10 Fascinating Books For The eCommerce Specialist In 2023
Learning every day from the experience of industry professionals is cheaper and opens a new world of eCommerce knowledge and strategies that you might not otherwise have. A good read will always help you grow into a strong, rational, and impactful leader regardless of your job position in eCommerce. However, finding resourceful and reliable materials to read can be pretty challenging since there are merely a handful of people to tell you about them.
Gepard has compiled a useful, must-read booklist for eCommerce specialists in 2023. The list features 10 best-selling books recommended by in-house eCommerce experts. The books will expose you to practical knowledge inspired by motivational & uplifting stories narrated by founders of world-class corporations.
So, let’s get started!
“The Personal MBA” by John Kaufman
- Amazon Rating: 4.6/5, 3655 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 30th December 2010
- Category: Introductory Business Premier
The Book In One Sentence
The Personal MBA book combines all the business strategies, lessons, and concepts you can learn in the traditional MBA course, saving you a ton of money, resources, and time that would otherwise be spent learning outdated concepts.
Why Should You Read It?
This book impacts you with experience that will help you explore the opportunities for creating products or solutions that consumers want. Unlike the traditional MBA approach, Kaufman highlights tips for identifying market value in a dynamic landscape and retaining the same for business success and continuity.
Main Ideas
John Kaufman covers five core functions that can make or break a business, including:
- The art of value creation is by understanding what consumers need and creating that product or solution.
- Marketing techniques that attract attention to building demand.
- Sales conversion by turning prospects into purchasing customers.
- Value delivery by matching your offerings with actions to fulfill an ideal customer experience.
- Finance discipline to make your venture worthwhile.
“Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini
- Amazon Rating: 4.6/5, 7384 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 1984
- Category: Marketing Research
The Book In One Sentence
Robert Cialdini takes an in-depth approach to explain the art of persuasive psychology while highlighting the triggers of primitive automaticity—authority, social proof, commitments & consistency, scarcity, reciprocity, and liking.
Why Should You Read It?
Experts herald Robert Cialdini’s work as one of the most important books that cast a spotlight on what true marketing and customer acquisition entail. In this book, you’ll learn about factors that implore customers to say yes to your product and leverage the same to stimulate sales in eCommerce.
Main Ideas
The book builds its narrative around six principles that include:
- Consistency as a weapon of influence.
- Reciprocation—giving what you expect to get back in return.
- Social proof—the more people find your product great, the greater it will be.
- Authority for compelling users to try your products.
- Liking—attractive products and marketing strategies will always sell.
- Scarcity—customer love products more if they seem to be unavailable.
“The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber
- Amazon Rating: 4.7/5, 9020 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 1986
- Category: Small Business Development
The Book In One Sentence
Michael Gerber takes a classical approach to breaking the entrepreneurial myth. He describes the personalities that make a true business owner—the technician, the manager, the entrepreneur—who starts a company because they don’t want to be employed.
Why Should You Read It?
This book is for business owners who want to drive change and thrive but often experience setbacks that are borne by their traits and personalities. In the book, Gerber invites you to his thinking world, where businesses are a distinct reflection of their owners. Owners, who must be willing to change if the business is going to serve their life and not the other way around.
Main Ideas
Three personalities cut across all business owners who want to grow their startups:
- The entrepreneur who is futuristic and looks forward to changing.
- The pragmatic manager, who lives in the past and believes in the status quo.
- The technician who does the work to accomplish present goals.
“Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age” by Jonah Berger
- Amazon Rating: 4.7/5, 5335 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 14th March 2013
- Category: Content Marketing
The Book In One Sentence
Jonah Berger authors a six-step strategy that can help eCommerce professionals build word of mouth in the digital age, and build trust, reputation, and loyalty with customers.
Why Should You Read It?
Every entrepreneur wants customers to associate their business with credibility. Most importantly, they want referrals from happy customers. In the book, Jonah Berger teaches you how to build a working word-of-mouth content strategy that will drive new customers with negligible overhead marketing costs on your end.
Main Ideas
“Contagious” content follows the STEPPS concept:
- S — Social currency—the value that your content adds to the reader when they share it.
- T — Triggers—things that come to mind when consumers think about your brand.
- E — Emotions—the psychology of the heart and mind that glues people to your content.
- P — Public—get more people to share your content, and others will believe in it.
- P — Practical value—align your content with what the customer needs.
- S — Stories—tell a story to sell your brand naturally.
“Made to Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
- Amazon Rating: 4.0/5, 4013 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 2nd January 2007
- Category: eCommerce and Business Presentation
The Book In One Sentence
Made to Stick explores how entrepreneurs and eCommerce professionals can make their ideas “stick” around the room so that other stakeholders can understand and believe in them.
Why Should You Read It?
In any organization, eCommerce specialists are required to propose ideas that can drive product success or business goals. However, not all ideas often come to fruition because they are poorly organized. In this book, you’ll learn the tricks of conceptualizing ideas so that they stick with the people you’re presenting them to and eventually come to fruition.
Main Ideas
Chip and Dan Heath recommend an all-around strategy for making your ideas “stick” throughout the book’s chapter. Some of the lessons taught include:
- The art of simplicity in prioritizing essential aspects of your ideas.
- How to grab the attention of your audience and maintain it using the unexpected.
- How to be concrete so that others can accept and implement your idea.
- Building credibility around your ideas even if you don’t have authority figures.
- How to employ the emotional psychology of imploring people to care about your ideas.
- Presenting ideas using stories to drive re-enactment or mental stimulation in the audience.
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“Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely
- Amazon Rating: 4.6/5, 7703 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 19th February 2008
- Category: Behavioral Economics
The Book In One Sentence
Dan Ariely explains the forces behind the irrational human decisions that make them manage finances prudently, build better relationships with others and live happily.
Why Should You Read It?
The author welcomes you to his forte and area of interest, where he passionately speaks about the psychological process of the way we decide how we want to experience life. In the book, you’ll learn how incoherent and irrational humans can be, teaching you the art of being reasonable in the future.
Main Ideas
The book inculcates three main lessons:
- Why free is just another powerful price.
- How and why people overvalue what they own.
- Comparing whatever we can with others.
“Made in America” by Sam Walton
- Amazon Rating: 4.7/5, 3916 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 1st May 1992
- Category: Retail Business Development
The Book In One Sentence
This book reveals what it takes to amass a stupendous fortune in the eCommerce industry with a real-life example of the man behind the success of Walmart’s billion-dollar empire.
Why Should You Read It?
Sam Walton’s made in America is the embodiment of a full-cycle business lesson. He teaches the best practices and values of acquiring and retaining a happy customer—creativity, confidence, frugality, and competitive spirit. In this book, every written page contains an important lesson with an unrivaled resolve to put the customer first.
Main Ideas
Most eCommerce specialists aren’t sure whether their journey will culminate in a multi-million or billion-dollar empire. Nonetheless, these three lessons covered in the book helps shed light on what it takes to get there:
- Good artists copy ideas, while great ones steal.
- The customer is the biggest boss in any organization.
- The culture of sharing financial success with employees.
“Good to Great” by Jim Collins
- Amazon Rating: 4.6/5, 6161 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 16th October 2001
- Category: Business Development
The Book In One Sentence
This book is a must-read for eCommerce specialists who have experienced success with their current strategies and managed to drive their companies to a “good” position but would want to realize the further good—greatness.
Why Should You Read It?
As the name suggests, this book offers resourceful information that can help you grow your company from “good” to “great”. Moving from good to great is greatness in itself but very rare. In the book, Jim Collins discusses his research findings and maps a meticulous strategy with systematic phases that can help you achieve this goal.
Main Ideas
The Good to Great narrative by Jim Collins is based on a three-component framework:
- The process of building up greatness before achieving a breakthrough.
- The three phases of the good to the great path—disciplined people, thought, and action.
- The flywheel process of attaining a consistent direction as you near the breakthrough point.
“Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore
- Amazon Rating: 4.6//5, 1523 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 1991 (1st edition)
- Category: Retail & Business Development
The Book In One Sentence
Crossing the Chasm is an award-winning book that targets high-tech eCommerce professionals with a marketing blueprint for driving product traction after launch until it reaches the mainstream market without succumbing to the chasm between pragmatists and early adopters.
Why Should You Read It?
What Geoffrey Moore describes as “The Chasm” is what eCommerce specialists need to overcome if they are going to experience success with their products and penetrate mainstream markets. The book teaches you how to target early customers who will drive the brand message of your product and convince the rest that your offerings are holistic and vouched by good references.
Main Ideas
Geoffrey Moore covers three main lessons in Crossing the Chasm:
- In-depth clarity of the chasm and how to identify the gap between the early adopters of your product and the pragmatic majority.
- How to secure a specific niche that will help you cross the chasm.
- How to climb to the top echelons of your niche market with a strong claim.
“The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss
- Amazon Rating: 4.6/5, 21 338 reviews
- Year of Publishing: 24th April 2007
- Category: Main Course for eCommerce Specialist
The Book In One Sentence
This book sheds light on how eCommerce professionals can get all the rewards of their hard work and join the cohort of the New Rich—a class of professionals who defy the traditional retirement-life plan to experience opulence in the here and now.
Why Should You Read It?
Narrated at a time when Timothy Ferriss worked 14 hours a day at a sports nutrition supplement company, the storyline in this book gives tips and strategies that can help you abandon the redundant all-day working norm and shift to The 4-Hour Work Week culture. You’ll learn how to discover your true innate power as an eCommerce specialist and create options that automate income so that you get more time to yourself.
Main Ideas
Ferriss narrates the pathway to becoming New Rich using the acronym DEAL:
- D—Definition, a strategy alienating misguided common sense and introducing fresh rules and objectives.
- E—Elimination, which debates the difference between the traditional concept of time management.
- A—Automation, which aims to put your cash on autopilot.
- L—Liberation, which frees you from one location to explore boundless experiences and income-generating opportunities around the world.
Conclusion
eCommerce can be murky and volatile. The information and knowledge acquired from these books will help you navigate various tricky situations and employ strategies that bring you closer to your long-term business goals. Gepard experts continue to conquer new heights of knowledge and are happy to share it with you.
