You’re good at building ecommerce sites and you’re wondering how to make the most of this gift of yours by acting as a manager of other people’s online stores. If you’re still not entirely clear on how to get started, this guide will help you figure it out.
What I would like to talk about in the next chapters is just how to become ecommerce manager, this is the name of the professional who takes care of taking over the management of an e-commerce site, in all its aspects. I’ll try to describe the duties of an e-commerce manager of an online shop and those of a social commerce manager, that is who manages the sale of products and / or services through social media, now increasingly prepared to be used as real virtual stores. Finally I’ll give you some useful tips to cultivate your experience and become a valuable professional in the field.
At this point you can’t wait to know what exactly an e-commerce manager is all about, can you? Then take a few minutes of your free time and read what I have to say on the subject: you’ll see that, at the end, you’ll have a clear picture of the subject and you’ll be able to understand what to do to manage an online business. I wish you a good reading and good luck for your business!
How to become ecommerce manager of an online store
A client has told you that he was struggling with the idea of having to bring his business on the Web and manage it on his own, so he asked you for a hand: now what you want to know is how to become ecommerce manager of an online store. Here are the main steps of the business.
You have to know that the ecommerce manager has, in general, two possibilities to start his work: to deal with the administration of an e-commerce site even before it was born, so the phases of conception, or take in management an already existing platform. If you work within a company, an agency or for a medium/large customer you will find yourself coordinating other professionals, such as social media manager and SEO.
In any case, if you have understood that the e-commerce manager is the job you want to do, you will have to be very good at analyzing the market, especially in the specific segment that concerns the online store to manage, to develop a strategy that can bring earnings and / or increase them. You’ll need to think and draft a proper business plan, with all the steps that lead to a return on investment.
The first step is to understand whether a given activity is in demand by any clients, so if there is scope to make a business out of it and how to do it: you can use a survey to investigate. Ask directly to the people you know what they think and if they would buy the products of the new ecommerce you are going to deal with. Better yet, include a larger sample of respondents: for this purpose, I recommend you start by using tools such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.
The next step requires you to know the data analysis tools, which will allow you to monitor the behavior of users on the ecommerce site you’re managing and many other parameters, which are essential in order to understand if the administration approach set up is correct, or if there is a need to “correct the shot”. The most popular tool for all this is Google Analytics: it is made available by the well-known search engine (with which all sites end up, then, to have to interact) and works through a monitoring ID, that is an alphanumeric code that must be inserted within the web pages of the site that you want to keep an eye on.
To know in detail how to use and apply it
Now, as is obvious, the mission of an e-commerce is to sell as many products as possible. Since the context in which it is placed is the Net, potential customers will have to be able to find your shop (or the one you manage) online. To do this they will use the browser and, above all, search engines, primarily Google.
In this regard, you will have heard about the importance of being first on Google, just to be immediately identified by the user who has typed a search key related to the activity of the e-commerce in question. However, I’m sorry to say that there are no magic formulas, or universal solutions, to succeed.
What you can do, if you want to become an ecommerce manager of an online store, is to manage wisely also those who, within the project, will take care of the SEO aspects. To learn more, a discipline that concerns the optimization for search engines of content ranging from the web page to the entire site.
In order to summarize the aspects that will have to be rationalized in the best way, to try to be indexed and positioned on Google, first of all you will have to make sure that for the realization of the e-commerce you will use (or you have used) a platform already optimized for SEO and able to respect the standard parameters of Web speed, for the loading of the pages, or that, in any case, will allow the operators to intervene on these factors.
My advice is to use proven platforms, more or less articulated, according to the type of sale they will have to support. In practice, they range from Shopify, perfect even for a merchant with no experience in online sales, WooCommerce, the e-commerce system designed by WordPress, the most famous platform in the world for creating blogs and websites, to Magento, one of the best ways to set up an online store with many pieces and also quite articulated. I remind you that, in the case of WordPress and Magento, we talk about CMS (content management system), i.e. platforms already partly “pre-packaged” to be populated with content and optimization systems.
Very well: let’s say that now the shop is online and you’ve verified what we’ve said so far, in your role of e-commerce manager. Now it’s time to plan an advertising strategy as well, in order to get your sales off the ground. So you will have to take care of coordinating the work of the marketing department related to the online sales project of which you are the head.
The two main cornerstones that you can check, at the website level, are the launch of targeted advertising campaigns, for example within Google and the arrangement of links in the pages of the site. Very important is also the examination of external sites that lead back to the e-commerce that you administer. the main tool provided by the most used search engine, to advertise an e-commerce site within its pages and channels and, therefore, on how to create a campaign on Google Ads.
Subsequently, when the e-commerce you manage will have acquired some authority, you can agree with the owner a strategy to sell to third parties links within the site: in this regard
Finally, use Google Search Console, the tool through which the sitemap of the site should have been sent to the search engine, to check for any errors and unsuitable sites that link to the e-commerce you manage, then correct and remove them. For a general background on advertising on the Net
Nowadays it’s very important to look for and maintain a direct contact with potential customers and those already acquired: to do this it can be useful to have social pages (for example on Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular social networks on the Net) related to the activity of e-commerce. I’ll explain in more detail in the next chapter how to get them.
You may also be required to manage a newsletter: this tool, in addition to being useful to communicate information to registered customers, can become a way to promote the company. In this regard, I suggest you to use Sendinblue, which offers all the tools to create effective marketing campaigns, including SMS and chat, with a basic plan that includes 300 free emails per day.
It’s not over yet, on the contrary, now comes the “hard work” of the e-commerce manager: the one that concerns all the practical and immediate aspects. I refer to the cataloging of products and their upload online within the shop, the drafting of descriptive cards, the addition of photos and images that best describe the goods, the management of orders, shipments, any returns and cancellations, customer service, gift codes, discounts, offers and logistics at the warehouse level, if any.
Obviously, if the volume is high enough, you’ll need a trustworthy team to take care of all these tasks, reserving their supervision.
At this point, you should have figured out how to become an ecommerce manager of an online store and, most importantly, that it is a pretty challenging job. However, by planning things and having clear goals for the shop, you should be able to successfully administer any type of business on the Net.
How to become a social commerce manager
You’ve been asked to manage an online store that sells its products via social media: at this point, what you need to know is how to become a social commerce manager.
First of all, social commerce can be defined as a more “confidential” form of commerce, which takes place mainly on social networks, blogs and forums of large trading platforms, such as eBay, Amazon and so on. In this context, buyers, in addition to finding products already available for purchase, can interact instantly with page managers or other users, who can provide feedback and useful opinions. This type of selling is increasingly meeting with the favor of digital merchants, as it helps the search for many potential new customers, since practically anyone today uses social media.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, social commerce can be an integrative part of a digital business, arising from a structured e-commerce on a website, or it can be completely independent.
If you want to become a social commerce manager for someone, start by analyzing what they intend to sell and who they are targeting: it will help you to understand which are the best channels to focus on and where to develop the commerce network.
In most cases, it should be Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg’s social networks on which it is now very easy to upload products to sell, taking advantage of their popularity. Among other things, the commercial tools of the two channels are structured to talk to each other.
Once you are entrusted to manage the Facebook and Instagram pages of a business, you will have to add the account to the Facebook Business Suite, or the designated social media manager, whom you will supervise, will have to do it.
The next step, the most important one for you, will be to structure the actual sales system, integrated on the Facebook page. You are in luck: the well-known social network provides all the necessary tools
the function that allows you to profile the real store and upload the products to be sold or synchronize them with the catalog of a possible e-commerce site.
But that’s not all: the same products can also be sold within a company’s Instagram profile, the social network for sharing photos and multimedia content.
Among the other social media on which it could be useful to establish an online presence, I would like to point out LinkedIn, indicated above all for structured companies and professionals; TikTok, a very young editorial channel that could be interesting to use to propose products dedicated to this target, and finally Twitter, to be used above all for cultural activities, newspapers or as a complement to a blog.
Thousands of contents and posts flow through social networks: therefore, in order to highlight those of the business page you manage, a sponsorship budget must be agreed with the owner of the business.
As a social commerce manager, one of your focuses should be to suggest to the social media manager the right kind of posts and sponsorships to publish, based on the sales data you have in hand. For example, there are times of the year when it’s better to invest in single posts on offers and sales, while others when it’s better to focus on the acquisition of likes on the company’s page. All this within a sales strategy that aims to maximize earnings.
That done, here comes the best part: the part related to the computation of the available products to put on sale, to logistics and shipments. This is a good idea, but it is not a good idea.
Although the above should be a summary of the tasks required of a social commerce manager, someone may also entrust you with the management of a store on a third-party platform, an affiliate program or the management of listings on classifieds sites.
Tips on how to become an eCommerce manager
If you’ve made it this far in reading and you understand how things work, you probably know that you might be cut out for the job of managing an online store: listen to these tips on how to become an ecommerce manager.
First, in order to become a professional ecommerce manager, know that having studied Business Administration, Statistics and being an expert in the digital field is almost essential. So, if you want to seriously study these topics, look for courses or masters promoted by schools or qualified institutions.Always follow the virtuous example of those who achieve tangible results
Another very important thing is to stay up to date with what’s new in the industry: for example Shopify, WordPress (and at the same time WooCommerce) and Facebook for Business offer dedicated blogs and sites where you can read about the changes taking place on the platforms. Follow the news, the economy and try to intercept what is liked and what is trendy in a specific period, always aware of the fact that, for your customers you will have to structure a solid business strategy, not only based on passing trends.