Ways to Start or Grow Your Retail and Ecommerce Venture
A Customer Managed Experience – Retail Smart-Up Your Start-Up Reading List By Ray Rebello (Acumatica)
The Internet contains such a vast amount of information on any given subject that’s it’s very easy to feel lost at sea, so to speak. If you’re looking for ways to start or grow your retail and ecommerce venture, where should you begin?
Well, here’s the life raft and compass you’ve needed. Whether you want to sit down with a hard copy, scroll through a web page, or listen to an insightful interview, we’ve compiled a list of the best books, blogs, newsletters, and podcasts to help inspire and inform your retail efforts.
Books
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
The CEO of Zappos shows how focusing on the happiness of both employees and customers through corporate culture and customer service helped the online retailer do over $1 billion in gross sales annually.
The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
This book explains how to use word-of-mouth advertising through social media to provide a level of one-on-one customer service that can beat out competition the way a giant marketing campaign might have in yesteryear.
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping: Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond by Paco Underhill
This revised edition of the best-selling book on consumer culture provides a look at the most innovative retail environments in the world along with the latest in online retail and ways that business practices could be improved.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
This biography of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos focuses on how he took the online store from delivering books by mail to an online retail behemoth that now sells everything from books to groceries and changed the way consumers shop today.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Collins’ book is an in-depth study of how good, mediocre, or even bad companies turn around to become leaders in their markets and how they stay that way.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
This book details the Entrepeneurial Marketing System, a method to reach business goals through focusing on six key components of your business.
What They Don’t Teach You at the Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack
When what you learned in school just isn’t enough, this book acts as a mentor to help you through problems with real world advice tested by the hugely successful entrepreneur McCormack.
Blogs/Newsletters
RetailWire—A forum for retail industry professionals with new discussion topics daily on the latest industry news.
Multichannel Merchant—Whether you’re using ecommerce, mobile, social, or catalog to sell, this blog contains helpful analysis and advice to help further your business.
eMarketer—There’s a daily newsletter with all new content, or you can browse a wide variety of articles on ecommerce, retail, and other industry topics.
PSFK—Access up to ten articles a month for free or there are paid memberships for full access to content on insights and trends for retail, advertising, technology, and more.
Internet Retailers—This site is loaded with news, data resources, and event details for retail professionals with a focus on ecommerce.
National Retail Federation — Shop.org—A great place to connect with other digital retailers as well as find news and research on the industry.
Other reading list:
5 Tools for Inventory Management – https://goism.com/5-tools-for-inventory-management/
True Cloud Applications for Agile and Fast-Growing Businesses – https://goism.com/true-cloud-applications-agile-fast-growing-businesses/
What other resources would you recommend? Let us know in the comments!
ISM sells, supports, trains, customizes, and implements Acumatica Cloud ERP.