact the property.

We thought we had it right using the “best first guess” method Ben refers to in Convert!. After hiring Ben’s web design firm, Scratch Media, to do some additional tweaking, we were amazed that the most important calls to action (phone calls to our property listing clients) went up by 50%. Ben’s modifications, which he highlights in the book, were responsible for a 50% increase in value to our clients. This is an example of how the concepts in this book result in direct and immediate monetary gain for site owners. If you own a web site that generates revenue of any volume, Ben can teach you to make more money…..lots more.

After reading the book, I see many more areas where our design and process needs improving. I can’t wait to use Ben’s ideas to increase conversions another 50%…..and revenue along with it.

– David Layfield

Convert! Highly recommended

As President of a small manufacturing company I was looking for a book to better understand the website development process. We have worked with web designers for years but always felt a bit in the dark regarding the process and what we should expect. Rarely did performance meet expectations. Working within our budget, it was tough to find an agency or individual that had both programming skills, marketing savvy and SEO/SEM expertise.

Ben’s first ebook ‘Save the Pixel’ was a great ‘eye-opener’ for me and really gave us a good tool to use in our dialog with our contracted website developers. Convert is even a better book that provides both a practical and philosophical approach to designing great websites. I would highly recommend it for any ‘do it yourself’ company or those wanting a tool to ensure that your web development agency is basically on the ‘same page’ with you.

This is really a great book that takes a lot of the mystery out of the website development and marketing process. Nice job Ben.

– Dominic

Web site conversions and design usually don’t go together!

I found this exciting reading! It is because Ben Hunt (no relation) answered the core question of how to integrate web design with SEO to create an internet marketing program. Then he goes on to explain how to improve and test changes with the real goal of increasing ROI for the web owner.

The writing is easy to follow, has been logically put together and has lots of examples.

It’s a great book for those wanting better results for their own business or for their clients.

– Dan Hunt

Purely Amazing!

This has to be the most insightful book I have ever read on Web Design, Conversion, SEO, Marketing, etc. It gives you a completely new way to look at web sites, from landing pages to Search Engine Optimization, and Conversion Optimization. Ben really has an incredible grasp on how people view and react to web design.’

If you’re looking for a way to bring your work to the next level, this is definitely the book to get!

– From Scratch