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Recommended Reading List
Rather than give a long list of books, I have debated long and hard and managed to reduce my recommended reading list to just seven books. These are the books that I have learned most from in relation to the topics discussed in this book.

1. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Steve Krug
Que Publishing
ISBN: 0-7897-2310-7
This relatively short book is a gem of common sense. Krug makes the potentially complex problems of Web site usability accessible and easy to understand. If you have ever wondered what you are doing wasting your time in design meetings discussing what shade of what color a graphic should be, then this book will help you focus on what is really important in improving your site for your users. Everything Krug seems so obvious and yet revelatory. He speaks with the wisdom of someone who has used a lot of sites himself and has watched a lot of other people using sites. Starting from the premise that "people won't use your Web site if they can't find their way around it", Krug explains how people really use the Web, how to write for the Web, how to design the homepage and navigation, and how to do usability testing yourself.

2. Content Management Bible

Bob Boiko
Hungry Minds
ISBN: 0-7645-4862-X
Unlike Krug's book, this one is long at almost 1,000 pages. But then again Content Management is a big subject and Boiko goes into every aspect of it in quite some detail. This is the most comprehensive book dedicated to content management that I have read. Despite its length, and some sections which are quite technical, it remains very readable and contains a good balance between the practical (processes, deliverables, checklists, forms and so on) and the more conceptual. The book begins by asking 'What is Content?' and then 'What is Content Management?' before moving into the main sections addressing how to do a content management project and how to build a content management system.

3. Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach

Russell Nakano
Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 0-201-65782-1
I did not get as much out of this book as I did from Boiko's book on content management. However, I did find it particularly strong and interesting when talking about how to organize development teams and development environments to suit the scale of initiative. As the title suggests, there is a focus on how to orchestrate collaborative development work, which is not easy but very important. The sections on workflow, how to handle multiple Web initiatives and how to approach globalization and localization are particularly good.

4. CRM at the Speed of Light: Capturing and Keeping Customers in Internet Real Time

Paul Greenberg
Osborne McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0072127821
I have read a lot of books and white papers on CRM and eCRM but this is the one that stands out for me. A lot of what I have read on CRM comes across as marketing vapor-speak but Greenberg's book manages to get the core concepts across in a clear and convincing manner. Coming from a background in digital media, I found it particularly useful to hear his take on CRM versus eCRM and how the two have evolved and are coalescing. A reasonable chunk of the book is dedicated to evaluating some of the major CRM players, which though interesting and valuable at the time, risks dating quickly in this fast evolving field.

5. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers

Seth Godin
Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684856360
This book has become quite a cult classic of the Internet age with Godin now heralded as the 'father of permission marketing'. As with Krug's book on usability, Godin's points are quite straight forward and seemingly obvious but it always helps to have someone else say them for them to become clear in your own mind. The key message is that 'interruptive marketing', where you push marketing messages intrusively into people's awareness, is giving way to 'permission marketing' where the goal is to build a permission-based relationship between company and customer. As you can tell no doubt, permission marketing has a strong affinity to the concepts of CRM and it is particularly well suited to the Web because of its interactive nature, facilitating more involved, two-way dialogues. If you want to improve the performance of your Web site, you would do well to improve the levels of permission you have to talk to your site's users.

6. Measuring the Success of Your Web Site: A Customer-Centric Approach to Website Management

Hurol Inan
Prentice Hall
ISBN: 1740096487
This is the best book I have so far read on how to understand the success of your Web site. Hurol Inan, the author, spent eleven years at Andersen Consulting and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, which helps ensure that the focus is a commercial one and based on a wealth of experience. Furthermore, far from being too 'management consulting' to be intelligible and practical, the book addresses operational and implementation issues as well as giving enough technical detail without being overwhelming. Definitely worth a read. The accompanying Web site (see details below) is also a good resource.

7. Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success

Jim Sterne
John Wiley and Sons
ISBN: 0471220728
Jim Sterne is a leading Internet marketing expert and has already published several books and white papers on online marketing and web metrics. The book promises to "explain the criteria for building a successful site, surveying the tools, services, techniques, and standards for Web measurement, and fully integrating those metrics with the customer experience". It is certainly comprehensive in the techniques and approaches that are reviewed, and the text is supported by some good case study material and real world insights. The book takes very much a marketing focus and skirts issues like content management, customer relationship management or implementation but if you really want to delve into the world of web metrics from a business and marketing point of view there is no better place to start.
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