17 Stocking Stuffers for Your Optimization Team

‘Tis the season for Holiday Gift Guides. We’ve assembled a list of our favorite optimization books, apps and tools to help you kick start your gift-giving endeavor. You’ll find something for everyone here:

Books:

Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results walks you through the five phases that comprise website development.
Hooked provides actionable steps for building products people love and can’t put down.
Information is Beautiful explains how the world really works, through infographics and data visualizations.
Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly helps you succeed by making your ideas resonate with the people you want to serve.
Prioritizing Web Usability describes guidelines for making better websites.
Psychology of Web Design gives you insights on how the human brain deals with different elements, colors, contrast, symmetry and balance.
The Psychology of Buying Behavior: How to Use People’s Unconscious Decision Making Process to Make the Sale explains how to detect people’s psychological motivation for buying a product or service.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems spells out a streamlined approach to usability A/B testing.
Thinking, Fast and Slow illuminates the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

Apps and Web Tools:

Balsamiq lets you easily create wireframes and mock ups.
Coolors helps you work out great color schemes.
Diigo creates bookmarks and lets you share lists of useful links.
Headspace gets you in the right frame of mind to be productive via a meditation and mindfulness app.
Onenote collates your ideas in one place and lets you record brainstorming sessions.
QuirkTools Screenfly helps you A/B test how websites display on various screen sizes.
Snagit lets you create and mark up screen captures.
Sublimetext makes it easy to edit text with code markup and syntax highlighting.