Ecommerce Executive
An Ecommerce Executive looks after the day-to-day running of a company's online shop - making sure products are listed correctly, prices and promotions are live, pages load and convert, and sales are tracked. They usually sit in a retail, brand or agency marketing team and work closely with buying, merchandising, digital marketing, customer service and whoever builds the website. It's a hands-on, operational job: a lot of time is spent inside the ecommerce platform itself and in analytics and spreadsheets.
Approximate graduate salary
Typically around GBP 24,000-30,000 to start, though this varies widely - London and larger retailers or agencies sit at the upper end and above, smaller regional businesses often below. Bonuses linked to online sales targets are common in retail but not universal.
What you'd actually do
- Uploading and tidying product listings in the CMS (content management system - the admin area behind the website): titles, descriptions, images, sizes, stock status, categories and tags
- Setting up and checking promotions and campaigns - discount codes, sale pricing, banners on the homepage and landing pages - and making sure they go live and come down on time
- Pulling and reviewing sales and traffic data in Google Analytics (GA4) or a similar tool, then reporting on what sold, which pages converted and where visitors dropped out of the checkout
- Merchandising category pages - deciding what order products appear in, pushing bestsellers or new lines up the page, and checking on-site search returns sensible results
- Checking the site for faults: broken links, wrong prices, images that haven't loaded, something that looks wrong on mobile - and logging these with developers or the platform's support team
- Working with the marketing side on product feeds and listings for paid search, email, affiliates and marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, where the company sells there
- Sitting in weekly trading meetings where the team reviews sales versus target and agrees what to promote next
How graduates get in
- Direct entry into a junior ecommerce, digital or trading role - this is the most common route. Many jobs are advertised as Ecommerce Assistant or Ecommerce Coordinator first, then Executive after a year or so
- Placement years and internships in retail, fashion, FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) or agency environments - a 12-month industrial placement in an ecommerce or digital marketing team is a strong way in
- Graduate schemes at larger retailers and consumer brands, usually badged as retail, commercial, digital or marketing schemes with an ecommerce rotation rather than a dedicated 'ecommerce scheme'
- Sideways moves from customer service, store management, buying admin or warehouse/operations roles within a retailer - common and well-regarded, because you already understand the products and the stock systems
- Agency entry, starting in paid search, SEO or account management at a digital agency and specialising in ecommerce clients
- Self-taught routes: running your own Shopify, Etsy, eBay or Amazon store, or a side project with real traffic, genuinely counts as evidence and is often enough to get an interview
What employers ask for
- A degree is usual but the subject rarely matters much. Business, marketing, economics and digital media are common; so are completely unrelated subjects. Some employers hire without a degree if you have platform experience
- Most adverts ask for a 2:2 or 2:1, and plenty don't specify a classification at all - this is not a sector with heavy grade screening
- Comfort with spreadsheets is near-universal: expect to be asked about Excel or Google Sheets, and sometimes tested on it
- Some exposure to an ecommerce platform (Shopify, Magento/Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce) or to Amazon Seller/Vendor Central is often asked for - but employers will usually accept a personal project or placement rather than full-time experience
- Free certifications such as Google Analytics and Google Ads help at application stage; no chartered or licensed qualification exists for this role
- Attention to detail is often explicitly tested, because a typo in a price or a wrongly tagged product has immediate commercial consequences
Skills that matter
Spreadsheet work (VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, pivot tables, filtering large product files)
Product data, stock files and sales reports arrive as big messy exports that you have to clean, cross-reference and summarise before anyone can make a decision.
Reading web analytics
You need to explain not just that sales fell, but whether traffic dropped, conversion dropped or a particular device or page broke.
Meticulous accuracy with product data
A wrong price, a missing size or a product tagged into the wrong category is live to customers within minutes and costs money or triggers refunds.
Commercial judgement about what to promote
Merchandising decisions - what sits at the top of a category page, what goes in the sale - directly affect margin, not just revenue, so you need to think about profit and stock levels, not just clicks.
Basic understanding of SEO and product feeds
How you write a product title and description affects both search rankings and whether the item shows correctly in Google Shopping or on marketplaces.
Chasing and coordinating other people
You rarely build anything yourself - you rely on developers, photographers, copywriters and the buying team, and the launch date depends on you keeping all of them moving.
Where it leads
Ecommerce Assistant or Coordinator into Ecommerce Executive - often within a year, though some graduates start directly at Executive level
Senior Ecommerce Executive or a specialism: online merchandising, trading, marketplaces, CRO (conversion rate optimisation - testing changes to the site to improve the percentage of visitors who buy), or digital marketing. Typically a couple of years in, but it varies a lot by company size
Ecommerce Manager or Trading Manager, owning the online sales target, a budget and sometimes one or two junior staff. Timelines vary widely - faster at small businesses where you're the only ecommerce person, slower in large structured teams
Head of Ecommerce or Head of Digital, and in larger organisations Ecommerce Director or Chief Digital Officer. This is a long route and depends heavily on company size and sector
Common sideways exits: moving to an ecommerce platform or agency as a consultant or account manager, moving into product management for a retail website, or starting your own online business - the skills transfer well in both directions
What people get wrong
“It's a creative marketing job about campaigns and social media.”
Most of the week is operational and data-heavy - product uploads, stock checks, spreadsheets and trading reports. Creative work is usually done by a separate content, design or social team, and you brief them rather than do it.
“You need to be able to code.”
Almost all the work happens through admin interfaces and spreadsheets. Basic familiarity with HTML or how a website is structured is useful for diagnosing problems, but developers handle the actual build; employers rarely test coding.
“The job is about getting more visitors to the site.”
Driving traffic is largely the paid search, SEO and email team's job. The Ecommerce Executive is usually judged on what happens once people arrive - conversion, average order value, returns and margin.
“It's a desk job with predictable hours.”
Trading is tied to the retail calendar. Black Friday, Christmas, sale launches and new-season drops mean concentrated pressure, early starts for campaign go-lives and occasional weekend or evening checks when something breaks on the site.
Where this varies
The job differs a lot by employer type. At a small or mid-sized retailer you may be the only ecommerce person, doing everything from product uploads to email campaigns to answering customer queries. At a large retailer the role is narrow and specialised - you might only do online merchandising, or only marketplaces. In a B2B or manufacturing business the site may be a catalogue with quote requests rather than a checkout, so the work leans towards product data and lead tracking. At a digital agency you work across several clients' stores and the emphasis shifts to reporting and client communication. Sector matters too: fashion ecommerce is fast-moving with constant new product and high returns; grocery, electronics and B2B are slower-cycle but more complex on pricing and stock.
General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.