Books to Read for Growth-Driven Design

The Growth-Driven Design methodology is a combination of many different ideas from various industries, disciplines, thought leaders. Growth-Driven Design pulls the best ideas from each one and adapts it towards building and optimizing a website.

There are many amazing books out there that dig into various topics related to web design, user experience (UX), conversion rate optimization (CRO), agile process, growth hacking, etc. To help provide some focus on what to read, I have compiled a list of some of my highest recommendations. - Enjoy!The topics covered in these books often span across the entire GDD methodology, however, I tried to group them by the three stages of GDD: Strategy, Launch Pad, and Continuous Improvement.

Strategy

• When Kale and Coffee Compete by Alan Klement

• Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice by Stephen Wunker

• Running Lean by Ash Maurya

• Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

• Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder

• Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder

• Research Design by John Creswell

• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

• Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Launch Pad

• SCRUM by Jeff and JJ Sutherland

• SPRINT by Jake Knapp

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

   

• Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelly

• Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf

• Inspired by Marty Cagan

• The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg

• Hooked by Nir Eyal

• Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Continuous Improvement

• Product Roadmaps Relaunched by Todd Lombardo

• Reforge Growth (blog) by Brian Balfour

• Scaling Lean by Ash Maurya

• Measuring the User Experience by William Albert

• Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll

• Math and Stats for Web Analytics and CRO by Himanshu Sharma

• You Should Test That by Chris Goward

• ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko

• Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

Additional Good Reading

• The Four Steps to Epiphany by Steve Blank

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

• The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

• Essentialism by Greg McKeown

• The One Thing by Gary Keller

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel

• Poke the Box by Seth Godin

• Small is the New Big by Seth Godin

• The Wisdom of Walt by Jeffrey Barnes

In addition to the books, there have been countless blogs, videos, interviews, and personal experiences that have shaped Growth-Driven Design as we know it today.

For those not familiar with Growth-Driven Design methodology, you can learn more in our "How it Works" section and take a deep drive by starting our (free) Growth-Driven Design Certification. 

I’m sure there are many good books that have influenced your thoughts on web design and optimization - please comment below with them. I’m always looking for a good read.

Image credit: Unsplash user Redd Angelo