10 Must-Read Books for Optimizers
Are you an optimizer looking to upskill? There’s no better place to start than with these Books-in-Blinks from Blinkist you can read or listen to in 15 minutes or fewer. Each comes with practical lessons you can immediately apply to your everyday optimization work.
1. Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini
Pre-Suasion
- 10 min reading time
- audio version available
If you want to influence your users’ actions or persuade them, you need to first pre-suade them. This pre-suasion is the “pre-treating” or conditioning that’s needed for more conversions. In this book, Cialdini gives you all the tools and techniques you need to master the science of pre-suasion to use throughout your experiments.
2. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan M. Weinschenk
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
- 13 min reading time
- audio version available
Weinschenk’s book quickly tips you into a state where you start “seeing” the designs of your landing pages or websites as your users see them. This book will teach you everything that’s there to use design cues in boosting conversion rates (and explain why those design principles work!).
3. You Should Test That! by Chris Goward
You Should Test That!
- 16 min reading time
- audio version available
“Conversion optimization is part science and part art,” says author Chris Goward. In this book, he goes into the “why” and “how” of conversion optimization and gives you a framework of testing with the exact steps needed for optimizing your website for higher conversions.
4. Neuromarketing by Patrick Renvoisé & Christophe Morin
Neuromarketing
- 15 min reading time
- audio version available
As an optimizer, you ought to know your users’ brains more intimately: at least, the new, middle, and old brains. The first one thinks, the second feels, and the third decides (what we all happen to call the lizard brain!). This book shows you just the right neuromarketing stimuli you need to speak to each of these brains and get more conversions.
5. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited
- 16 min reading time
- audio version available
When your users land on your pages, you know what you want them to do. But do they also “get” it instantly, or do they have to deal with cognitive workload and figure it out? This book teaches you how to weave intuitiveness into your designs and help your users do what you want them to do, without having to think!
6. The Dip by Seth Godin
The Dip
- 15 min reading time
- audio version available
As a CRO person, you only get limited time, budget, and effort to invest in your experiments. Which means when a certain experiment heads nowhere, it’s time to quit and move on to the next one. In this book, Godin shows you how to create a “quitting contract.” You and your testing team will benefit immensely from creating one.
7. The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
The Laws of Human Nature
- 18 min reading time
- audio version available
One sure way to boost conversion rates is to discern your users’ insecurities and reduce resistance by addressing them. This codebook for deciphering people’s behavior shows you exactly how to do this in your experiments. Greene’s book also forces you to slow down, throw your initial judgement away about people, and analyze it for unlocking deeper insights about them.
8. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Influence
- 33 min reading time
- audio version available
This classic guide on persuasion introduces you to the six persuasion principles that get people to say “Yes!” Cialdini’s book will arm you with all the persuasion weapons you need to plan and execute experiments psychologically-primed for more conversions.
9. Writing That Works by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson
Writing That Works
- 21 min reading time
- audio version available
Writing is a big part of running experiments. Whether it’s crafting a clear hypothesis, writing the copy for the treatment, or documenting learnings to guide the follow up experiments, everybody needs to write. This book shows you how to write well and get rid of the murky, jargon-loaded, and long-winded writing that needs multiple re-reads and slows things down.
10. Holacracy by Brian J. Robertson
Holacracy
- 16 min reading time
- audio version available
Nothing threatens the culture of experimentation of an organization more than the HIPPO (or the highest paid person’s opinion) phenomenon. When certain people’s opinions matter more, data gets discounted. Here’s where adopting Holacracy, a refreshing way of structuring and running your organization (or your CRO team!), might be the solution.
