I had the opportunity to see Lance Loveday speak at a Search Engine Strategies conference a few years ago. His session was packed with online ROI (return on investment) tips, easily turning it into one of the most useful and informative sessions of the conference.

Fast forward to 2007 and Lance has joined Sandra Niehaus to write this great volume, Web Design for ROI: one that delivers on the promise to turn browsers into buyers and prospects into leads.

In order to accomplish this goal, he starts by making the case for ROI, explaining the concept applied to the Web and describing how organizations today operate so much against basic ROI principles for diverse reasons. He then offers a roadmap for the readers who have become convinced of designing their sites for ROI.

The guidelines offered by the book are intelligently broken down into: Landing Pages, Home Pages, Category Pages, Detail Pages, Forms and Checkout Process. The ordering is not casual as it is tied to the importance they have in the process of converting visitors. Each chapter is analyzed from the standpoint of the goals for that particular section of the web site, the goals and questions a typical visitor has when visiting it, the metrics that should be tied to the section along with its unique issues and a few guidelines and examples to wrap it all up.

All the concepts presented in the book wouldn't be more than great theory if it weren't for the fact that the authors have proven them time and again with scores of client web sites for whom they have increase ROI by orders of magnitude. No matter your role: if you are involved in the decision making process surrounding a web site, you need to read this book.