The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better

From Publishers Weekly
For those trying to make their Web sites profitable in the lean years, Internet marketing sage Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the Ideavirus, has written a practical guide to making sites more attractive to browsers. The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better offers simple but frequently overlooked design tips (avoid inefficient pull-down menus, don't ask for the same information twice) that will keep impatient users from ditching your site before they buy whatever it is you're selling. Godin's primary mantra is to limit information on each page and offer clear incentives for clicking to the next screen. Each of his concise points is illustrated with an image from an actual Web site, making the book itself a model of simplicity that will be appreciated by busy entrepreneurs and Web designers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
While the average computer book is as thick as the unabridged telephone directory to China, Godin's new Web marketing manual is so slender you'll actually want to read it. Geared primarily toward those designing, building, or owning retail Web sites, the text encourages us to picture the would-be shopper as a monkey (wearing a red fez) whose attention will wander if he can't instantly find a "banana": a simple objective on each page that leads to a reward. (The author insists the comparison is not demeaning, saying we're all monkeys once in a while.) Though he may be part of the insidious gang that seeks the best way to part us from our hard-earned cash, he is also a de facto consumer advocate; it turns out that what we find most annoying in the online world--Flash sites, crappy search engines, Spam--are the very things that cut into revenue. Imagine! After this brisk and humorous read, even a monkey would agree that this is how business ought to be done. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Business WeekSeth Godin is the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age.

Review
Business Week Seth Godin is the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age.

Product Description
YOUR WEB SITE IS COSTING YOU MONEY. IT'S ALSO FILLED WITH SIMPLE MISTAKES THAT TURN OFF VISITORS BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO BECOME CUSTOMERS.

According to marketing guru Seth Godin, a web site 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 supremely practical, cut-to-the-chase book, Godin identifies what it takes to create web sites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. And he's at his prickly stickler best using real-life examples to illustrate the essential truths and ridiculous fictions about how a web site should work. Packed with his inimitable wisdom and compelling hands-on applications, The Big Red Fez is a must-have tool for anyone working on the web.

About the Author
Seth Godin is the author of the New York Times business bestseller Permission Marketing. His ebook Unleashing the Ideavirus has been downloaded by more than a million people and broke new ground in the way ideas are distributed. He was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in 1998. He was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo! until he left to lecture and write full-time. A regular columnist for Fast Company magazine, he lives in Westchester County, New York.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Product Description
If you're looking at this page this far ahead of publication, you're probably a member of Seth Godin's tribe. And if so, you already know what this book is about.

You know about waiting in line at an Apple store, or the look on a fellow Deadhead's face.

You know about the way it feels to go back to the church where you grew up.

You know about the real power of a brand.

According to Godin, Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have.

The new opportunity is that it's easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes -- and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time.

Tribes (the book) will help you understand exactly what's at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own.

If you keep reading Seth's blog, you'll learn about a special, invitation-only online community that will connect readers to each other. Stay tuned for details.

Are you on the bus?

About the Author
Seth Godin is the author of ten international bestsellers, including the New York Times bestseller The Dip. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and include Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and Meatball Sundae. He is also the founder and CEO of Squidoo.com (a huge and fast-growing tribe) and the most popular business blogger in the world.

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World

From Publishers Weekly
Advertising's fundamental theorem-that perception trumps reality-informs this dubious marketing primer. Journalist and marketing guru Godin, author of Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, contends that, in an age when consumers are motivated by irrational wants instead of objective needs and "there is almost no connection between what is actually there and what we believe," presenting stolid factual information about a product is a losing strategy. Instead, marketers should tell "great stories" about their products that pander to consumers' self-regard and worldview. Examples include expensive wine glasses that purport to improve the taste of wine, despite scientific proof to the contrary; Baby Einstein videotapes that are "useless for babies but...satisfy a real desire for their parents"; and organic marketing schemes, which amount to "telling ourselves a complex lie about food, the environment and the safety of our families." Because consumers prefer fantasy to the truth, the marketer's duty is to be "authentic" rather than honest, to "live the lie, fully and completely" so that "all the details line up"-that is, to make their falsehoods convincing rather than transparent. Troubled by the cynicism of his own argument, Godin draws a line at deceptions that actually kill people, like marketing infant formula in the Third World, and elaborates a murky distinction between "fibs" that "make the thing itself more effective or enjoyable" and "frauds" that are "solely for the selfish benefit of the marketer." To illustrate his preferred approach to marketing, the author relates a grab bag of case studies, heavy on emotionally compelling pitches and seamless subliminal impressions. Readers will likely find the book's practical advice as rudderless as its ethical principles.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.

Successful marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.

This is a book about doing what consumers demand-painting vivid pictures that they choose to believe. Every organization-from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns to wineglass blowers-must understand that the rules have changed (again). In an economy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time to make them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about telling stories.

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.

But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers and Marlboro.

This is a powerful book for anyone who wants to create things people truly want as opposed to commodities that people merely need.