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Reading list
Conversion rate optimization books
These conversion rate optimization books cover what a CRO practitioner needs: a process, how to run fair A/B tests, analytics, usability and the psychology of decisions. Every title and author has been checked. There are no ratings and no affiliate links, just what each book is for and where to start.
Short answer
Which of the conversion rate optimization books suits you depends on your gap: You Should Test That! by Chris Goward for a testing mindset, Making Websites Win by Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson for customer research, or Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu for reliable A/B tests. Add a usability book too.
- New to CRO? Read one book each on usability, the CRO process, testing and how people decide, in that order.
- Read at least one book on experimentation before you trust a test result.
- Books on usability and microcopy help you fix the words people read at the moment of decision.
- Apply one idea from each book to one busy page straight away, then fix it or test it.
What is the best book on conversion rate optimization?
The best book on conversion rate optimization depends on your gap. For the testing mindset, read You Should Test That! by Chris Goward. For customer research, read Making Websites Win by Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson. To run A/B tests you can trust, read Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu.
No single book covers everything, because conversion rate optimization borrows from research, statistics, design and copywriting. The list below groups 22 books by topic, so you can pick the one that fills your biggest gap.
Conversion rate optimization books at a glance
This table lists every book on the page with its authors and what it is best for. Titles link to the description further down.
| Book | Author | Topic | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| You Should Test That! | Chris Goward | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | A testing mindset and a way to find test ideas |
| Landing Page Optimization | Tim Ash | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | Landing pages, page diagnosis and test design |
| Conversion Optimization | Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | A structured process for online stores and lead generation sites |
| Making Websites Win | Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | Customer research before redesigns and tests |
| Convert! | Ben Hunt | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | Web design decisions that affect conversion |
| The Conversion Code | Chris Smith | Conversion rate optimization and landing pages | Lead generation businesses that sell by phone or appointment |
| Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments | Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu | A/B testing and experimentation | Running A/B tests correctly |
| A/B Testing | Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, with Cara Harshman | A/B testing and experimentation | An accessible introduction to A/B testing |
| Experimentation Works | Stefan H. Thomke | A/B testing and experimentation | Leaders building a testing culture |
| Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing | Georgi Z. Georgiev | A/B testing and experimentation | The statistics behind significance, power and stopping rules |
| Web Analytics 2.0 | Avinash Kaushik | Analytics and measurement | Choosing what to measure and acting on it |
| Lean Analytics | Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz | Analytics and measurement | Picking the one metric that matters at each stage |
| Don't Make Me Think, Revisited | Steve Krug | Usability, design and copy on the page | Usability basics and quick user testing |
| Web Design for ROI | Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus | Usability, design and copy on the page | Making the business case for design changes |
| Neuro Web Design | Susan M. Weinschenk | Usability, design and copy on the page | Psychology applied to web pages |
| Microcopy | Kinneret Yifrah | Usability, design and copy on the page | Buttons, form labels, error messages and other small text |
| Influence | Robert B. Cialdini | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | The principles behind social proof, scarcity and authority |
| Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | How people really make decisions |
| Hooked | Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | Retention and repeat use in apps and subscriptions |
| Cashvertising | Drew Eric Whitman | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | Direct response copywriting techniques |
| Tested Advertising Methods | John Caples | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | Headlines, and the habit of testing copy |
| Breakthrough Advertising | Eugene M. Schwartz | Persuasion, psychology and copywriting | Matching the message to how aware the buyer is |
Which CRO books should you read first?
If you are new to conversion rate optimization, read four books in this order: one on usability, one on the CRO process, one on testing, and one on how people decide. That gives you a way to spot problems, a process to fix them, a way to prove the fix worked, and the reasons it worked.
- See problems: Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug. Short, and it changes how you look at every page.
- Learn a process: You Should Test That! by Chris Goward, or Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy.
- Test properly: Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Kohavi, Tang and Xu.
- Understand decisions: Influence by Robert B. Cialdini.
Then go deeper where your work needs it: analytics if you do not trust your numbers, copywriting if your pages are clear but flat, statistics if you run many tests. For shorter reads on each of these, see Convertica's conversion optimization blog.
Best books on conversion rate optimization and landing pages
These conversion rate optimization books cover the whole job: research, hypotheses, landing pages and testing. Start here if you want one framework to work from.
You Should Test That!: Conversion Optimization for More Leads, Sales and Revenue or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing
Chris Goward. Sybex (Wiley).
Chris Goward, founder of the agency WiderFunnel, sets out how to plan and prioritize tests rather than guess. It introduces his LIFT model for judging a page: value proposition, relevance, clarity, anxiety, distraction and urgency. A good first book if you are moving from opinions to experiments.
Best for: a testing mindset and a way to find test ideas.
Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
Tim Ash. Sybex (Wiley), first and second editions.
A long, practical book on why landing pages fail and how to test fixes, from common usability problems to choosing between A/B and multivariate tests. It is thorough on test planning. Read the second edition if you can, since the first predates many current tools.
Best for: landing pages, page diagnosis and test design.
Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers
Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy. O'Reilly Media.
Written by the founders of the agency Invesp, it walks through how visitors decide, what builds trust, and how to turn research into a testing plan. It is often listed as "Conversion Rate Optimization", but the title is Conversion Optimization.
Best for: a structured process for online stores and lead generation sites.
Making Websites Win: Apply the Customer-Centric Methodology That Has Doubled the Sales of Many Leading Websites
Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson. Scribe Media.
The founders of the agency Conversion Rate Experts argue that understanding customers comes before any design or test, and show how to gather that understanding. A strong book on research methods and on why redesigns without evidence so often disappoint.
Best for: customer research before redesigns and tests.
Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion
Ben Hunt. Wiley.
A designer's view of conversion: how to match a page to the visitor's level of awareness and design it around what they need next. Some examples have aged, but the thinking about visitor intent still holds.
Best for: web design decisions that affect conversion.
The Conversion Code: Capture Internet Leads, Create Quality Appointments, Close More Sales
Chris Smith. Wiley.
Less about websites than about the path from online lead to sale: capturing leads, following up and turning them into appointments. Useful if your conversion is a booked call rather than a checkout.
Best for: lead generation businesses that sell by phone or appointment.
Best books on a/b testing and experimentation
These books explain how A/B tests work, how they go wrong and how organizations build a habit of testing. Read at least one before you trust a test result.
Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing
Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu. Cambridge University Press.
Written by people who led experimentation at Microsoft, Google and LinkedIn, it is the most complete guide to running online experiments you can trust: metrics, sample sizes, pitfalls and the checks that catch broken tests. Dense in places, and worth it.
Best for: running a/b tests correctly.
A/B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers
Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, with Cara Harshman. Wiley.
The founders of Optimizely explain A/B testing for marketers and managers, with stories including the Obama campaign tests Siroker ran. Some tool references have dated, but the case for testing and the common mistakes are still relevant.
Best for: an accessible introduction to a/b testing.
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments
Stefan H. Thomke. Harvard Business Review Press.
A Harvard Business School professor on why companies that run many experiments make better decisions, and what culture and systems it takes. Written for managers rather than practitioners.
Best for: leaders building a testing culture.
Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing: Statistics for data-driven business decisions and risk management in e-commerce
Georgi Z. Georgiev. Independently published.
A detailed treatment of the statistics of online tests, including sample size, power and sequential testing, for readers who want to understand the numbers rather than trust a tool's dashboard.
Best for: the statistics behind significance, power and stopping rules.
Best books on analytics and measurement
Conversion work starts with numbers you can trust. These books show what to measure and how to turn data into decisions.
Web Analytics 2.0
Avinash Kaushik. Sybex (Wiley).
Analytics author Avinash Kaushik sets out a framework for web analytics that goes beyond page views: outcomes, experimentation, voice of the customer and competitive data. The tools have changed since, but the thinking is still sound.
Best for: choosing what to measure and acting on it.
Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz. O'Reilly Media.
Written for startups, it helps any business decide which metric matters most right now and what a good result looks like for its model, from ecommerce to SaaS.
Best for: picking the one metric that matters at each stage.
Best books on usability, design and copy on the page
Many conversion problems are usability problems. These books help you spot what makes a page hard to use and fix the words people read at the moment of decision.
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug. New Riders.
The classic short book on web usability: how people scan rather than read, why clarity beats cleverness, and how to run simple usability tests yourself. The revisited edition adds mobile.
Best for: usability basics and quick user testing.
Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers and Prospects into Leads
Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus. New Riders.
Treats a website as an investment that should pay back, and shows how design choices on landing pages, forms and checkout affect that return.
Best for: making the business case for design changes.
Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?
Susan M. Weinschenk. New Riders.
A short book by a behavioral psychologist on the unconscious drivers behind online decisions, such as social validation, scarcity and reciprocity, with web examples.
Best for: psychology applied to web pages.
Microcopy: The Complete Guide
Kinneret Yifrah. Nemala.
A practical guide to the small words on a page: button labels, form fields, error messages and empty states. These sit exactly where visitors decide, so they are a common place for quick wins.
Best for: buttons, form labels, error messages and other small text.
Best books on persuasion, psychology and copywriting
Conversion is a decision. These books explain how people decide and how tested advertising copy speaks to them.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini. Harper Business (new and expanded edition).
The book most CRO practitioners have read: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity, and in the new and expanded edition, unity. Use it to understand why trust signals and urgency work, and when they backfire.
Best for: the principles behind social proof, scarcity and authority.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Nobel laureate's account of the two modes of thinking, fast and intuitive against slow and deliberate, and the biases that follow, such as anchoring and loss aversion. Long, but it explains much of why page changes work.
Best for: how people really make decisions.
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover. Portfolio (Penguin).
Sets out the Hook Model, a four-step cycle of trigger, action, variable reward and investment, for products people return to. Most useful for SaaS and subscription businesses.
Best for: retention and repeat use in apps and subscriptions.
Cashvertising
Drew Eric Whitman. Career Press.
A direct, practical collection of advertising psychology and copywriting techniques drawn from direct response advertising. Useful for headlines and offers.
Best for: direct response copywriting techniques.
Tested Advertising Methods
John Caples. Prentice Hall (fifth edition revised by Fred E. Hahn).
Caples tested mail-order advertisements long before the web and measured what each one sold. His chapters on headlines are still some of the best advice on the first words a visitor reads.
Best for: headlines, and the habit of testing copy.
Breakthrough Advertising
Eugene M. Schwartz. Bottom Line Books.
A dense copywriting classic, best known for its levels of customer awareness and market sophistication: ideas that help you decide what a landing page should say first.
Best for: matching the message to how aware the buyer is.
How to put CRO books into practice
The fastest way to learn from a conversion rate optimization book is to apply one idea to one page straight away. Pick a busy page that loses visitors, use the book's method to find a likely reason, then fix it or test it. Reading without testing teaches you opinions; testing teaches you what works on your site.
- Check your tracking first, so the results of any change are real
- Choose one page and one problem, not the whole site
- Write a hypothesis that names the evidence, the change and the metric
- Plan the sample before you test, with a sample size calculator
- Run the test for whole weeks and do not stop early
- Record what you learned, especially from tests that lose
Want real examples to compare with what you read? See these A/B testing examples and Convertica's CRO case studies, each with its metric, timeframe and source.
Free tools to go with the reading
Most of these books ask you to calculate conversion rates, sample sizes and significance. Convertica's free calculators do it, and each one shows its formula.
Plan a test
A/B test sample size calculator
How many visitors each variant needs before a test starts.
Check a result
Statistical significance calculator
Whether a finished A/B test result is statistically significant.
Questions about CRO books
What is the best book on conversion rate optimization?
For a single book on conversion rate optimization, start with You Should Test That! by Chris Goward for the testing mindset, or Making Websites Win by Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson for customer research. If you already run tests, read Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Kohavi, Tang and Xu so you can trust the results.
Which conversion rate optimization books should a beginner read first?
Beginners should read Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug first, because it is short and teaches you to see usability problems. Then read one CRO process book, such as You Should Test That! or Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy, and one testing book.
Is there a good book on A/B testing statistics?
Yes. Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu covers how to run and read tests correctly. For more depth on the statistics, Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing by Georgi Z. Georgiev covers significance, power and sequential tests.
Are CRO books still useful when tools change so fast?
Yes, for the thinking rather than the tool instructions. Screenshots and tool names in older CRO books date quickly, but how people decide, how to research visitors and how to run a fair test change slowly. Pair a book with current tool documentation.
Is the Saleh and Shukairy book called Conversion Rate Optimization?
No. It is often listed that way, but the book by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy is titled Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers, published by O'Reilly Media.
Do I need to read books to do CRO?
No, but they shorten the learning curve. You can start with a free CRO audit and Convertica's free calculators, then read the book that matches your biggest gap: research, testing, analytics, usability or copy.