“Ries & Daughter” provide Eleven (11) Laws by which you can judge any Internet business. These are helpful to investors, business owners, venture capitalists, designers, and stock option holders. Or if you just are interested in “the way things work” this book will be of interest.

But why should you consider this book when there are so many other Internet business books?

First, brand names are important. Look in your kitchen cabinets, the name of your car, etc. Look at the names of the web sites you frequently visit. A good brand name is an often overlooked part of building a business. This book’s focus is Internet branding, something that is vitally important to every Internet web site and business.

Second, Ries is a good brand. Ries is co-author of Positioning, the most important business book I’ve ever read. His two other Immutable Law books are also considered by many as classics. In other words, Ries as been talking about branding for sometime and that knowledge is an important component of this book.

Third, 11 Immutable Laws is a good start. Another reviewer called it an “easy read.” That is a high compliment since complex ideas get explained concisely without a lot of fluff. The book is full of examples and predictions. Names are named. I think the other books can wait until you read this.

Fourth, it will give you an understanding about why you like some sites and not others. After you read one law, you might say, “That was obvious.” Then that make you think about why the other laws are not obvious to you. That is learning. That is why I went back an re-read the first law.

If you are not sure, then read the publisher’s information and visit their interactive web site.

But I’m biased. Ries and his former partner Trout are two of my five favorite authors. Regardless, I think anyone in the Internet business will find this a useful business tool.

Right now I’m examining how our four current and two future Internet products comply with the 11 Laws. Certainly sparks some interesting possiblities.

Al and Laura Ries point out that companies seeking to do business on the Internet almost always get it wrong. And those errors begin with their choice of a brand name to use, the services they offer, the form those services take, and the technologies they plan to use. Basically, the authors make the now familiar argument (if you have read their earlier work) that there can only be one winning name in a category, that this name will be a proper noun or two rather than a common noun or two. The lousy examples they give of poorly selected brand names would be fairly humorous if it weren’t for all of the money and lives being wasted in an obviously losing effort. One of the most persuasive arguments they make is that most categories will be dominated by one brand, and that brand will be the one with the best brand name (assuming some level of decent service), not necessarily the first entrant. Thus, Amazon.com is praised for having a good name while buy.com is hissed for a generic one. Yet everyone believes that being first on the Internet is the only issue for dominating a category. Wrong!

Since their earlier work called for 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, I was pleased to see that the Internet is less complicated to brand correctly than a typical new product. The main reason for this is that the seller is dealing directly with the buyer, rather than through an intermediary like a bricks and mortar retailer.

The most telling argument they make is that existing businesses have an important decision to make: To either turn the existing business into an Internet-based one (like Cisco, Dell, and Charles Schwab have done), or to create a new brand with an Internet business model to compete with the nonInternet business. Most businesses would benefit from carefully thinking through this point.

The authors also argue that making your Web site more interactively valuable is critical to your success. If you notice that most Web sites aren’t, you will soon be convinced that this is advice more people need to read and understand.

This book points out the problem that many people are now operating Internet-based businesses who have little understanding of the fundamentals of how to succeed. This book will be a valuable contribution to the literature of how to solve that problem.

The book is also valuable for its ability to point out the sources of stalled thinking when it comes to the Internet. The issues are more similar to existing businesses than different, despite all of the hype in the e-press.