#PandaPounds: Ecommerce team challenges in 2018

Jun 27, 2018 3:53:09 PM

What challenges do ecommerce teams expect to face this year? In January, we released our annual ecommerce salary survey questionnaire and the full results were revealed in April!

For the first time ever, we decided to ask ecommerce professionals what they felt were the big challenges for their ecommerce team this year. So, let’s have a look at the challenges and see what insights we can discover!

If you want do see the full insights from our questionnaire, download a free copy of our 2018 ecommerce salary survey & insights report!

An overview of ecommerce team challenges We asked our respondents to select from a number of potential ecommerce team challenges and select all that apply to them! (This is why totals do not equal 100%.)

Here’s a quick glance of their responses overall…

 

Customer Acquisition

Ecommerce professionals believe customer acquisition is the biggest challenge facing ecommerce teams. 51% believe that mastering customer acquisition will be important to them – considering competition is high across the industry, we’re not surprised ecommerce teams want to secure new customers!

36% of the respondents who selected this option work within ecommerce management, online trading and merchandising, while 25% work within digital marketing. It isn’t too much of a shock to see respondents within these ecommerce specialisms prioritising the challenge of customer acquisition!

Staff Retention – keeping the team engaged and valued

Staff retention is another hot topic across ecommerce teams. With one of the most common reasons for leaving an ecommerce job being a lack of essentials (no progression, not feeling valued etc.), it seems management teams know that engaging their employees should be high on the priority list!

So, 48% of our respondents see staff retention as an overall ecommerce team challenge. Of this figure, 48% state they are manager or senior manager when it comes to their seniority. Direct management deal with teams and employees the most, so it isn’t surprising for them to see how important staff retention is. It’s definitely a challenge that shouldn’t be ignored.

Recruitment – hiring the right people

If only there was a recruitment agency that specialises in ecommerce

Jokes aside, this is another big challenge according to our respondents with 42% of our respondents selecting it. Like the challenge of staff retention, it highlights the importance of the people within ecommerce teams and hiring someone who fits within the culture is important.

58% of those who specified hiring the right people as a challenge this year fall into manager, senior manger and head of seniority levels. These respondents are likely very involved in the hiring process, and they not only want the right culture fit but they understand that skilled professionals are in high demand!

What is surprising is that only 12% of those who selected this as an ecommerce team challenge fall within assistant to junior executive seniority levels. While you could say they have no need for concern if they’re not as involved in the process, should a focus not be put on determining culture fit across the team?

As staff retention was so high up, could hiring managers be doing more in the recruitment process to involve the whole team and hire the right fit?

What are your ecommerce team challenges?

We would love to hear what other challenges ecommerce professionals expect to face this year! Comment below or contact the pandas today…we would be more than happy to chat about all things ecommerce!

What do you think?

Share your thoughts on this post - whether you agree, disagree or have your own insight to share, we want to hear from you!

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