Submit Now teaches what it means to go beyond usability, graphical design and marketing and to make your web site as perusasive as possible. It focuses on helping users to transact on the web an enlights them and their different needs from a new perspective.

Chak states that every click is a decision and so your site must motivate and enable your visitors to make the right click. In order to make a transaction complete every consumer naturally runs through the consumer-decision cycle: he recognizes a need, searches for information, evaluates the possible options, decides to purchase and if he is satisfied, starts again from the beginning.

In this process the weapons of influence play an important role. Another factor is designing for decicions. Chak states that on the web, you don’t sell to people; you help them to buy. Designing for users is the third element and this topic makes up the main part of the book. Andrew Chak describes the four roles users play when they come to your site:

• Browsers do not know what they exactly want. But they have a need to fulfill. They are looking for information on your site.
• Evaluators compare the options they have, based on the knowlege they have gained. They search for detailed information about products and services.
• Transactors have made a decision. The want a safe and fast way through the transaction process.
• Customers come back and are willing to become transactors again. They want to be satisfied and recognized.

Each of these user types must be handled in its own manner and Chak provides some thoughtful hints how to design your site for them. The book finishes with some practical examples on how to design persuasive web sites and opens up a kind of roadmap for this process.

Conclusion: A real pleasure to read and with a lot of “uhhs” in it. Andrew Chak really knows about the topic and shows a lot of hands-on solutions on how to design your site more user centred and more persuasive. A must read for everyone dealing with concepts and designing web sites.

Andrew Chak, Submit Now – Designing Persuasive Web Sites, New Riders Publishing, September 2002, ISBN 0735711704