Difficult Ecommerce Manager Interview Preparation Guide

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Leadership comes with responsibility so an effective way to approach this question would be “ everyone that works with me is an extension of my effectiveness as a manager and as such, I will have a heart-to-heart with the employee in question however, if nothing changes and it starts to affect the company bottom line, well, that’s my responsibility as well”

The key is to be forthright and honest about the bad news and then to focus on how your team will move forward to succeed. People appreciate honesty and optimism.

You could discuss training from a mentor/current supervisor. You could discuss management classes you've taken. You could discuss management books you've read.

☛ Talk about one of your most effective campaigns. What made them so effective?
☛ How do you know when a campaign has failed? What metrics do you use?
☛ What does the conversion funnel look like at your company?
☛ How many people are on your current marketing team? What are their roles?
☛ How would you describe your current brand’s tone of voice and visual identity?
☛ How do your customers inform your approach to brand-building?
☛ How do you get product feedback from your customers?
☛ What tools do you use to stay organized?
☛ Talk about your experience with editorial calendars.
☛ What is the relationship between SEO and content marketing?
☛ What are some common SEO mistakes in digital content production?
☛ What are the most important and effective social media channels for your brand?
☛ What is your experience with marketing automation?
☛ What role does paid advertising play in your overall strategy?
☛ What is your experience with co-marketing campaigns?
☛ What is the importance of thought leadership at your current organization?
☛ Describe a time you worked with a team to create a campaign on a tight budget.
☛ What is your approach to structuring a marketing budget?
☛ What is your approach to editing copy?
☛ Describe a time you gave constructive feedback to a colleague.
☛ Describe a time your team didn’t agree with your direction. How did you handle it?
☛ How would you handle negative feedback about your brand?
☛ What’s interesting about our current marketing? What could we do better?

☛ 1. Talk me through your approach to generating strategies for addressing current and future ecommerce market scenarios and to position a business to capitalise on them.

☛ 2. How do you drive results and what are the processes and methodologies you use in your job to successfully deliver your agreed ecommerce KPIs?

☛ 3. How big is the e-commerce business you are currently responsible for? (Inquire about revenue and order volume because large revenues can sometimes mask operational inefficiencies.)

☛ 4. Talk me through how you put together your ecommerce budgets with their corresponding KPI’s?

☛ 5. Tell me about a successful ecommerce project and how would you do it even better second time round (lessons learnt)?

☛ 6. In your opinion, what are the most important roles in an ecommerce team and any third party agencies engaged to delivery a project?

☛ 7. What are the current common risks for ecommerce and how do you mitigate them?

☛ 8. How big was the e-commerce business at the previous company upon arrival? Inquire about revenue and order volume because large revenue dollars can mask operational inefficiencies?

☛ 9. What are the latest systems you’ve used to manage and optimise your ecommerce projects?

☛ 10. How do you keep up-to-date with the latest ecommerce trends and new technologies?

This is a test to see how quickly you change jobs. Stress that you're investing your energy, time and efforts into this company for the long run (if you truly are)

When you are hiring someone, typically you look for strong characteristics like integrity, work ethic, diligence, potential and so forth. Most importantly highlight how you felt the hiring would impact the company for the better.

Questions such as this one are asked with the aim of getting you to discuss some of your qualities, perhaps hidden that you wouldn’t have mentioned if you weren’t asked.

“Well, my colleagues will tell you they can count on me. They will tell you that I am a team player and someone they enjoy working with.”

This is usually when average businesses transact with the customer. This is done through the shopping cart softwares and the amount involved in the transactions is usually low.

The major benefits of Ecommerce are:

☛ 1. Secure - More secure than a cheque.
☛ 2. Fast - The transactions take not more than a few seconds
☛ 3. Always on - The purchases can be made 24/7
☛ 4. Convenient - Ease of purchasing
☛ 5. Reduced cost price - Reduction of Marketing and Advertising Costs

In B2B, companies transact with each other. This includes the companies selling their product to wholesalers, distributors, etc.

Establishing who is officially on the e-commerce team (with a solid line to the general manager) versus who will be part of a shared-services team supporting e-commerce will impact the type of talent companies recruit. If the expectation is that the e-commerce leader will own responsibility for the P&L—but will need to rely on other key functional business heads or other shared resources to do so—it may adversely impact a candidate’s perceived ability to meet the established goals.

One of the most important issues to address early on is the risk related to IT resources and accountability. Everyone involved must understand the structure and reporting model of the IT function before the search for an e-commerce leader begins. Particularly in situations where the IT unit reports into multiple heads and the e-commerce leader will not have direct or dedicated IT support, some candidates may be concerned that IT will be unable to completely focus on and execute the e-commerce strategy.

The aim of this question is to ascertain the kind of leader you are. If you ever get to hold a management position in their firm, how would you handle issues of workload delegation or teach your subordinates?

I am of the opinion that a team should have specific individuals who are experts or most qualified to handle certain tasks, so as a leader, I would distribute the workload as evenly as possible to ensure that the best hands for different tasks are put where they are most effective. This will be done by ensuring that every member of the team has the skill and resource needed to complete his/her tasks.

Whatever you say, your response must be measurable targets. Your interviewers are trying to size up what you truly bring to the table and it is better for you to offer quantifiable answers. A good response would be “Management basically has the responsibility to set goals and ensure that these goals are met. Building a strong team capable of withstanding any pressure, working with relevant data and ensuring that all deadlines are met. The company will always continue to grow under my supervision.”

Obviously every company wants a perfected project and a deadline met. In the marketing world, this is challenging. Sometimes new promotions and ideas come at the last minute and you have to be flexible to meet the deadline and produce great content. In my experience, I have found that planning eliminates some of the stress involved with meeting deadlines. The better I plan what needs to be marketed and how, the easier it is to produce polished, strategic work on time.

Do you send out weekly inspirational emails? Do you talk with your teammates weekly to rally them around a cause? Do you have team events? Do you take your coworkers out to a dinner?

In this, a consumer places the product on the net. The companies willing to buy this product bid for it. The comsumer can then decide, depending upon the bid, which company to sell it to.

I love working with people, and all of my previous jobs have included interacting with others. In my previous role, I had to work with the Vice President of Sales to create a marketing campaign that would help increase sales by 10 percent. Part of this task involved presenting ideas to the sales team. Once they chose a campaign, I had to work daily with the sales team to make sure it ran smoothly. My people skills enabled me to coordinate with my team and the sales team. The campaign was successful and the sales team was able to meet their goal.

For many CEOs, the answer to this question may seem obvious. Most organizations believe it is imperative that the e-commerce organization reside at headquarters in order to build rapport and partnerships with cross-functional colleagues. This will help support an integrated business culture that will legitimize e-commerce within the rest of the organization and ensure that it stays close to the center of the business.

However, some retailers, including one well-known big-box brand, have built e-commerce teams in locations away from the company headquarters, reasoning that it would be easier to attract top talent to an alternate city. For example, the San Francisco area, because of its wealth of relevant talent, has become a popular spot for locating these separate e-commerce units. One catalyst for locating the team away from headquarters might be when a medium-sized e-commerce organization is growing to the next level, and will require more sophisticated e-commerce expertise and leadership—leadership that may not be easily attracted to the headquarter’s location. Some retailers have concluded that for an e-commerce organization to thrive, it needs to sit elsewhere to get out of the shadow of the stores—truly making it a separate division—and that, again, means locating it near e-commerce talent centers.

It is crucial that you discuss your objectives and how you intend to achieve them.

For instance: I would like to be the best in my department or I’d love to be the person my colleagues can rely on. I also feel I would be skilled and experienced enough to handle whatever responsibilities might come my way.

You need to discuss the issue openly with the employee to come to a resolution.

Your answers should focus on how well you can review relevant facts, consider various options and select the most appropriate option. Discuss how you factor in variables such as constraints and resources.

The new hire isn’t a good cultural fit. One of the most important competencies in an e-commerce leader is the ability to be a change agent but also mesh culturally within the organization. What will make a successful e-commerce leader is the ability to deftly navigate the existing culture while simultaneously executing the e-commerce strategy.

Under- or over-hiring. If an organization is going to go through the considerable effort of conducting a comprehensive search, it stands to reason that retaining the successful hire would be extremely desirable. This is why right-sizing the candidate for the opportunity is critically important. As laid out in No. 2, it’s important for organizations to thoroughly evaluate their needs so that they pick the right candidate.

No two e-commerce businesses are the same—success at one dot-com doesn’t necessarily translate to another. Generally speaking, evidence of past success does predict future success, but it’s important to know more than the broad strokes of a candidate’s experience. In order to make sure a candidate’s past will translate well to a new business, context is essential. For example, how big was the e-commerce business at the previous company upon arrival? Inquire about revenue and order volume because large revenue dollars can mask operational inefficiencies. This will help determine if the candidate has the required experience for a complex logistical environment.

In an ideal world, a compensation model should be developed before an e-commerce search begins. From a basic planning standpoint, that is obvious. However, there is another, more critical reason. Compensation models that focus almost exclusively on increasing online sales can cause internal strife at the company. Since an online sale may come at the expense of a store sale, retail-side leaders may feel threatened by e-commerce initiatives in a battle over the customer. According to the 2009 State of Retailing Online report from Shop.org, companies have adjusted their management and incentive structures to better align the online division with the rest of the company and vice versa.
One important area to address will be assigning credit for in-store revenue generated online. Successful compensation models also may emphasize shared credit for revenue performance and multi-channel sales, as well as companywide strategies around buyer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Not only will a successful compensation model avoid debilitating, money-losing rivalries, but it will incentivize cooperation across business lines. When recruiting e-commerce talent, the candidate will inquire about how his or her bonus will be measured.

☛ 1. The merchant submits a credit card transaction to the Payment Gateway on behalf of a customer via secure connection from a Web site, at retail, from a MOTO center or a wireless device.
☛ 2. Payment Gateway receives the secure transaction information and passes it via a secure connection to the Merchant Bank’s Processor.
☛ 3. The Merchant Bank’s Processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Interchange (a network of financial entities that communicate to manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions).
☛ 4. The Credit Card Interchange routes the transaction to the customer’s Credit Card Issuer.
☛ 5. The Credit Card Issuer approves or declines the transaction based on the customer’s available funds and passes the transaction results, and if approved, the appropriate funds, back through the Credit Card Interchange.
☛ 6. The Credit Card Interchange relays the transaction results to the Merchant Bank’s Processor.
☛ 7. The Merchant Bank’s Processor relays the transaction results to Payment Gateway.
☛ 8. Payment Gateway stores the transaction results and sends them to the customer and/or the merchant. This communication process averages three seconds or less.
☛ 9. The Credit Card Interchange passes the appropriate funds for the transaction to the Merchant’s Bank, which then deposits funds into the merchant’s bank account. The funds are typically deposited into your primary bank account within two to four business days.