Seth Godin is awesome. His ideas are interesting and valuable and he knows what he is talking about when it comes to marketing and entrepreneurship. The Big Red Fez: How to Make any Website Better is not only a practical guidebook but will get you thinking about how you market your content or product.
The basic premise is simple and two fold.
A monkey in a red fez has one mission, to find a banana. You need to make finding the banana easy.
The monkey in the red fez is your visitor, the banana is what they are searching for and your website is there to make finding the banana easy. And once the monkey knows how and where to find the banana, it will come back for more.
One page, one goal is extremely important. Each page is an opportunity to get the monkey in a red fez to find the banana (get them to do what you want). Too many options, bad user experience and complicated processes and visitors will leave your site.
Pachinko is a Japanese game similar to pinball. There are many silver balls that the player has to catch. Godin says that a website is a lot like this. You need to get visitors (the balls) to come to your site. The ones at the bottom are much more important and more likely to do what you want as you have set up a course. The more balls you get, the better.
Remember your website isn’t about you, visitors want to know what is in it for them.
Read this book if…
If you have a website, then you should read this book. Even the best websites will be able to learn something. And although written in 2002, it still holds true, even in a mobile environment. Each page is filled with good and bad website examples. A very short read that will leave a lasting impression.
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