Do you need a VP of Ecommerce?
Well, the first important question to answer is “what role does a VP of Ecommerce fill?”
What is a VP of Ecommerce?
In short, a VP of Ecommerce is responsible for the overall strategy and success of your ecommerce channel.
At a certain point in the growth of your business, you will need someone fully dedicated to managing and growing the ecommerce channel (as you would for wholesale or retail channels). When you are a small brand, you likely won’t have a dedicated role for this. Perhaps the founder or a C-level employee will oversee the ecommerce channel amongst a slew or other responsibilities.
But eventually, you’ll need an experienced VP of Ecommerce dedicated solely to this channel if you really want to see your online sales grow.
What skills does a VP of Ecommerce need to have?
1) Experience
Your VP of Ecommerce needs to have experience successfully growing ecommerce brands. They must have a proven track record.
2) Knowledge
Your VP of Ecommerce needs to have a certain level of knowledge in all of the areas that it takes to be successful online from traffic acquisition (paid and organic), design, development, onsite optimization, marketing, etc. They do not need to be experts in each of these fields or be able to execute them all individually. But they must have enough knowledge to oversee the area and understand how each aspect plays together in a holistic strategy to drive your business towards its ecommerce growth goals.
3) Leadership
Finally, your VP of Ecommerce needs to have the leadership skills and experience in order to drive a team effectively towards your businesses ecommerce goals.
How do you measure the success of your VP of Ecommerce?
Measuring the success of your VP of Ecommerce is cut and dry. Their success if your ecommerce store’s success. If your sales are up and your customer base is increasing, your VP of Ecommerce is doing their job.
Just make sure to allow enough time for their work to kick in before you measure their results. Not all changes will result in an uptick immediately.
How do you find a VP of Ecommerce?
Is your business ready for a VP of Ecommerce to lead the growth and success of this channel? Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find someone with all of the skills and experience required to do the job well. Not only does this person need to have experience and knowledge across a wide variety of areas, but they also need to have the leadership experience to manage a team of experts.
That’s why Metacake exists. We are a team of ecommerce experts, and serve the role of both VP of Ecommerce and ecommerce execution team for many brands, large and small. We are a full service ecommerce growth team and are here to help.
