Buy Call to Action

The Eisenberg brothers have made some good money helping companies succeed on the web. Call To Action is a compilation of their years of experience that will help you achieve great online results in ecommerce or any website you operate.

The book is divided into six main sections:

• Planning
• Structure
• Momentum
• Communication
• Value
• Accountability

The sections on planning and structure take up the majority of the book and dive into the most detail. Each chapter averages only a few pages and focuses on individual aspects of these overall section themes.

Since the shorter chapters make for a quick read, it seems as if they were weekly newsletter articles that were pulled together to create the book. While that may be, it does allow you to read a chapter quickly and then ponder how it applies to your situation.

Almost every chapter will leave you with a list of action items for improving your website and your visitor’s experience. You’ll learn how to improve your efficiency and persuade customers to take action.

Some of my favorite parts of the book are recurring mini-chapters that are guidance from industry leaders. These real world examples are often coupled with sound advice that you can directly apply to your online business.

Call To Action will change the way you are doing business online for the better. By implementing even a few of the ideas in this book, you’ll reap the financial benefits.

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Buy Freakonomics

Freakonomics, written by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, takes an unorthodox view at some questions you’ve probably never asked. In so doing, they explore “the hidden side of everything” as the book’s subtitle states.

Although the authors claim at the end of the book that there is no recurring theme to its pages, they do state a straightforward central premise:

If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work.

If nothing else, you’ll learn from this book how to break away from the standard perceptions and accepted norms that society often pounds into our heads. Through the power of the data, the authors’ analysis illuminates the differences between correlation and causality.

To illustrate what the authors mean, they use this analogy: With correlation, it would be fair to say that it only snows when it is cold. Since it doesn’t always snow when it is cold, there isn’t necessarily a cause and effect (causality) relationship. These two points do, however, have a strong correlation.

When analyzing numbers at your business you may be tempted to erroneously put pairs of results into a cause and effect relationship. For example, your company has a stellar fourth quarter with record profits. During that quarter you got a new CEO, introduced two new product lines, and opened a branch office in Chile. Would it be true to say that your new boss led the rise in profits? Not necessarily.

Unless you dive deeper into the data, you won’t know the exact effects of these events on your company’s bottom line. All three may correlate to increased profits because they happened at the same time; however, that doesn’t guarantee that any one of them caused the increase.

Incentives

The wide ranging effects of incentives are illustrated in Freakonomics with stories and data from day care facilities, standardized school testing, and sumo wrestler tournaments. Through these you see why people do what they do even if that means cheating. People’s reactions to incentives may not always be what you’d expect them to be.

Information

Experts can wield a great amount of knowledge to their advantage and often to your detriment. The authors compare the Ku Klux Klan to real estate agents. Both have used closely held information to their benefit. By spreading that knowledge to the masses, their power has been reduced. How can you leverage the power of information for your success?

How are these all related?

You’ll ask the question “how are all these stories related?” several times while progressing through this book. Nevertheless, the authors masterfully tie their stories and data together to bring out effective and thought provoking conclusions.

Conclusion

Freakonomics turned out to be an eye opening voyage through the world in which we live. Reading this book will help you take a step back and question society’s accepted conventions. You’ll find yourself asking more questions like: “What do the statistics and numbers I deal with every day really mean?” You’ll take a fresh look at your business or personal life and see how your actions are really affecting the world around you.

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Buy this book

Creating Customer Evangelists written by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba is a brilliant work about turning your customers into a powerful sales force. Customer Evangelists are the ideal Return Customers that will come back to your business and bring their friends.

This book outlines several key ways you can utilize your customers to improve your business. Involving your customers can result in improved products, more new customers, and increased profits.

The authors present these six tenets of customer evangelism in detail:

• Customer plus-delta - continually gather and utilize customer feedback
• Napsterize your Knowledge - share your knowledge freely and make it easy for others to pass along
• Build the Buzz - build powerful word of mouth networks that extol just how wonderful your company and product really are
• Create Community - encourage customers to meet
• Bite-size Chunks - offer smaller versions that are easier to attract customers
• Create a Cause - focus on making the world a better place

After outlining the major principles behind creating customer evangelists, the authors share 8 case studies of companies that have exhibited those same qualities and have benefited greatly. You’ll get a boatload of ideas of how you can start reaping the rewards of customer evangelists from these examples.

The end of this book offers a few bonus appendices that help you get started. The authors ask several thought provoking questions that you can ponder in your business. The answers will improve your customer experience and your bottom line.

Creating Customer Evangelists is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it.

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Buy Blink

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell dives into those split second decisions that we make everyday. Something deep in our subconscience allows us to make quick and accurate decisions without even a thought.

Gladwell shares numerous examples through stories, research, and case studies that show how people have been very successful or complete failures at utilizing this rapid thought process.

I checked this book out from the library a few weeks ago and I’ve had a hard time getting pulled into its content. Most of the stories he tells left me asking how it could apply to me. Fortunately, the person who had the book before me had left little pencil marks in the margins where Gladwell makes his main points. Because of this I was able to skim most of the book and extract the tidbits of knowledge that were scattered throughout. For example:

• Gladwell outlines how people can make accurate decisions in a fraction of second but then have difficulty explaining why they made them. Once you become an expert at something, you can make those quick decisions and then explain the logic behind it.
• In marketing, product packaging leads people to form opinions about the product itself. Feelings, sensations, or thoughts about the product are all jumbled together in the consumer’s mind and therefore “the product is the package and the product combined.”

Gladwell makes some intriguing points and recounts several interesting stories throughout this book. However, I was never engaged enough to read it cover to cover.

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Things don’t always go like you hoped. Your website will be used by different types of people from various backgrounds. You must prepare and make their online experience with you as pleasant as possible. This includes gracefully recovering when visitors encounter problems.

Defensive Design for the Web comes to us from the ingenious people at 37Signals. I’ve praised their innovative products here before because they have created a wonderful user experience. This book passes along some of their expert knowledge in an easy to read format.

Defensive Design includes screenshots of websites with analysis of what works and what doesn’t. Forty key points are covered that can help you create an online experience that effectively handles the bumps in the road.

Take a look at this book and I’m sure you’ll find at least a handful of things you need to fix on your website.

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Buy 1776

David McCullough’s nonfiction work 1776 guides you through the military campaigns of the American Revolution during the historic year the Declaration of Independence was signed.

A collaboration of quotes and facts from historical records, journals, and letters, 1776 narrates the story of strategy, battles, and hardships from both the British and American perspectives. You hear from the common soldier and his leaders to create a vivid picture of the challenges and trials faced during this pivotal year in America’s struggle for independence.

So what does this have to do with business and marketing? As a lover of history I’m reminded of the famous saying: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

In your business today you are struggling for independence against numerous forces. You have competition, trials, disasters, and great victories.

About half way through this book I was thinking, “how did we even win this war?” Turning that question to business merits the thought: how will we ever succeed in selling product XYZ? Or, how can we outperform our competition?

McCullough’s 1776 gives some stirring examples that can inspire you to succeed in your business. You’ll read of leadership, strategy, resourcefulness, failure, perseverance, and more.

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Have you ever had to deal with change in your business? If you haven’t yet, odds are you will soon. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson is a parable of how you need to adapt to change. This is a very short and simple read but it drives home some very solid principles about adjusting when things outside of your control change.

Your customers change. Your products become obsolete. Your competition expands and encroaches on your territory. In order to survive and thrive in this environment, you must:

• Prepare for change
• Be on the lookout for change
• Be flexible in adjusting to change

Who Moved My Cheese? teaches these principles and more to help you adjust to the constantly changing landscape in which you do business. The lessons in this book can be applied to more than just work. They’ll benefit you in your family life, friendships, personal finances, and more.

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Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith offers great insights into developing customer relationships. The author shares numerous real world examples and extracts the business and marketing principles for your benefit. This closely correlates with the goal of this site and I found numerous points that I can work on in my business activities.

Selling the Invisible is full of sound marketing and business advice that applies to your company. Even if you don’t consider yourself a service company, this book has insight you can put into practice.

I checked out the audio CDs from my local library and listened to them during my daily commute. I was so intrigued by Beckwith’s points, that I often wished I had a hard copy of the book for reference.

This book is worth the investment of time to read. Take note of the principles he shares and see how you can improve your business.

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