What Skills Does An E-Commerce Manager Need?

Are you considering a career in e-commerce ? You would like to hire an E-commerce manager but you are looking to write his job description or check if he has all the required skills? Then use our article “What skills does an E-commerce manager need?” to take stock and get all the answers to your questions!

WHAT IS AN E-COMMERCE MANAGER?

The role of an e-commerce manager is extremely important for anyone doing e-commerce. He will be used to lead the e-commerce team and ensure the growth of the site.

It's a profession that didn't exist before but which in a few years has become crucial.

The exact training to become an e-commerce manager does not yet exist to our knowledge so there can be a wide variety of profiles.

But with more than 200,000 e-commerce sites in France alone, the possibilities of finding a job if you have the right skills are strong!

The e-commerce manager will therefore create the site's commercial development strategy, work with e-commerce agencies , service providers, partners and of course his e-commerce team.

At the same time, he must ensure the proper functioning of the merchant site and traffic, conversion and loyalty.

Of course, the larger the structure will be, the more you are in a big company, the more it will be supported by many people: DSI, Web marketer, internal technical agency etc...

So, to succeed in all of this, what are the skills needed to become the best e-commerce manager in the world?

Technical skills

• Know how a web page is built (DOM, HTML, CSS)
• Know how an E-commerce site runs in broad outline (CMS E-commerce, templates, Back office, front office)
• Know what this operation is based on: servers, html requests, dns,
• Know the main error codes of sites: 404,200,301,500 at least The idea is of course not to know how to code a site but in broad outline, knowing technically how everything works makes it possible, for example, to identify and solve problems more quickly, to detect misleading speech in calls for tenders , to better price the services and the time required and to have an idea of ​​the prices when requesting a quote from a merchant site.

If the technique is not good, it is impossible to develop an e-commerce site correctly. Knowing the basics ensures a work environment based on solid foundations.

Marketing skills

This is the talent that we most often find among our E-commerce customers. E -commerce experts oriented towards marketing or web marketing. This is obviously a very positive point for a great career as an e-merchant or e-commerce manager.

This skill includes many sub-skills that can vary greatly from one individual to another.

For example, in e-commerce managers we find a lot of products from natural referencing or Google Ads for example.

On more junior profiles, it's obviously skills on Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok.

But there is also obviously emailing, PR, etc.

In broad outline, here are the web marketing skills expected of an e-commerce manager:

• Know how to bring traffic to the site: SEO, Advertising, Emailing etc ..
• Know how to read site data: Google Analytics or other
• Reporting: synthesizing data for others
• Create web marketing action plans based on this data: Ex content or targeting strategy

Design skills

E-commerce design Having a running site is good, but having a sense of design is better! An e-commerce manager who will surf his site, detect small errors, align the elements, with the help of his developers or designers if necessary.

In short, someone who does the maintenance so that the site is pleasant, readable and clear for him but especially for the customers!

It's also paying attention to colors, spacing, comfort of the surf and not just putting beautiful visuals everywhere.

Having design skills to offer a differentiating experience is clearly an asset against the competition to stand out.

It is therefore necessary to have:

• UX skills: ergonomics, layout, positioning
• To know how to read and do AB/Tests
• To have an eye for small graphic details
• To think about the design of the site as a whole to improve user perception and make the graphic charter shine At this level, skills in tools like Figma or Adobe XD are a real plus for success!

Sales skills

All the skills that we have mentioned before are very good, but we must not forget that the very existence of the position of e-commerce manager is to increase the turnover of the merchant site.

It's certainly a little down to earth but you have to get the numbers. And for that no other way than to understand the main rules of the sale. We take out the big words such as “assortment”, merchandising, product placement etc. If Porter is your friend, or at least your bedside book then you have what it takes.

Because even with lots of traffic and a really nice, fast site, if you don't have the right products or there's no stock, you won't sell anything.

In the list of required skills we will therefore find:

• Build a coherent product range: product categorization for example
• Do the merchandising: placement of products in the right places, i.e. those that are seen by customers
• Create commercial operations, we call it “OP” (pronounced “opé”) to energize the window of the site, the homepage, and the other products according to the period, we think of sales , Christmas, black friday, spring, Mother's Day, clearance sales, new arrivals etc...
• Of course, manage your stocks. If at any time you thought e-commerce was easy, then you've never managed a stock. Too much stock and you're stuck on your hands, not enough stock and lost sales accumulate.
• Manage prices. Too expensive, you don't sell enough, not expensive enough, you don't earn enough margin. The debate is endless and you will spend hours managing the lowest price on the site. And when you find the right one, a competitor will pick you up on that product and you start over. You're welcome. It's happened to all of us thousands of times.

Management skills

As if all these skills weren't enough, you'll have to deal with other people: a team, service providers, shopify agencies , experts, your boss, etc.

At that point, two solutions, either we manage everyone or we let ourselves be overwhelmed by all the requests.

It is up to you, the e-commerce manager, to ensure that all these little people work in the same direction, that is to say the direction you will choose to generate turnover .

Easy to write, not easy to do when there is already so much work, you don't have enough budget to manage everything and there are thousands of tasks to complete.

Yet this is one of the secrets of the proper functioning of many sites: managing to do a lot with few resources thanks to their organizational talents.

AND IT'S NOT OVER

Even if all this set seems important to you, each passing day sees the appearance of new tools, new e-commerce solutions, new ways of generating turnover in e-commerce.

The world of e-commerce changes often and it is therefore necessary to have an additional quality: knowing how to learn, test and change your mind quickly to organize a new, more efficient strategy.

But it's a horrible job!

I had the pleasure of being an e-commerce manager for many companies for years while being very young at that time. These have been unexpected opportunities to have been able to learn, test, build and grow businesses.

To my knowledge, this is not possible in other sectors of activity and in other types of professions.

Best Ecommerce Job With several hundred thousand sites in France, growth still in double digits for many of them, thousands of things to do to keep busy, often attractive remuneration and significant recognition within the company because it is a key position, it is in my opinion the best position in the world .

And if you are also interested in it, know that it is possible to learn almost everything online, to try your hand on test sites or even for a few tens of euros a month to gain your own experience. So try your luck!

And you, what skills does an e-commerce manager need? Do not hesitate to give us your opinion in the comments!