How to Become an eCommerce Specialist

What is an eCommerce specialist?

An eCommerce specialist is someone who is competent enough in all eCommerce jobs that they can oversee all aspects of an eCommerce strategy, growing a project all the way from conception to a mature merchant online that is firing on all cylinders and making money among several marketing and checkout channels.

It is no simple feat to achieve this guru level of ecommerce solutions provider and requires a ton of learning, with a side of learning, a sprinkle of learning and a stuffing of an insane amount of practical experience. You have to work your way up the ladder to get to this level, whether that be within an agency, as a freelancer or working on your own projects.

Here is a quick rundown of skills you should be competent in to call yourself an eCommerce specialist…

• Website design
• Website building (on more than one platform)
• Site management
• eCommerce Marketing
• eCommerce SEO
• Marketing funnels
• Conversion optimization
• Email marketing
• Search engine marketing
• Social media marketing
• Display marketing
• Analytical analysis
• Data driven decision making
• Up and cross selling
• Others

Basically, everything to do with selling something online. You may also be expected to deal with logistics if the company doesn’t already deal with such things or you are starting out yourself.

General Skills to Hone

Here some overall skills that you should work on that will provide the foundation for building up a strong skill set in the future…

Communication

Whether it be communicating with a client, communicating with team members or dealing with customers, be it on an individual basis or through crafting ads and emails to be broadcast out to them, communication is key to doing well in all areas of business. Persuasion requires communication, and persuasion is basically the game.

Analytical skills

The beauty of optimizing an eCommerce marketing strategy compared to a traditional brick and mortar store is you can track and collect data on all aspects of your site. Measuring the effect of a newspaper ad on the revenue of a brick and mortar shoe shop is almost impossible. Thankfully, all the online marketing channels provide ways for us to track exactly where our sales come from, be it geography, gender, ad copy, targeting, traffic source or a whole multitude of other metrics.

Knowing how to analyse this data and use it to increase profits is essential whether you are testing email marketing subject lines, competing images in an Instagram ad, different headlines for Google Ads or split testing call-to-action button colors on your site. Statistical significance should be the cornerstone of every business decision you make.

Understanding customers

Different stores will have different customers and a different requirement for understanding, but most of it falls back on to human psychology. Understanding how humans think, especially in regards to shopping will help you build or make changes to your site to appeal more to them. This can include color psychology, the thought process and emotional journey someone goes through before making the decision to purchase and more. This type of knowledge can be heavily influential in your marketing efforts, copywriting and throughout your site.

Get started

That’s the trick… get started. Doing anything is better than doing nothing. If you are fresh to the concept of making money shipping items online then start studying, practice building yourself a store (even if just for practice), learn about marketing, sales funnels, SEO, advertising, retargeting, best design practices and more. If you are not new but still have a way to go then keep sharpening that saw. Learn, do, repeat. Earn it.