There are a handful of authors who have inspired our book and concepts. In no particular order:
Avinash Kaushik — Avinash authored a foundational book on analytics Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
and maintains an analytics blog. His blog, or his book, is a good place to start your exploration of your site analytics. He is a supporter of paired metrics, like we talk about in the book.
Future Now Inc — These people created Call to Action
and Always Be Testing
they are pioneers in conversion optimization and popularized the use of temperament as an influencer of buying behavior online. You can read my review of Always Be Testing here. The frameworks in Always Be Testing led us to the question: how do you measure success? We try to answer this question by tying performance indicators to real world behavior that each temperament displays.
Tim Ash — Tim gives good high level thoughts on conversion in Landing Page Optimization
and to some extent influenced the use of Aquisition and Retention as major concepts in User Driven Change: Give Them What They Want.
Steven Krug — Don’t Make Me Think
along with works by Jakob Nielsen, have been fundamental to “clean design” for years. Jeff and I both have personal aesthetics’ that pay homage to Krug. But, there are some ways in which marketing communication is combative of simplicity. We encourage balance or goal specific application of Krug’s concepts.
By combining concepts that many of you have already been introduced to and honestly answering how we apply them to our own projects we hope we provide you with a solid resource to improve your own website. We encourage you to add other resources that you think people should be looking for to expand their knowledge and skills in using the web as a tool for communication.
Related posts
Definitely all great books. I’d like to add to this list: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark also from Future Now Inc; The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki; and Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill.
All of these books (and the ones mentioned above) influenced our ideas in one way shape or form. I highly recommend any of these books for your reading pleasure!