Book Review: Over 300 Top Tips For Running An e-Commerce Website
A reasonably priced book that offers “Over 300 Top Tips” for selling successfully online may sound like a no-brainer for anyone planning or running an e-commerce website so it was with interest I received the book written by Chris Barling, of Actinic Software Limited. As one of the leading purveyors of e-commerce software for business we can probably assume Chris knows what he is talking about.
A book of this nature isn’t designed to be read from beginning to end (although you could do so as the book is only 146 pages from beginning to end) but instead it’s aimed to be dipped in and out of as required so it’s ideal to keep handy for those times when you have a few minutes available.
Beyond the introduction and final thoughts section there are five main sections grouping the tips into marketing techniques, selling, operational tips, advanced ecommerce and customer relationships. By far the largest number of tips revolves around the marketing section which boasts around 125 pearls of wisdom out of the 300+ included.
Some useful tips involve techniques for dealing with serial returners, planning the returns process, understanding the Google quality score, and tips on how to turn browsers into buyers.
One particularly interesting section deals with the introduction of audio and video to your site with sixteen insightful considerations including setting objectives and dealing with services like YouTube.
With so many tips available it’s not surprising that not all the 300+ tips are the gems we might expect. One tip simply refers you to another section whilst another recommends answering emails in a timely manner which, hopefully, is already common sense.
Personally, I would have liked the book to have included some real world examples of the tips to give things a little more depth and to show how they could be, and have been, applied. Another thing that would have made the book more usable would have been a glossary. Whilst many of the acronyms, such as PSP, AVS, CV2, PPC, are explained in each tip a quick look-up section would have been useful.
Overall, the book has plenty of useful tips to make it a worthy read and if you are in the e-commerce world you are bound to gain some useful insights. As tip number 317 puts it “If you put the effort in, you will get the reward.”
Selling Successfully Online is currently available as an A5 paperback from Amazon for £7.99, and you can also obtain a free PDF copy from www.actinic.co.uk/top-tips | Buy .
- £7.99
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