11 ecommerce books to add to your summer reading list

Whether you’re just starting your ecommerce journey or looking to re-strategize your brand – there’s a diligent process of preparation that sets you up for success. 

From UX design to social promotion to influencer outreach down to how to write ecommerce product descriptions there is a lot of strategy that needs to go into a successful ecommerce business regardless or vertical or industry. 

A survey from 2019 showed that only 20% of ecommerce business-line owners consider themselves to be good at strategy planning.

We selected 11 books to add to your educational reading list to help you build successful ecommerce businesses:

Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula to Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love, and Live the Life of Your Dreams by Jeff Walker

How do you make your business popular right from the start? It’s all about the launch process. You want to make the brand attractive for the right audience, so you need specific strategies to bring attention to it. 

The budget doesn’t matter too much. The strategy does. This book will teach you many things you need to know about launching the business the right way. You’ll learn how to create powerful positioning for your brand as soon as you launch it. But it also reminds you of the succession of launches for the business. You’ll be launching new services/products, marketing campaigns, promotions, partnerships, and so on. Successful businesses are all about successful launches.

E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice by Dave Chaffey

This book serves like a manual for business owners from all industries and at all levels. It covers important topics, such as the needed budget for starting an online business, the strategies you can implement, and the priorities you should set. 

When you start your business, should you first invest in influencer marketing or content marketing supported by EduBirdie’s term paper service? Chaffey helps you understand nuances before you make these decisions.   

The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

“Startup” is not a buzzword. It’s not a concept someone made up. It’s a real trend, and it’s exactly what your ecommerce business is going to be. How do you make your startup successful? This book teaches the essence of developing a great business.

The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gendersen and Clayton M. Christensen

You want your ecommerce store to succeed? Well it’s not enough to invest in it and be the business owners. You have to be an innovator. The audience won’t choose your brand if it fails to offer something different from the competition. 

This is the book that teaches you how to be the innovator that your industry is waiting for. It analyzes the specific behaviors of world-class innovators. You’ll understand that the leaders from Apple, Virgin Group, Amazon, Google, and other giants have the “innovator” factor. But you’ll also understand the process behind innovation: associating, questioning, observing, networking, andexperimenting.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

This is a textbook for entrepreneurs. It teaches about the importance of innovation for starting a business, but it goes further: it tackles the concept of continuousinnovation. To keep your audience coming back to your site, you’ll have to surprise them more and more. 

You should dedicate your role as a business owner to adaptation to new conditions and innovation under all circumstances.  

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovit

The concept of data is all over the place. Every online guide on how to maintain a business tells you that data analytics is an inevitable aspect of the process. But datais hard to understand and use. You need a guide that introduces you into the matter of analytics. This is the one. 

Dropshipping E-Commerce Business Model 2019 by Steven Sparrow

This book teaches you how to “make passive income fortune with Shopify, Amazon FBA, affiliate marketing, retail arbitrage, eBay and social media.” Sounds complicated? It’s not. 

Before you start an elaborate online store, you can try earning money through these methods. With such experience, it will be easier for you to start the business. You’ll already know what to do.

The Genius E-Commerce Mindset: Grow Your Ecommerce Business & Learn the Best Mindset to Win the Digital Marketing Game by Khaled Belkeram

How do you become a successful entrepreneur? It all starts and ends with the mindset. It has to do with the way you found the business, the employees you hire, the way you advertise… everything. 

The final chapter is especially useful. It teaches you how to contact Instagram influencers. The way you approach these social media celebrities will determine the success of your collaboration. 

DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online by Russell Brunson 

Russell Brunson conducted over 1K original split tests to discover the principles of successful online businesses. In this book, he recommends the best practices for improving traffic, getting more conversions, and selling more through an ecommerce site.  

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

Google already affects your life. You know what? Its influence will be even greater when you start an online business. You’ll want to make the website attractive for Google. The search engine will impose standards you have to follow, and then it will change them. But you won’t know what the changes are and you’ll try to guess by experimenting with different content marketing methods. 

Without proper guidance, it’s a hard battle to win. This book helps you understand how the search engine works. 

What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest by Denise Lee Yoh

How do you get that X factor for your brand? How do you make it recognizable? What makes the best brands better? Denise Lee Yohn reveals the background.

There’s no magic formula behind the stardom of brands like Apple and Nike. There are specific branding principles that make them recognizable. This book reveals seven important principles that the best brands always implement. As a proof of their functionality, you’ll get case studies involving companies of all sizes.

You can’t read every single ecommerce bookout there, but you can at least read the most important ones. Eleven books may seem like too much, but it’s not. All these books teach something unique and if you start with on it will be easy to continue. 

Learning doesn’t stop once you launch the brand – it's an ongoing journey.