Ecommerce Team Structure #ecomchat – Key Points

Last week’s chat topic was ‘Ecommerce Team Structure’ looking at the different ways to build an ecommerce team. There were more than 200 contributions to the very busy debate.

Key contributions were from @optimiseordie @milsom @aattias @Magique83 @schurli666 @ahmed_khalifa @OmetriaData @danBArker @alwightman @edgotham @beyondcontent @commerceJohn @CraigWSoftcat @CeuMorais @montsecano @robeasson @alwrightman.

Q1: Which roles should be in an IDEAL Ecommerce team?

The list of roles identified for the ideal Ecommerce team were; Leadership, CRO, UX, Performance, Merchandising, Marketing, Analytics (it’s important to collect good data from day 1), Content (especially the copywriter), Customer Support, Community/Social, BA (to create user stories), PM and an admin to get all those product updates in! A outlying suggestion here was a vendor / platform solution architect but this is only really relevant to larger organisations where this cost can be justified.

Key themes

Unsurprisingly leadership was seen as essential is an individual with a broad knowledge, vision and commercially savvy, surrounded by specialised individuals. P&L ownership was seen as required or at least beneficial giving “control over the success of the team”, preventing spending too much time lobbying / explaining to senior decision-makers.

@jamesGurd explained that “For me it starts with a commercially savvy experienced manager with ecommerce skills. Without direction, teams drift.”
@magique831 commented that “Whether they are 100% responsible for the P&L or not they absolutely have to be commercially savvy enough to look after it.”
‏@danbarker recommended that “often a ‘good coach’ is great to head up an #ecommerce team. As tactics/tech change, better to empower others rather than dictate.”

Where to draw the line!

• The line between front end and back-end development and where Ecommerce wants/needs to get involved.
• There was a preference for front-end development to be part of the Ecommerce team to open up the front end allow Ecommerce to drive CRO UX etc.
• Use of tools such as VWO and Google content experiments were cited and recommended.

Q2: What are the options for structuring the team? How should responsibilities be divided?

Key theme

• Internal / External – best way to deliver core skills?
• Some, especially startups like to work with specialist small agencies and freelancers – always be relatively important to the supplier and mind the gaps between suppliers. Big agencies can save time on management. The internal vision remains critical.

Q3: How should an Ecommerce team fit in with the rest of the business?

Location dependent on maturity and focus of the business & sometimes simply historic. Company culture has large role in setting size and level of an Ecom Team – differences between pure plays and multichannel.

Key theme

Separation. Strong preference emerged here for separate Ecommerce teams – not part of Marketing, certainly not part of IT and preferably with board representation.