From 10M to 100M: The Ecommerce Role That Really Counts

Big Data. Is your eCommerce business using it properly?

Or more importantly, do you have the tools and resources in place to uncover the profit hiding in your data?

Can your team go beyond the limits of conventional business intelligence and use your data – both structured and unstructured – to predict where your eCommerce business could be in 12 months?

What about two years? Or five years?

Can you use these insights today to make informed business decisions that will help you scale profitably?

How Strong is Your eCommerce Team?

Find out – in our 8-question quiz – who is in the cornerstone eCommerce role at the Top 200 Online Stores and whether they’re (not) on your team too.

Take the Quiz

Data Science is the Key Differentiator You Need

The difference between 10 million in annual revenue and 100 million is more about how effectively you use big data than the data itself.

According to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), there are now major disparities in performance between a small group of technology leaders – such as Amazon, Alibaba and Flipkart – and the average eCommerce business.

“These companies differentiate themselves through their data and analytics assets, processes, and strategies.”

The Age of Analytics: Competing in a Data-Driven World (MGI, 2016)

These data-oriented eCommerce leaders future-proof their business by attracting the best analytics talent and consolidating their competitive advantage.

To compete, mid-market companies must assemble specialized teams that span data science, digital marketing and software engineering while handling the complexities of an SPA (single page application) platform.

But at what cost?

Use the Power of AI to Compete at Scale

The ability of an eCommerce team to analyze its data and translate the insights gained into profitable action is an ongoing challenge. You need a team with the right balance of cross-functional capabilities.

Data science expertise – for example – is one of the more technical skill sets required to help an eCommerce business scale profitably. But increasing demand for experienced data scientists means finding and retaining them is almost as challenging as the job itself.

But data science is no longer exclusively the domain of eComm titans. The AI revolution has leveled the playing field.

Do More With Less – Use Tadpull Pond Software

The power of AI and machine learning has enabled us to develop a revolutionary software tool now being used by some of the world’s most innovative brands.

The Tadpull Pond software helps you surface insights from your data to yield opportunities across inventory, campaigns and users.

But even with AI and machine learning on your side, it’s still a team effort.

Use Our eCommerce Team Hiring Guide

At Tadpull, we developed this free resource to help you assess the relative strengths and skills gaps in your organization.

From the highly technical – data scientist, SEO and CRO specialists – to the marketing, paid media, social and outreach roles, this template will help you develop your own strategic roadmap for talent allocation in your business.

Use this guide to compare against your own organizational structure, noting critical gaps in your current team and building a case for hiring in-house employees or partnering with an eCommerce specialist agency like Tadpull.

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Role: Data Scientist & Analyst

There is one common and foundational element required for every eCommerce team role. Everyone in the team must be comfortable interpreting and using data to drive decision-making – from both a macro standpoint – What markets should we serve? – and a micro standpoint – What ages should I target with this campaign?

While a culture of data-driven performance across the entire team is needed, it’s also vital to incorporate data scientists – specialists who assemble and analyze product and customer data, and campaign information to identify growth opportunities.

A digital marketer armed with a spreadsheet can analyze historical data to guide decisions for A/B tests and campaign creative, for example, but the real power in scaling and obtaining profitable growth lies in predicting and building models from the data – AKA data science.

Data scientists today are tapping the potential of AI to make sense of previously unwieldy data assets. Ideally, they use a software tool that acts as a data warehouse and an AI ninja – surfacing insights across subscriber, customer, website and product data.

What Does a Data Scientist & Analyst Do?

While the rest of us might gawk at the sheer volume of data that is generated by just one mid-market eCommerce business, data scientists see opportunity.

The opportunity to turn all that data into action. To see problems others haven’t seen and find solutions that others can use.

Essentially, a good data scientist has a knack for uncovering the profit hiding in your data.

• Fluent in statistics and programming, particularly Big Data languages such as Python and R
• Effective at building predictive models within data constraints and leveraging third-party data sources for enhanced efficacy
• Leverages customer and inventory data platforms to save time and budget while surfacing insights to hit growth targets and achieve a higher CLTV over the customer lifespan
• Works closely with highly technical and less technical roles to scrub, synthesize and share data for cross-channel execution

Provide Inventory and Pricing Insights

eCommerce isn’t all about marketing. It’s also about making sure you have the right products at the right time, and that those products are priced appropriately and competitively. A data scientist and analyst will provide inventory insights from Oracle NetSuite, using demand loss and price elasticity of demand as well as analytical pricing insights.

In other words, your data scientist should be able to answer questions like:

• How much should we markdown Product A for Black Friday this year compared to last?
• What products would we sell at full price (and should not be discounted)?

Campaign Optimization Analyses

A data scientist and analyst should also provide deeper insight into marketing optimization, including email, website, content, and social media marketing to identify patterns for best performance using classification techniques from machine learning.

This matters because what works for one business might not work for yours and your customer base – a data scientist can help identify what time of day you should send an email or which Facebook audiences matter most to your bottom line.

Modeling and Analysis

• What is the actual lifetime value of a customer?
• Which sales touch-points are most critical for your target audience in their journey?
• What behaviors can you predict of your customers?
• How do your customers feel about your brand?

These are all questions your data scientist can provide through customer lifetime value modeling, attribution modeling, propensity modeling, and sentiment analysis.

Product Recommendations

While it’s ultimately the responsibility of your product team to come up with new products, your data scientist makes product recommendations based on customer data and identifies emerging trends in the market and within your operations.

This can be particularly powerful when you’re looking to increase AOV (average order value) through bundles, complementary products, or small give-aways that lead to big increases in customer value perception and conversion.

Pulling Data Out of NetSuite and Other Tools

The principal role of a data scientist is to make use of data from various software apps, including NetSuite, Google Analytics, Bronto and Facebook Ads Manager.

A seasoned data scientist will use a tool like the Tadpull Pond software to save time, bring data into a single data warehouse, simplify the analytics process, and grow top-line revenue and ultimately, profit margins.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

Given the high demand for their skills, data scientists are extremely costly hires and most will be hounded by recruiters as long as they’re on your team.

Coupled with the advanced technical nature of the role, this means partnering with a dedicated eCommerce solution provider such as Tadpull is the wiser and more sustainable option.

As with an in-house hire, you work with your partner team by providing access to your data and answering contextual questions as they arise.

Role: Technical SEO Manager

Like data scientists, true SEO professionals keep a close eye on your data. However, the SEO role – particularly Technical SEO – is typically more diagnostic in its approach.

While the data scientist might build a model to predict future behavior of organic search users, the SEO specialist is more interested in:

• How our organic users reach our property – keywords, page positions, etc.
• How well our property performs in the search results – rankings, mobile performance, page speed, structured data, etc.
• How we can remove obstacles to improve our positions in the search engine results pages – or SERPs – for high value search terms.

A good Technical SEO professional draws on a combination of skills and experience to build an accurate diagnostic snapshot of your data. An in-depth knowledge of search engine crawler behavior (such as Google’s algorithm), website architecture and code is a prerequisite for every Technical SEO Manager.

A nuanced understanding of SEO within the context of NetSuite is especially advantageous. NetSuite platforms are built on top of an SPA framework, and additional tools and workarounds are needed to render web pages in Google-bot friendly form.

Although potentially complex and costly, winning the fight for top organic listings on listings SERPs is worth the investment:

• The #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average click-through-rate of 31.7%
• The #1 organic result is also 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in the #10 spot

What Does a Technical SEO Manager Do?

Your Technical SEO specialist needs to be an expert in on-page SEO, technical optimization, and data analytics.

• Identifies link-building opportunities and blends cross-channel efforts from paid media to influencers – getting lift by knowing your users’ aspirations and afflictions
• Communicates effectively with software engineers and manages development efforts to optimize your site’s performance
• Builds and manages a portfolio of high-performing long-tail keywords with consistent growth and corresponding revenue
• Catches technical errors in real-time and performs ongoing risk-mitigation for key web pages
• Fluent in standard tools including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush and Ahrefs

Run Extensive Diagnostics

A Technical SEO specialist uses prerender.io page generator tools in addition to building out and monitoring XML Sitemap and Robots.txt files. These resources guide Google algorithms through the process of indexing, crawling and cataloging your site.

Develop Evergreen Content Ideas

The SEO specialist should account for your users’ needs and use analytics software to identify the right keywords, plan a strategy to rank for those keywords, and identify evergreen content opportunities to build out content onsite and with other channels such as YouTube.

Conduct Competitor Analysis

Part of building a successful SEO strategy involves identifying what your competitors are doing well – and what they aren’t doing so well. With the help of advanced competitor analytics software, a good SEO specialist will recognise gaps and help you establish a content framework that unearths opportunities for improved rankings against your competitors.

Maintain Link Profile Detox

Your Technical SEO specialist will maintain a close watch on the health of your link profile. This includes clearing toxic links and avoiding any link-based penalties that could affect your rankings.

Use Google Analytics and Search Console

The best Technical SEO strategists know Google Analytics and Search Console inside and out – they can provide actionable reports and fix issues in real-time to increase organic rankings on a daily basis.

Stay Abreast of Google Penalties and Algorithm Updates

The world of Technical SEO is in a state of almost continual flux as Google works to improve search result relevance with emerging features like voice search and rich snippets. A Technical SEO Manager needs to keep up with every mutation and variation in the algorithms.

Fix eCommerce Platform SEO Issues

Every eCommerce platform has different quirks that affect SEO rankings, and NetSuite is no exception. Your Technical SEO specialist will understand how the NetSuite tech stack behaves and how to best optimize for improved rankings across category, product and blog pages.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

Many eCommerce leaders consider Technical SEO to be their most successful strategy, and understand that hiring the right technical SEO expert is worth the wait.

The Technical SEO role is a hybrid of content strategist that’s fluent with code, highly competent in analytics, and effective at managing developers. Rather than waiting for a Technical SEO unicorn with all these requisite skills to materialize, most mid-market eCommerce businesses can avoid losing ground to their competitors by engaging a partner with expertise in their particular eCommerce and ERP platform.

Role: Paid Media Manager

While organic search remains a critical channel, online advertising accounts for about 97% of Google’s total revenue, and paid search ads are in the top three most influential generators of website conversions.

Interestingly, while marketers may know the difference between paid search and organic search listings, 46% of people can’t distinguish between organic paid ads on the SERPs. So your paid search advertising strategy is just as important as your SEO strategy.

Historically, a Paid Media Manager role centered around bidding for keywords and ad space, but today, with the rise of Machine Learning and advanced AI-enhanced platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the need for a highly technical and creative paid media role has emerged.

To achieve scale and a healthy blended Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), the paid media manager works with SEO specialist/s to monitor keyword shifts and identify opportunity gaps within the paid search landscape. But just as importantly. they also need to collaborate closely with the data scientists – putting high Customer LifeTime Value (CLTV) segments to work, building lookalike audiences, and relentlessly testing creative across ad sets.

What Does a Paid Media Manager Do?

Your Paid Media Manager must perform across multiple platforms to scale and capture new markets.

• Set targets and establish frameworks to achieve blended ROAS and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) targets across major platforms
• Leverage customer, inventory, and pixel data to build sophisticated (high CLTV, high intent to purchase, etc.) customer segments and audiences
• Perform A/B tests at scale, optimizing for each phase of the customer journey funnel while mitigating wasted spend
• Keep up with ongoing platform trends and tools, notifying leadership as strategic shifts are needed

Define Target Goals

Your Paid Media Manager works closely with the leadership team to establish key growth goals, mapping results back to individual platform targets for ROAS, CAC and purchase conversions. This includes applying strategic frameworks for broad prospect, remarketing, and re-engagement campaigns to keep spend in alignment with quarterly targets.

Leverage Data Sets to Drive Campaign ROI

This includes using past purchaser data from high CLTV segments, email subscriber data, and predictive customer behavior (remember our data scientists!) to build lookalike audiences, guiding the Facebook and Google algorithms to find highest value prospects/customers.

Build Out and Manage Tracking

The Facebook Pixel behaves differently than the Google Analytics (GA) tracking tag – your Paid Media Manager will audit the tech stack, troubleshoot issues, build out additional tracking and work closely with developers through tag management tools including Google Tag Manager and/or hard coding solutions.

Run Ongoing A/B Tests and Ad Set/Group Experiments

The Paid Media Manager typically coordinates with the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) role. Finding qualified leads (those highly likely to convert) means testing hundreds of versions of ad types, creative, and targeting while ensuring landing pages effectively move users through the purchasing funnel.

Proficient Across Major Ad Platforms

In-demand Paid Media Managers are adept at all ad platforms across paid search and paid social media, including Google Ads and Publisher, Facebook Ads Manager (including Instagram), Amazon Seller Central, and third-party campaign management tools.

It’s a massive hill to climb to compete with established eCommerce brands like Amazon, but it’s a challenge a good Paid Media Manager will relish.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

While this role can be hired in-house, there are a few notable considerations:

• Partner media buyers can access massive data sets across multiple client accounts, which means they can apply insights from one client to another, conserving time and budget.
• Media buyers must continuously educate themselves about platform shifts and innovation trends (it’s no longer just auction bidding). An in-house hire should include provision for continuing education and professional development.
• Experienced paid media buyers have the skin in the game required to actually achieve growth at scale. In-house buyers can often work in silos, missing crucial strategic oversight in their day-to-day campaign management. In contrast, a solid partner will go the extra mile just to keep your business, collaborating effectively with your team to meet quarterly growth targets.

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Role: Conversion Rate Optimization & UX Specialist

While the Paid Media Manager plays a crucial role in running segmented campaigns to drive high-value traffic at the top of the funnel, the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and UX (User eXperience) Specialist has an equally important job: moving prospects to the next phase of the conversion funnel – subscribe to the email list, add to cart, complete purchase, and so on.

Of all the ways we can influence online revenue, there are four main levers we can use to achieve higher revenue goals:

1. Increasing traffic
2. Increasing conversion rates
3. Increasing average order values
4. Increasing the frequency with which customers purchase from you

What Does a CRO/UX Specialist Do?

The CRO/UX Specialist concentrates on the last three levers used to influence online revenue – by testing and scaling onsite copy, imagery, features and value propositions to boost conversion rates and transaction sizes.

• Excellent problem solver with extensive knowledge of analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel
• Collects both qualitative and quantitative data, forms scientific hypotheses based on the results, and conducts ongoing A/B or multivariate testing
• Designs, implements and evaluates A/B or multivariate tests and executes on the results
• Trained in CSS, HTML and Javascript and collaborates with your software engineers to set up tests on your website
• Works within best practice web design principles and writes copy that converts effectively

Based on your users’ behavioral data, CRO/UX experts should be able to identify gaps in the experience that potentially lead to lost revenue, identify why this is happening (from the customer POV) and prioritize appropriate testing solutions.

Research and Data Analytics

As with other roles, improving website conversions demands a deep dive into your analytics to identify improvement opportunities throughout each phase of the purchasing funnel. Your CRO/UX specialist expertly wields Google Analytics and works with your data science team to leverage customer behavioral trends as a reference point for experimentation.

Qualitative Data Collection

Beyond analyzing quantitative data, a CRO/UX specialist relies on other research methods to determine why your website is underperforming – this entails gathering direct feedback from users and customers. CRO specialists regularly capture qualitative data by conducting user tests, analyzing visitor recordings and scroll/heat maps, and interviewing customers and customer support teams to identify friction spots in the shopping experience.

A/B and Multivariate Testing

An expert CRO/UX Specialist:

• Conducts comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research
• Creates an actionable experimentation roadmap
• Performs ongoing A/B and multivariate tests based on data

Their ability to understand statistical thresholds and logarithmic scale is a foundational skill for effective experimentation.

Web Development

CRO/UX Specialists should have a knowledge base in basic web languages like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and more. They should have experience in wireframing and drafting test variants on your website. Like the media manager and SEO specialist, a comprehensive understanding of tracking code and pixels is important given the need to diagnose tracking issues on product and checkout pages.

Web Design and Content Creation

Top CRO/UX Specialists are rare considering they must be masters of code as well as web design and content development, including copywriting. They must also work closely with content managers to pinpoint high performance messaging and adapt assets and copy to align with your brand’s voice and tone.

Optimizing your website for better conversions can yield stellar results, so securing the right person to help you execute on these initiatives is crucial to achieving higher revenue.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

Whether you opt for an in-house CRO team or turn to an outside partner, there are three key considerations:

• Outsourcing CRO is a great option if you don’t have internal resources in place to consistently audit your data, test variants, evaluate results, and execute across your website to increase conversions. It’s a time-intensive role involving a proper strategy to ensure your efforts are prioritized for big revenue improvements over time.
• Reliable CRO experts can be difficult to source and many entry-level staff require advanced and ongoing technical training across A/B testing tools.
• The CRO Specialist works very closely with the paid media team and outsourcing these two roles together can help optimize the budget for NetSuite eCommerce businesses.

Whichever route you choose, you’ll want to have a clear understanding of your current website traffic, as this will influence the specialist’s ability to run tests. If you’re still in an early phase with relatively low traffic and lower overall conversions, consider keeping CRO activities inhouse until you attract enough traffic to give an outside partner a viable data set they can use to really scale up.

Role: Content Marketing & Email Specialist

While CRO focuses on conversion rate, the Content Marketing & Email Specialist is typically busy behind the scenes, often writing, designing, and managing email marketing at scale. Without this content engine, the CRO would have very few variables to test effectively.

Investing in content marketing clearly pays off. Content and email marketing are among the most effective marketing channels in terms of ROI and work best when combined with technical SEO.

• Email marketing delivers a 4,400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent
• Shoppers spend 138% more when marketed to through email, compared to those who don’t receive email offers
• Email is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined

Owned media, including email and content, isn’t just a lucrative way to capture quick sales. Many eCommerce companies are finding that their email subscriber and customer volumes even impact their valuations. A sizable, quality list can closely correlate with ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), making the content marketer’s role immensely valuable to your business.

What Does a Content Marketing & Email Specialist Do?

Your Content Marketing & Email Specialist:

• Gathers customer data and sign-ups
• Collaborates with the data science team to build high-value customer profiles and segments
• Develops email and web content that converts customers in the purchasing journey funnel

The modern Content Marketer brings a crucial combination of cross-functional skillsets straddling both the creative and analytical.

• Solid grasp of statistics and analytics and the strategic know-how to build high-value datasets alongside the data science team
• Develops tactical copy and visual content in conjunction with Paid Media, SEO and CRO roles
• Manages email marketing platforms, troubleshooting implementation and campaign data challenges with ERP and database integrations
• Approaches content strategy and campaign planning with a scientific mindset, running A/B tests (from website modals to email subject lines) at scale

Your Content Marketing & Email Specialist is a skilled copywriter and adept at producing engaging content. But the role also needs to understand the data and insights provided by the data science and CRO/UX roles.

Audience Segmentation

Once again, alignment with the data science team is needed to capture critical customer data and build highly-segmented audiences based on browsing and buyer behavior. If your email marketing specialist is sending out the same message to all customers rather than segmenting high-CLTV vs. low-CLTV, frequent purchaser vs. infrequent purchaser, your eCommerce brand is likely missing out on significant conversion opportunities.

Establish Subscription Targets and Lead Capture Frameworks

Less experienced marketers might roll the dice and just add a pop-up on the website but sophisticated teams work to build quality leads (and more importantly, datasets) at the top of the funnel. This can involve interactive quizzes, segmented forms and A/B testing promotions for list capture and conversion opportunities, from subscriber to first-time customer.

Technical Proficiency in Email Marketing Platforms

This requires working knowledge of top ESPs (Email Service Providers) and tracking code, list health and segmentation, email copywriting, promotional strategy, triggering, automation and drip campaigns, dynamic content, and data analytics. This role is becoming increasingly technical due to the dynamic nature of eCommerce campaigns (building in API calls to the ERP platform for current inventory quantities, customer browsing behavior, add to cart data, etc.)

Work with SEO/Media Buyer/CRO to Create High Conversion Content

An experienced content marketer knows that content costs much less (up to 62% less) than traditional marketing, but generates nearly three times the leads. The paid media buyer can get a high-quality lead through the door but the content marketer has to “walk them through the house” and convince them to purchase. This role can involve copywriting but it also requires a technical eye for cart and checkout changes, design updates for engagement improvements and working with the CRO to run A/B tests at scale on high-value pages.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

While some eCommerce brands prefer to keep email marketing roles in-house, there are a few factors to consider.

• In-house content teams are often overburdened and many high-value projects are scrapped throughout the year to keep up with demand – but they do have live access to user-generated content and inside news (contributing to brand shares).
• Content marketers often come from a writing or graphic design background – good for visual appeal, but potentially inexperienced in terms of technical ability to build a profitable funnel, leveraging big data in each phase of the journey.

If a company sale or acquisition is the long-term goal, a trusted partner can work with you to establish methods for raising the value of your subscriber and customer lists, positively impacting the valuation – you could hire strategic support, leaving the campaign management to your in-house team.

Role: Social Media Manager & Outreach Specialist

Some marketers might feel organic social is a losing game but online consumers still spend almost 2.5 hours on social networks and social messaging every day.

This presents brands with a significant opportunity to connect with new prospects but performance is highly-reliant on leveraging others’ audiences and using effective media and post types (Instagram Stories, for example) to reach your users.

With Facebook significantly reducing your organic views, the need for a data-savvy and strategic social manager is becoming increasingly important in 2020’s scroll on culture.

What Does a Social Media Manager & Outreach Specialist Do?

While a talented Content Marketer can put the building blocks in place, a Social Media Manager & Outreach Specialist surveys the landscape for high-value influencers and content partners that can drive high-quality traffic to the target page.

• Creative – with an eye for design but also technically savvy to bridge the gap between customer data collection and growing organic reach
• Authentic – can sell and pitch without sounding spammy (a rare talent), building long-term relationships with influencers, celebrities and partners
• Empathic – nails the brand’s tone of voice in high-risk arenas like Facebook and Instagram with happy/unhappy customers
• Astute – fluent in platform analytics and behavioral trends – Pinterest users behave differently than Instagram users – establishing strategies for referral growth, affiliate plays, and organic share experimentation

To achieve organic lift, your social and outreach hire or partner must perform across a spectrum of skill sets.

Drive Engagement

Use customer data and audience insights tools to drive UGC (User-Generated Content) and referral engagement across social platforms. Depending on your audience and your customer segments, your social and outreach role might test/promote contests, giveaways, and reward shares. Remember, shares from a brand itself are low-reach, shares from organic friends and followers are high-reach and good in terms of advocacy and social proof.

Partnership Outreach

Conduct extensive research on complementary partners and influencers to vett partnership and co-branding opportunities. This includes in-depth analytics vetting to avoid wasted sponsorship spend and the ability to craft a win-win pitch with a high-return rate. It can also involve building out and managing an affiliate network to tap into content niches not available in the typical PR landscape.

Develop Backlink Strategy

Work with the Technical SEO Manager and Content Marketing Specialist to craft an expansive backlink strategy, filling in keyword gaps and using long-form content plays to build authority around seeded topics. The outreach role should maintain a shared responsibility for reaching quarterly organic growth goals given gaining backlinks from a high-quality domain is a critical piece of the strategy.

Ongoing Reputation Management

Implement key promotions and pushes, manage negative comments, and handle customer support requests through Messenger. Involves leveraging a suite of tools for video creation, brand mentions, post scheduling, etc.

Solution: New Hire or Outsource?

While outsourcing social management and outreach is an option, there are a few important considerations.

• Your brand’s tone of voice can be difficult to capture for third-parties unfamiliar with your internal culture
• Outreach often works best coming from a real person’s email address and brand-based email addresses tend to be more trustworthy
• A solid SEO partner can help guide content outreach and analytics vetting for entry-level social marketers needing strategic support – consider providing the role with outside help

Next Steps

Fundamental business principles remain the same despite the changing digital landscape:

• Provide a great brand and product experience
• Build a loyal customer base
• Set challenging but achievable growth targets

While these principles remain, the methods and roles needed to achieve them are where the real shift is rapidly taking place.‍

Providing a great brand and product experience means leveraging machine learning and AI to provide highly personalized organic and paid content.

Key Resources: Data Scientist & Analyst, Technical SEO Manager, Paid Media Manager

Building a loyal customer base means relying on customer data for demand planning and content/product creation strategy, along with code changes for streamlined shopping/fast shipping.

Key Resources: CRO & UX Specialist, Content Marketing & Email Specialist

Establishing growth targets means having a strategic framework and dynamic reporting structure that spans all of the digital channels, with concrete targets and capable managers behind them.

Key Resources: Leverage the power of Tadpull Pond software, a unique tool built for NetSuite that transforms how you manage your reporting and big data challenges.

Hire or Outsource? How to Decide

Deciding which roles to fill in-house and what to outsource to a partner such as Tadpull can seem overwhelming, so we’ve tried to make the task less daunting by summarizing the relative importance of outsourcing each role based on their specific contribution to your typical mid-market eCommerce business.

• Data Scientist & Analyst – Outsource Consideration: Mandatory
• Technical SEO Manager – Outsource Consideration: High
• Paid Media Manager – Outsource Consideration: High
• Conversion Rate Optimization & UX Specialist – Outsource Consideration: Medium
• Content Marketing & Email Specialist – Outsource Consideration: Medium to Low
• Social Media Manager & Outreach Specialist – Outsource Consideration: Low

Who Is Actually Critical to eCommerce Success?

Find out – with this 8 question quiz – who is in the cornerstone eCommerce role at Taobao, Rakuten, Etsy and Walmart, their role description and whether they’re (not) on your team too.

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