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The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better
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 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.
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Seth Godin
147 books6,265 followersSeth W. Godin, also known as "F. X. Nine", is an American author and a former dot com business executive.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
May 15, 2019
The premise of Seth Godin's non-fiction book about how to improve business websites is this: imagine consumers as a monkey in a big red fez looking for a banana, i.e., whatever it is you're selling or promoting. You want whatever the "banana" is to be as big and bright as possible because if the consumer can't find it, like right now, they're going to go somewhere else.
"Some people might object to the characterization of web surfers as monkeys. After all, they say, we're smarter than that. No, actually, we're not. We're not smart because we're busy, or we're distracted, or we've never been to a particular site before and and we're not mind readers." pg 8
Yes, the specific information about how to lay out your website is outdated. (The examples he uses for newsletters are too.) But, if you take his general business advice and apply it in broad strokes to your blog or social media accounts, it is still incredibly useful.
For example, I don't answer all of the messages my business account receives on its Facebook page because we get too many. I had a generic robot response set up that said something like "thank you for your interest, we can't get back to you right now". Godin pointed out that most websites lose an opportunity to further connect with the consumer by not utilizing the "thank you" portion of the interaction. The consumer has already reached out to you through a sale, or in this case, a message. Why not direct them back to other items or services your business sells when replying?
As I said, he was applying this idea to the sales portion of a website, but I started thinking about other potential applications and realized that I was missing a golden opportunity to share further information about our business.
I now use the automated message response to thank the person for contacting us AND providing the links to our YouTube page and Patreon account. I may have never come to the realization — that the person reaching out to the business wants more than just a thank you note — if Godin hadn't pointed it out. Thanks Seth!
He also had some interesting ideas about what kinds of things to post on your website/social media accounts. Sometimes, he asserts, you just need to strike up a conversation.
"The biggest win you can create when you interact with a customer is actually not closing a sale. The biggest win is getting someone to tell ten friends, who then come do business with you." pg 75
Good business is about how valued you make the consumers feel. Make the interactions about them and their needs.
Don't read this book if you're actually interested in website design. I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed.
Do read this book if you're interested in general business principles that you can apply to your digital interactions. I've generated a half dozen different ideas on how to improve my online business presence, all thanks to The Big Red Fez.
"Some people might object to the characterization of web surfers as monkeys. After all, they say, we're smarter than that. No, actually, we're not. We're not smart because we're busy, or we're distracted, or we've never been to a particular site before and and we're not mind readers." pg 8
Yes, the specific information about how to lay out your website is outdated. (The examples he uses for newsletters are too.) But, if you take his general business advice and apply it in broad strokes to your blog or social media accounts, it is still incredibly useful.
For example, I don't answer all of the messages my business account receives on its Facebook page because we get too many. I had a generic robot response set up that said something like "thank you for your interest, we can't get back to you right now". Godin pointed out that most websites lose an opportunity to further connect with the consumer by not utilizing the "thank you" portion of the interaction. The consumer has already reached out to you through a sale, or in this case, a message. Why not direct them back to other items or services your business sells when replying?
As I said, he was applying this idea to the sales portion of a website, but I started thinking about other potential applications and realized that I was missing a golden opportunity to share further information about our business.
I now use the automated message response to thank the person for contacting us AND providing the links to our YouTube page and Patreon account. I may have never come to the realization — that the person reaching out to the business wants more than just a thank you note — if Godin hadn't pointed it out. Thanks Seth!
He also had some interesting ideas about what kinds of things to post on your website/social media accounts. Sometimes, he asserts, you just need to strike up a conversation.
"The biggest win you can create when you interact with a customer is actually not closing a sale. The biggest win is getting someone to tell ten friends, who then come do business with you." pg 75
Good business is about how valued you make the consumers feel. Make the interactions about them and their needs.
Don't read this book if you're actually interested in website design. I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed.
Do read this book if you're interested in general business principles that you can apply to your digital interactions. I've generated a half dozen different ideas on how to improve my online business presence, all thanks to The Big Red Fez.
September 17, 2013
Even though it's dated the material is still more relevant than ever. I wish the website was still functional,or showed some real examples as the black and white images from the book were not always clear. A good place to start when evaluating ones one website.
September 14, 2021
Example websites are definitely dated but the point of the book is clearly illustrated nonetheless. A new edition might show newer generations examples of similar style mistakes but the sites from the early 00s add a strangely pleasant nostalgia to the read.
Definitely has me thinking of redoing my site from the ground up with a focus on clarity and pushing visitors to the proverbial giant red fez.
Definitely has me thinking of redoing my site from the ground up with a focus on clarity and pushing visitors to the proverbial giant red fez.
November 12, 2018
‘A web visitor is a lot like a monkey looking for one thing: a banana. If that banana isn’t easy to see and easy to get, your visitor is gone with a quick click on the ‘back’ button.’
They key message in this fun and fast book about website design, is that the reason so many websites were in financial trouble at the time was because the engineers were in charge. Their over-programmed, over-thought and over-built websites were a hacker’s dream, funded by venture capitalists who embraced the engineering-centric view of the web.
Those of us who didn’t (and still don’t) understand the technology were left out in the cold. It wasn’t until Amazon went live in 1995, the same year that Netscape went public and triggered the dot-com boom, that we learned HOW to make websites accessible to the every-day consumer.
Amazon set an example and survived the dot-com bust in March 2000 because they had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer. They led the way because they knew where to put the banana and Seth uses many examples of this in The Red Fez.
Each page of The Red Fez offers a screenshot of a web page on one side, and an explanation of what is right or wrong about it on the opposite page. And Seth says it as it is, from his point of view, as a user.
They key message in this fun and fast book about website design, is that the reason so many websites were in financial trouble at the time was because the engineers were in charge. Their over-programmed, over-thought and over-built websites were a hacker’s dream, funded by venture capitalists who embraced the engineering-centric view of the web.
Those of us who didn’t (and still don’t) understand the technology were left out in the cold. It wasn’t until Amazon went live in 1995, the same year that Netscape went public and triggered the dot-com boom, that we learned HOW to make websites accessible to the every-day consumer.
Amazon set an example and survived the dot-com bust in March 2000 because they had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer. They led the way because they knew where to put the banana and Seth uses many examples of this in The Red Fez.
Each page of The Red Fez offers a screenshot of a web page on one side, and an explanation of what is right or wrong about it on the opposite page. And Seth says it as it is, from his point of view, as a user.
March 7, 2016
For a book written about website design and optimisation in 2002, it's astonishing how relevant a lot of the advice in this engaging and quick to read book remains today.
It's refreshingly jargon-free. Godin takes us back to the basics of the User Experience and many of these rules still apply. Sure the screen-shots are dated, the tech has sped up and moved on, but these add to the charm and I've seen plenty of sites falling into these bear-traps even now, albeit with flashier graphic design in play.
What has changed is it's easier than ever to implement the experiments, iterations, analytics and testing that Godin talks about, so there's really no excuse not to work through his checklist.
It's refreshingly jargon-free. Godin takes us back to the basics of the User Experience and many of these rules still apply. Sure the screen-shots are dated, the tech has sped up and moved on, but these add to the charm and I've seen plenty of sites falling into these bear-traps even now, albeit with flashier graphic design in play.
What has changed is it's easier than ever to implement the experiments, iterations, analytics and testing that Godin talks about, so there's really no excuse not to work through his checklist.
August 23, 2010
I'd been meaning to read this for a while and considering this is a book about websites, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself laughing out loud at certain parts. It is admittedly a tad dated -- but really, any book about the Web inherently becomes dated ... likely by the time it makes it to print. But it was a nice, amusing reality check and included some great quips and one-liners that will make explaining Web best practices to clients and colleagues easy and memorable.
Btw, it's also a very fast read. I read it in one evening, flat.
Btw, it's also a very fast read. I read it in one evening, flat.
September 3, 2011
Seth Godin is the guy who always asks you questions that you have to figure out, but along the way gives tons of examples and tips. All of his books are put into the simplest-non-technical-reading form so anyone can pick up on it super fast! This book definitely touches on the marketing fundamentals behind web design and why they are important.
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July 10, 2024I picked this up at a thrift store just because it was Seth Godin and it's a super quick read. It did not disappoint. While a lot of the examples definitely show their age and are long gone from the internet, the core optimization concepts are still relevant today. Plus, I had some good chuckles over the way websites used to operate. As a marketer, this was just what I needed to get my creative juices flowing again and spark some new ideas in my current campaigns.
June 8, 2017
Given this is a book about websites and was written in 2001, a lot of the specifics are quite outdated. Some of the screenshots of old websites are almost beyond belief compared to 2017 websites. That being said, a lot of the broader principles are probably even more applicable today: make it clear, make it easy, don't confuse people, don't abuse permission.
April 25, 2021
Very quick read ~45 minutes.
I LOVED the intro to the book. Godin does a stellar job explaining the mindset for web (product) development. Many sections of the book are dated but do a stellar job of hammering his thesis home.
I LOVED the intro to the book. Godin does a stellar job explaining the mindset for web (product) development. Many sections of the book are dated but do a stellar job of hammering his thesis home.
February 22, 2020
An interesting read about how to create, establish, optimise and market your business website. Mainly read to glean information that might be useful about e-learning design.
September 13, 2014
The Big Red Fez is Seth Godin’s guide to web design, and it promises to teach you “how to make any website better”. Sure, it’s a little out-of-date, but the underlying concepts of good web design are remarkably consistent and remarkably simple to grasp, which is why Seth Godin, a marketer, is able to write about the subject.
Broadly speaking, though, the lessons in this book are nothing new, and they boil down to that old advice that all good designers are already following – keep it simple, stupid.
Broadly speaking, though, the lessons in this book are nothing new, and they boil down to that old advice that all good designers are already following – keep it simple, stupid.
October 28, 2012
My third Seth Godin book this year. This one's a super quick read - I read it in an afternoon. The subtitle is "How to Make Any Web Site Better." And it delivers - still. The book is over ten years old, so the websites he references are old. However, the information he's conveying about what makes a site great IS still relevant. I got this book on the recommendation of Laura Roeder. Thanks, LKR.
March 16, 2015
The book is a bit dated, has been around forever - BUT there is a lot of information here that still holds true. Your company website needs to be clear in order to work. Period.
Lots of examples so there's no guessing what he's talking about. Overall a great little book that doesn't take very long to read.
Lots of examples so there's no guessing what he's talking about. Overall a great little book that doesn't take very long to read.
September 21, 2016
A really interesting but opinionated take on web interactions, readers should take this book with a pinch of salt. I liked some of the points he made but at the same time wished it was less feely and have a more rational explanation. The book's examples are really dated but they still apply to modern web interactions.
November 17, 2007
This book was excellent--short and sweet and to-the-point. I would recommend it to anyone who is an entrepreneur and wants to or already uses web sites for business. It has several recommendations that I never thought of but also reviewed several things I already knew.
January 17, 2008
Seth Godin writes well: concisely, clearly, and succinctly. This book is therefore a really quick read that will instantly improve any marketing efforts you undertake.
His thoughts on Power Point are all but revolutionary.
His thoughts on Power Point are all but revolutionary.
March 14, 2010
A very short book about web site design. It's a good book but I basically was already thinking along these lines so I didn't get much extra out of it. Would probably be a good book for people that don't use the net much and want to build a web site.
March 30, 2014
Dated, yes. But seeing as it only take about an hour to read, worth the time. Illustrates the evolution of websites. Tips on what not to do are still relevant. And reminds us that Amazon's done it right from the get go.
July 22, 2007
It's a quick read by blogger Seth Godin. Just has snippets of advice for web site design.
April 27, 2008
insight for web developer and SEO specialist, nice to read
November 5, 2008
Great book!
December 15, 2008
Ok book on web design, though not nearly as clear as Don't Make Me Think. He gave examples and problems, but no pictures of solutions.
June 29, 2010
Super quick, easy read that will help you make your website better. The advice is simple. The steps toward improvement are even simpler.
July 4, 2010
Very good
September 30, 2011
"The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better" by Seth Godin is a book that can be read very quickly, yet it has a lot of useful information in it.
June 21, 2017
Fast read. Definitely dated (although it was interesting to see how little Amazon has changed in 10 years). A good overview of the basics - should be a starting point for other things.
February 9, 2012
Another great hit from Godin. Good book to get quick hit ideas on building a great web site. I appreciate how there's no fluff with Godin, just compelling thoughts in a fast, concise format.
June 30, 2012
Outdated
June 11, 2012
A must read first book for anyone building a site or ecommerce store.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews