Mark Miller — October 11, 2017 — October 11, 2017
Mediamodifier / Pixabay
In 2017, eCommerce sales are expected to grow to a staggering $ 2.290 trillion. Yes, trillion, with a T. eCommerce transactions will account for about 10% of retail sales worldwide this year, and you can assume those figures will only continue to rise.
eCommerce is the future of revenue growth for many businesses. Marketing and digital professionals would be wise to keep that in mind and shape their career paths and skill stacks accordingly. If you’ve been struggling to make career progress lately or don’t see much opportunity in your future, it may be prudent to look at eCommerce-based firms for open positions and adding some relevant skills to attract the attention of eCommerce headhunters.
What skills and capabilities will help you find the most success in a fast-evolving eCommerce environment? Start with some of these high-value (and in-demand) skill sets to get an edge:
Funnel Optimization Analytics
One aspect of eCommerce that makes it so attractive to businesses is the ability to meticulously track buyer behavior through every step of the customer journey. And at every touchpoint, there are opportunities to experiment, test, and improve performance.
There’s a serious talent gap in eCommerce analytics right now. Experts tend to be concentrated at a few major players (think Amazon, WalMart, Jet, Alibaba, and the big box retailers who got an early head start in the eComm world). That’s left organizations who are newer to the game scrambling to find the talent they need and turning to eCommerce headhunters for help pulling talent from these established firms.
There are so many opportunities in eCommerce to improve conversions. Everything from site layout to CTA button colors to shopping cart experience to email confirmation and beyond is on the table. And even a small improvement of a few percent at any given point in the funnel can lead to huge boosts in overall revenue. If you have any ability to track users across a web site, A/B test, interpret data and make actionable recommendations, this is definitely a field to pursue.
eCommerce SEO
SEO is a core pillar of any complete modern digital strategy. And it’s just as important for eCommerce sites as anyone else–perhaps more so. A successful SEO strategy for eCommerce often means immediate conversion opportunities if you’re ranking for the right keywords.
But SEO for eCommerce sites requires a much different strategy from SEO for a standard business website. eCommerce sites are structured very differently from most websites, with lots of product and category pages. Many standard best practices aren’t ideal for an eCommerce environment. You’ll need to adjust what you know about SEO in order to draw in customers.
Fortunately, you don’t have to figure out everything on your own. There are some reliable resources we’ve found as eCommerce recruiters to get started updating your understanding of eCommerce SEO.
- The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites
- eCommerce SEO – The Definitive Guide
- A Simple (But Complete) Guide To Ecommerce SEO
eCommerce Platform Shop Development
A large or ambitious business might choose to develop and manage a proprietary eCommerce store from scratch. But such a venture is expensive, time consuming, and often risky.
Many more organizations, including thousands of small businesses, startups, and sole proprietors as well as some big businesses instead opt to build their shop on top of an existing platform.
There are dozens of such platforms that offer out-of-the-box eCommerce solutions: Shopify, Etsy, Magento, BigCommerce, and more. They make it easy and affordable for almost anyone to open up their own online storefront. But not all of these shops are created equal; they can and should be customized to improve buyer experience, promote your brand, enhance SEO and ultimately drive more sales.
It’s true that nearly anyone who’s comfortable using the web can make a digital store front. But eCommerce recruiters specifically want someone who can create a store that is well-designed, visually attractive, and keeps customers coming back for more. A professional who’s an expert in working in one or more of these platforms can make quite a career working with firms who rely on these eCommerce sites.
eCommerce Automation
If you’ve ever bought something online (and you probably have; about 96% of adults have made an eCommerce transaction through their lives), then you know how gratifying it can be to get instant confirmation and feedback on your purchase. You may also know how frustrating it can be to wait for a response.
Some eCommerce businesses execute thousands of transactions an hour. There’s simply no way an organization can expect to manually manage all of its sales and customer nurturing manually, especially as it scales up. eCommerce automation is vital to providing a fast, positive customer experience that drives loyalty and brings customers coming back for more.
So much about eCommerce needs automation. Payment processing, order confirmation, account registration, upsell marketing, and more. If you have the right automation and system integration talent, your skills should translate well to most eCommerce-heavy organizations.
Most of the major marketing automation platforms like Marketo and Hubspot offer eCommerce integration of some kind, so understanding how to use those tools and connect them to your online store is extremely powerful. Email campaign automation and optimization is another powerful capability to bring to the eCommerce table.
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