Not all of them are good, of course. Some are, some aren’t.

Personally, I think you should read one, maybe two books, specifically about conversion optimization. Other than that, you should go directly to the seat of knowledge.

In other words, conversion optimization is a broad discipline. Instead of getting the executive overview, it’s better to read, from the source, about statistics, strategy, analytics, UX, etc. etc.

Anyway, here are some of the books that have most influenced my thinking around conversion optimization.

• Statistics
  • The Black Swan
  • Antifragile
  • Bandit Algorithms
  • How To Lie With Statistics
  • Quantifying The User Experience
• Psychology and Persuasion
  • Thinking Fast and Slow
  • Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
  • Predictably Irrational
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
  • Brainfluence
  • Neuromarketing
  • Ogilvy on Advertising
• Copywriting
  • Words That Work
  • The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
  • Finding The Right Message
• Management and Strategy
  • Lean Startup
  • The Halo Effect
  • Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard
  • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
  • Nudge
  • You Are Not Smart
  • You Are Now Less Dumb
  • Growth Hacker Marketing
  • Superforecasting
• Conversion Optimization
  • Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist
  • Small Business Big Money Online: A Proven System to Optimize eCommerce Websites and Increase Internet Profits
  • How to Build Websites that Sell: The Scientific Approach to Websites
• Analytics
  • Lean Analytics
  • Predictive Analytics
• User Experience and Usability
  • Lean UX
  • Don’t Make Me Think

Here they are!

Category 1: Statistics

Even if you took a stats 101 class in college, you’ll want to brush up before you run an A/B test. The most common A/B testing mistakes are made because people don’t understand how to run tests or understand how to base decisions on the data at hand.

The following books will put you in at least the 20th percentile of A/B testers.

1. The Black Swan

The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb is one of my top 5 favorite books of all time. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so.

The author built his career as a quantitative trader, and from then on devoted his life to thinking about problems of prediction and uncertainty.

While the book will certainly make you smarter in terms of your statistical knowledge, it’s also deeply philosophical in nature. It will make you think about the world and decision making differently (and will also make your question the applicability of the Gaussian bell curve and other common statistics practices).

2. Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

This book, too, is more about decision making and philosophy than it is about basic statistics. Nassim Taleb is a genius, and his books are incredibly entertaining as well.

This book mainly deals with Antifragility – things that gain from chaos, disorder and uncertainty. It’s about setting yourself upf or the best chances of success in an environment of uncertainty. For that reason, much of it is applicable to how you face optimization decisions from an organizational standpoint, as well as from a mathematical one.

As Andrew Anderson put it in a comment on a ConversionXL blog post, “Mathematically and from a systems standpoint its important to understand antifragility and just how much personal biases and storytelling limit the expected value of your program.”

3. Bandit Algorithms

Bandit algorithms are different than A/B tests in that they exploit the winning variation in real time.

Meaning, instead of a period of pure exploration (50/50 split) they work on an algorithm that attempts to be more efficient and minimize regret.

These concepts are a bit complicated, but reading this book will not only help you directly with optimization, but the multi-armed bandit problem is philosophical in nature and will help you think about life and decision making differently.

Awesome book – clearly written and easy to understand.

4. How To Lie With Statistics

This book was written in 1954 – a little bit before the Optimizely era – but it is still so relevant.

If anything, this book is a good defensive strategy against shitty statistics – whether you’re reading an A/B testing case study or hearing a presentation about the results of a campaign, promotion, or A/B testing.

If you’ve ever messed around with Excel charts, you’ve probably figured out rather quickly how you can emphasize or de-emphasize certain findings. Well, journalists and executives know how to do this, too.

This book, at the very least, will teach you to be a skeptical reader and to ask probing questions of data presented to you. Especially when it’s too good to be true.

5. Quantifying The User Experience

A big part of optimization is making your website more usable and systematically improving the user experience. But ‘user experience’ is one of those things, to most people at least, that sounds like ‘branding’ – a nice idea, but thoroughly untrackable.

Fortunately, that’s largely a myth, and Jeff Sauro shows you how to quantify the user experience.

This book goes both high-level and granular, showing you exactly how to run usability tests and do stats on small data sets. Very good read.

Category 2: Psychology and Persuasion

Understanding what goes into persuasion, motivation, and human behavior is supremely important for optimizers.

How can you get User X to do Action Y and make more $$?

This is a fun section. You’ll not only find optimization applications in the books below, but you’ll find ways to incorporate the persuasion and psychology principles into everyday life.

6. Thinking Fast and Slow

If you only read one book on human behavior, make it this one.

Kahnemann is probably the most influential modern psychologist, famous for his research on judgment, decision-making, and behavioral economics.

Read the book, but know: it will take you a long time to go through. You’ll find yourself stopping to ponder the concepts very often.

7. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Hooked by Nir Eyal is super popular among startup founders, mostly those doing consumer marketing.

The book explains what goes into habit forming products and presents his Hook Model, which includes:

• The Trigger
• The Action
• The Investment
• The Reward

It also outlines many modern case studies. It’s not only great for product designers and managers, but it’s great for understanding what makes people want to be invested in a product and how to keep them coming back. Also features a ton of behavioral psychology principles, and importantly, shows them being used in a practical way.

8. Predictably Irrational

Awesome book about the irrationality of human decision making.

Actually, I want to say you should read this one before you touch Thinking Fast and Slow. It includes many similar concepts, but Thinking Fast and Slow is more in-depth and takes longer to read. This one will spark your interest and make you want to dive down the behavioral economics rabbit hole.

9. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

I actually read this one in college for a persuasion class. I’m super glad I did, because it’s now in the canon – one of my all time favorite books.

I got to meet Robert Cialdini and see him speak a bit ago, and the dude is the real deal. This book will help you with optimization – just Google “Robert Cialdini marketing” or “Robert Cialdini conversions” and you’ll see how popular it is. But it will also help you with sales, life, and other areas of persuasion.

10. Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing

Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence is a practical, exciting, and applicable book filled with awesome ideas to increase conversions. If you don’t walk away with at least one revenue boosting idea, you’re not doing it right.

11. Neuromarketing

Neuromarketing is a bit older but still relevant. Lots of the examples revolve around classic ads, but the principles can just as easily be applied to websites and apps. This book is all about appealing to all parts of the brain to persuade a user to take action.

12. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

A classic. I had a hard time fitting this to a specific category because it’s such a force, but take my word for it: read it.

Category 3: Copywriting

Words sell.

People forget this, and trip and stumble through various iteration of their value prop, but no one ever truly understands what the hell it is they actually do.

A good copywriter can’t solve the problem of a shitty product, but they can present a good product in a clear and persuasive way so people actually buy it.

While you don’t need to be a great wordsmith (I’m not by any means an amazing copywriter), you should be able to tell between good and bad copy.

13. Words That Work by Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz isn’t a copywriter; he’s a pollster. But his research methodology is pure Voice of Customer, and it’s effective – he’s coined some of the most effective and emotional (and controversial) phrases in America, like “death tax.”

Some parts dragged on and were a bit dry. My favorite parts were the 10 rules he laid out for effective language (easily applicable heuristics), and then I really liked the appendices as well for showing words that work in action.

14. The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters

My favorite book on copywriting, hands down. I still refer to it, like a dictionary, whenever I need to write a piece of copy.

15. Finding the Right Message

Jen Havice is an insanely talented copywriter, and reading this book is important because she’s specifically a conversion copywriter. She doesn’t just rely on flowery language that sounds like it will sell; she runs A/B tests to validate it.

This book is about message mining and voice of customer research. It’s about mimicking the way your customers speak, tapping into their emotions, and writing copy that speaks directly to them. Very important.

Category 4: Management and Strategy

Optimization strategy is probably the most important and most underrated part of optimization.

If you’re part of a mature organization, then there’s likely someone on your team that knows how to run a test correctly (a data scientist doesn’t need a blog post to learn how to run a test).

But how do you move quickly (without breaking things too bad), and continuously increase revenue (or signups), while avoiding the bruises of ego and politics?

These books will help.

16. The Lean Startup

So I read The Learn Startup a long time ago, before I really knew what conversion optimization was. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to start a company or work for a startup, and this was the popular book at the time. It came in handy when I joined an early startup later.

And then it came in really handy when I started doing optimization, because the framework is so identical to how we approach conversion optimization.

17. The Halo Effect

The Halo Effect has been called “One of the most important management books of all time,” by Nassim Taleb, which, alone, is enough to read it.

It’s about the delusions and self-deceptions we all fall into, and how to combat them.

18. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Change is hard. Are you working at an organization (or for a client) that is resistant to positive change (or data)? Check this book out.

19. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

Here’s a book that’s basically about waterfall vs agile development. The point is to do short sprints, structured meetings about roadblocks, and to consistently iterative and improve..

20. Nudge

This book is all about small changes that lead to big results, particularly at an organizational level. It’s a good book to start thinking about which organizational “nudges” you could implement to develop a culture of experimentation.

21. You Are Not Smart

A book filled with biases. Not only are these things you can learn to motivate and persuade customers, but you can look out for them in your own judgement and decision making.

22. You Are Now Less Dumb

The follow up. Both are highly entertaining and informative.

23. Growth Hacker Marketing

Not quite a pure “conversion optimization” book, but the mindset is similar.

Also, this book is short, easy to read, and a good introduction to lots of smart ideas and people.

24. Superforecasting

I bought this book randomly, something to read while bumming around London, and ended up loving it.

In all domains of life, digital marketing (my focus) included, being able to predict with some level of accuracy the events of the future is an insanely enviable skill. Some seem to be better at it than others. Many writers have denounced the belief that we can predict future events as delusional. But Tertolck’s research shows that, while most often we can’t predict better than a monkey with a dart board, certain people can predict certain events better than average. Much better.

The book goes through the common traits that “superforecasters” have, some of which are bayesian updating, being “foxes” rather than “hedgehogs,” and having a growth mindset, i.e. being in permanent beta.

The book ends with a 10 Commandments appendix that should make you a better forecaster as well.

Category 5: Conversion Optimization

There are a few really good books specifically about conversion optimization.

Of course, you could also dive into content on ConversionXL (which you should). But if you want a paperback, check these out:

25. Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist

Brian Massey is one of the most knowledgeable optimizers I’ve met. Also, this was the first book on optimization I read and I’m glad I started here.

It gives an excellent framework for the craft, and it’s a great starting point for any optimizer – anyone looking to grow revenue in their business, period.

If you’ve been doing conversion optimization for a while, you might not get much new information from the book. But if you’re new to the craft, or just want a good refresher (with witty, fun writing), this book is awesome.

26. Small Business Big Money Online: A Proven System to Optimize eCommerce Websites and Increase Internet Profits

Lots of small businesses should read this.

The first part is dedicated to methodology – Alex describes in compelling detail his whole process for conversion optimization.

The second part shows how he applied the concepts to three different companies to boost conversions. I’ve read so much theory and so many tactics that ‘s refreshing to read a clearly laid out strategy with case studies to clarify the steps.

Highly recommended reading for any SMB owner that wants to increase their revenue online.

27. How to Build Websites that Sell: The Scientific Approach to Websites

Peep Laja, founder of CXL, trains thousands of marketers and has helped hundreds of large companies improve their conversion rates. He created the process that almost every agency and CRO team uses, at least to some extent, to identify CRO opportunities and prioritize them for maximum impact. This book covers that process in detail. Very good!

Category 6: Analytics

All analytics tools are different, but the concepts are the same.

So you don’t really need to read much about the high level stuff – rather, get your hands dirty and learn Google Analytics, Amplitude, Heap, Adobe – whatever you’re working with.

And actually, because of how fast analytics moves, you’re best off following a few select blogs on the topic:

• Annielytics
• Seriously Simple Marketing
• Simo Ahava
• Avinash Kaushik’s blog

Oh, take this course too.

But here are two of the best books I’ve read on analytics…

28. Lean Analytics

Startup? Read this.

Same series as The Lean Startup. Gives you a fundamental understanding of startup metrics and what you should be tracking. More importantly, it gives you a focused-idea of data.

29. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

It’s kind of a buzzword, but predictive analytics isn’t as complicated as you’d think – at least conceptually. This book takes the term off its pedestal (and away from software sales people), and explains it in easy-to-understand terms.

Category 7: UX and Usability

30. Lean UX

Again, same Lean series, this time about UX. This series is all about actionable advice, so this is a good one to start with.

31. Don’t Make Me Think

The classic user experience book. The point is simple: don’t make your users think. It’s a quick read. Worth the time.

Conclusion

I love books. Books are great. This list of books will fill your head with optimization knaaawledge.

Eventually, though, you’re going to have to get some experience. So read some of this, get interested, and then get in the game.

Oh, and also, you’ll reach a point where reading books about marketing or optimization (if they’re high-level enough) is going to bore you.

When that happens, go back to reading Voltaire, Fitzgerald, or David F Wallace and feel okay with missing the marginal returns in industry knowledge.

The post Conversion Optimization Books: 30+ Recommendations For Data-Driven Marketers appeared first on Alex Birkett.

I’ve never been much of a New Year’s Resolution type of guy. I hate the swarms of new people in my gym January through Mid-February. But, I did come up with a resolution of sorts a few years ago that totally revolutionized my life. Now I set this goal each January 1st: read 50 books per year (roughly one book per week).[1]

As Ernest Heminway said, “There is no friend as loyal as a good book,” and I’ve found that the benefits of reading extend beyond the friendship, entertainment, or even the mental stimulation. Simply put, they bring ideas and opportunities, which are hard to even put a value on.

Why Reading?

I don’t have to sell myself too hard on reading’s benefits. But just in case, here’s a roundup:

• Mental Stimulation
• Stress Reduction
• Knowledge
• Vocabulary Expansion
• Memory Improvement
• Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills
• Improved Focus and Concentration
• Better Writing Skills
• Tranquility
• Free Entertainment

With most goals, specificity helps. When you read a list of benefits like this, you’re like “yeah, I should read more.” But “read more” is a recipe for failure, because other priorities will jump up. You’ll get busy. When you read 50 books a year, it’s a measurable goal, and you know how you’re tracking against it.

Personally, my goals need to be measurable. I can’t just “lose weight,” “read more,” or “try new things” I need to lose 10 pounds, read 50 books, or go to Brazilian Ju Jitsu classes twice a week. I think most people are the same. If you really want to change, you need something to measure, something to define whether you’ve succeeded or failed.

But, why 50 books per year?

I like the number 50. It’s about one book per year. It’s a good round number, and it sounds impressive (better than 30, or even 40).

You could also say, “read one book per week,” and that would be roughly the same thing. Except I think that carries some downsides, notably that if you define the pace at which you read you’ll define the books you pick out. Some books take more than a week. Some less. You should give yourself flexibility to binge a few books in a week sometimes and to skip a week because you’re busy or traveling other times.

Some you might binge read and get a little ahead of schedule. But also, if I am too strict on “1 book per week” then I’m less likely to pick up overly challenging books. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged would be difficult to get through in a week (unless I drop all other actual work I’m doing). Therefore, I make my goal a more rounded 50 to account for the variance in complexity and length.

What happens when you read 50 books per year?

Here’s some math: 50 books times 200 pages per book equals 10,000 pages. 10,000 pages equal a lot of words, and some of those words are going to help you out.

It’s almost guaranteed that throughout the course of the year you’ll read something that specifically relates to a problem you’re trying to solve. It seems like a lot of effort to find a very specific solution to a very specific problem, but if you make reading a habit it will come naturally. You won’t even need to look for a solution when the time comes. That makes the entire process worth it.

I find that I apply ideas to situations now much more naturally. Due to the unnatural amount I’ve read on behavioral science, I can apply frameworks to problems that are better solved using such psychology and behavioral science. Due to the unnatural amount of content I’ve read on analytics and online growth, I have a better intuitive idea on how these things work than someone who solely looks at things at the tactical level.

Similarly, you can solve your own problems in the moment with good books (better than good articles). Straying from the modern, if a book has been around long enough you can almost assure that it holds some sort of universal or at least long lasting value.

When you read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or even the classics of last century, you can pull patterns and ideas that have existed or millennia.

More importantly, when you read at a good breadth, you cross-connection subjects and see that, wow, what Marcus Aurelius talked about so long ago deals with the same thing as current neuroscience or social psychology or probability theory, or whatever.

I’m spitballing on the topics and genres there, but the point is that having a good understanding of multiple disciplines which helps you connect dots into patterns easier than those who have a narrow view of the world (if all you have is a hammer…)

There are other subtle benefits, such as those that follow.

Expanding Your Horizons

In addition to reading about specific things that will help you in specific ways, reading 50 books per year really broadens your horizons.

Inevitably, reading will take you down a few unexpected rabbit holes and you’ll emerge with new interests and knowledge. I’m now weirdly knowledgeable on John F. Kennedy and American History during the Cold War. I mainly read to improve my marketing and business chops, and the Cold War has nothing to do with that. But it’s influenced a lot of how I think about certain things. I also went down a rabbit hole of the history of Hollywood a few months ago. Random interests like these help liven up your conversations, and reading classics helps you relate and converse with almost anyone.

Become Articulate and Awesome

You’ll become more articulate if you read 50 books per year. Once you read enough, you’ll distinguish patterns that make certain authors more eloquent than others. This includes organization, sentence structure, word choice and voice. Once you distinguish these patterns, you really don’t even have to work to incorporate them into your own communications. It sort of just happens.

Writers read a lot, and good writers read a lot of good writing.

Substance Over Noise

When you read 50 books per year, you’ll become successful. You’ll develop a depth and breadth of knowledge. Reading pithy blog posts won’t make you successful. Sure, reading Seth Godin’s blog posts can inspire you – but you should really read 50 books per year if you want to be a smart, capable person. Otherwise you’ll be full of inspiration and lacking on substance. The true recipe for both failure and charlatanism.

Most importantly, reading 50 books per year will defuse the power that click bait still holds. I hate click bait. Journalism is at a depressing low right now, but people are hungry for depth and quality. When you read 50 books per year, sure, click bait still pisses you off. But you can be more zen about it because you know that real content awaits you in the form of a 800 page paperback about Teddy Roosevelt.

Self-Awareness

Reading 50 books per year defeats the illusion of knowledge.

You’d think it would make you feel much smarter, but it really makes you aware of how much you don’t know. However, this is a good thing. I bet some of your Facebook friends think they’re political experts because they read a blog post that said Obama is a socialist without an American birth certificate. No, these people aren’t certifiably insane (but close). But they could probably pick up a book or two this week, and it would help them be less vitriolic.

How To Read 50 Books Per Year

Let’s talk about the process. It’s not as bad as you think. All you need to do is create a habit. I talk about this with how I learn Spanish, too. Never rely solely on ambition or motivation or vague plans of “getting better.” Build that shit into a routine in your life so it feels weird when you break it.

Really, what 50 books per year looks like is about 45-60 minutes of reading per day. Maybe a bit more, if you add in weekends (I usually read about an hour on weekend days). How long is your commute? I walk 30 minutes to and from work and always throw on an audiobook. Done. The process really doesn’t take as long as you’d think, and if you eliminate an hour of TV and replace it with challenging books, you’ll be grateful.

I also find that if you build the habit into a certain time of your daily routine, it gets done always. I read for 20 minutes in the morning while drinking my coffee. Right before meditation, and right after waking up. Sometimes I read more if I feel like it (at night or whatever), but I never miss a morning.

There are many things you can do to improve your life, but reading 50 books per year might be what provides the most overall value. You get the most results out of what you put into it. If you’re looking for a new year’s resolution, don’t try to give up ice cream or go to the gym 8 days a week. You’ll fail. Try reading just a little bit a day, and reap the benefits that readers have enjoyed for centuries.

Update 2018: How I Read Now (and Why It’s Fewer Than 50 Books)

I don’t read 50 books a week anymore. I set my goal at a more moderate “30 books per year,” which is a bit over 2 per month. That’s still a shitload of books, so don’t get mad at me for bailing on my original intent. I read 50 books a year for (I think) 5 or 6 years. Lots of books!

I only read 30 now because I’m taking specific courses and educational activities related to my goals. I want to learn Spanish, Krav Maga, and get better at growth (and specifically data science). None of those are easy things to learn, and they take time. I sacrificed some of my book reading for other forms of education.

Here’s the thing: the time I carved out to read 50 books per year is still being used, just for other forms of education.

Now that I look back at this article that I wrote in college (junior year I believe), I’m impressed at my ambition to read so much, but I’m even more so just happy that my past self carved out such a significant amount of time in my day to focus on growth and self-improvement. Building out that habit and that priority was more important than the sort of arbitrary educational format of books (though I do believe there is a particular depth and precision of information transfer that you get from books).

Next year I’ll probably read even fewer books as I a) shift to move active forms of learning with language and data science and b) shift to reading denser books and rereading my favorite most valuable ones.

You can watch video lectures, meditate, play with Duolingo, or take Spanish Skype lessons – doesn’t matter too much. It’s really just a process of carving out that time and being deliberately dilettantish & erudite. Learn shit, ya know?

Second Update 2018: What I’m Focused on This Year

I decide to set my goal this year at 24 books. 2 per month. Still a lot, but not 50.

Why?

I want to a) focus on other courses and skills that require time and depth, b) re-read a few of my favorite books this year, and c) read some denser books than normal.

For my first point, I’m learning Spanish (lessons 2-4 times per week plus other activities), taking Krav Maga and kickboxing classes, taking Reforge & a course on machine learning (haven’t decided which course. Convince me if you have a good one), and focusing on doing more public speaking (through improv classes among other things). I’ve got a busy life. Reading is still a priority, but other stuff matters, too.

Point two, there’s a maxim in Taleb’s new book (Skin in the Game) about re-reading bringing more value than reading new books (if the value is sufficient in the re-read) because of the way memory works. Therefore, I want to re-read some of my favorites (including Antifragile and Black Swan, by Taleb).

Point three, I want to read some more challenging stuff. It was easy to breeze through 50 books (sort of) when I was just starting out in marketing, reading a lot of Seth Godin, and mostly putting down 200 pagers. I have a few on my shelf I’ve been meaning to get to that are more difficult – large 700 biographies, technical books on data science concepts, and some classics that will take me a while to get through. I’m indexing on quality over quantity now.

You can track my books here, though: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10765202-alex

1 I just recently discovered that I’m not the originator of this challenge. Not even close. In fact, Julien Smith wrote an awesome blog post about it a few years ago that I just discovered: https://inoveryourhead.net/one-book-a-week-for-2007/

The post Why (& How) You Should Read 50 Books a Year appeared first on Alex Birkett.