Product Description

From the author of the business bestseller Permission Marketing, the man Business Week called the 'Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age' comes a book of essential truths about building a better website. Everyone who surfs the web knows that some sites are better than others. Now marketing guru Seth Godin identifies and illustrates the crucial guiding principles behind creating websites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. Once upon a time it was believed that web surfers had plenty of time, knew exactly what they wanted, and made considered decisions with each click. Before long, however marketers asserted that surfers that surfers were busy, ill-informed and impatient. Data would later reveal that the marketers were right. Thus, according to Seth Godin, anyone building a website should think of every visitor as a monkey - in a big red fez. Monkeys want to know one thing: Where's the banana? If the banana isn't easy to see and easy to get, the monkey is as good as gone. Expanding upon this premise, Godin uses real-life examples to explain why no website sould try to be all things to all visitors, how and why the mantra 'customers first' applies to websites, why it's incredibly important to think proactively about serving online customers, and more. Packed with wisdom and practical applications, The Big Red Fez is an essential tool for anyone involved in the web.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100723 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 324 pages

About the Author
Seth Godin was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the leading interactive marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in 1998. He was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo! until he left to lecture full time. He is the author of several bestselling business books.

Customer Reviews

Worth far More Than it's Price
I read the electronic version of The Big Red Fez. I'm a new media and marketing person but it's always good to be reminded of the basics of what we're trying to achieve.

Seth's critique of some of the best known names on the Web is refreshing. Not all of them come out well, I might add - and looking at the sites he criticises, I find myself saying "Yes, he's right about that!" Not even the big boys get it right, which leaves plenty of space for my customers to do better!

It's not only a "must read" it's a "must re-read at regular intervals" to remind us all that without the fundamentals being correct, a web presence degrades to an online company brochure - if that.

Nice simple book with great case studies
Another Seth Godin easy read with great practical (and real) ideas to work on. See how other people are going right and wrong.

You just need to read this book, that seems to state the obvious, to give you lots of simple changes that you could make to your web site to give it more impact.

The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better By Seth Godin
What a very odd & strange book.
I purchased this on Amazon without actually flicking through it. One of the dangers of online purchasing I suppose.

I have heard of the author - he wrote some well regarded books on the issue of permission based marketing. The tag-line of the book was: how to make any Web site better. Buyers beware of any book with a cheesy / overly-simplistic tag-line.

So to the book itself.
Over Christmas with a bit of time to spare I started reading this book. Two short sessions is all it took to complete this book. I could easily have completed it in one reading. There is 108 pages in the book, every second page is a picture & the pages that do have writing on them - consist usually of about a half page of text.

The author presents a number of Web-sites & outlines how they could be improved. To be honest the author picks on lame sites & explains their failings. A fairly easy task you may think - & you may be very right in thinking this.

This book is from 2002 - Hadn't realised this at the time of purchase.

Seth Godin is a marketing man - & this book is marketed at those people who do not know a lot about Web-sites . After reading this book these people will still know very little about Web-sites.

It is a nothing of a book - & unlikely to encourage you to read this author again. I have another book by the author - Survival is Not Enough. Really looking forward to reading it - Not.

A visitor takes 3 seconds on average to decide whether to stay on a web-site. I would think it is less than 3 seconds for your average reader to decide on the value of this book.

Books like this are of historical interest at best. The author should really update the content or he will disappoint additional readers like myself.