Digital Ecommerce interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Tell me about a project where you owned a measurable e-commerce outcome — CVR, AOV, CAC, repeat rate.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you have worked on.
4. Why DTC / digital ecommerce — versus brand marketing, platform PM, or retail buying?
5. Why this category — apparel vs beauty vs consumables vs home?
6. Why the firm?
7. Walk me through the firm's product, funnel, and unit economics in your own words.
8. How does the digital-ecommerce function actually drive value at a DTC brand?

Technical concepts to master

• Unit economics + cohort discipline

  CAC + blended CAC · Contribution margin after marketing · Payback period + LTV/CAC · Cohort retention curve · RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary)

• Paid acquisition + creative engine + MMM

  Blended MER vs platform ROAS · Creative volume as the binding constraint · Incrementality testing + geo holdouts · MMM (Media Mix Modeling)

• Onsite CRO + merchandising + AOV

  CVR by step (landing → PDP → ATC → checkout → purchase) · PDP (product detail page) anatomy · Checkout flow + express pay + guest checkout · AOV mechanics — bundles, free-shipping threshold, gift-with-purchase · Hypothesis-driven A/B + primary + guardrail

• Retention + lifecycle + subscription

  Lifecycle flow stack · Subscription mechanics + churn · Loyalty + referral programmes · Win-back + reactivation · First-party data + zero-party data

Practical drills

• the firm reports: last quarter blended CAC was $48, AOV $72, gross margin 55%, fulfilment + payments $9 / order, ad spend $1.2M / month. This quarter: blended CAC $60, AOV $70, gross margin 53%, fulfilment + payments $9.50, ad spend $1.5M / month. Walk through the diagnosis + the first three moves.
• Site CVR has flatlined at 2.1% for two quarters; mobile is 1.6%, desktop 3.4%. AOV is $75. Walk through a 90-day plan to push CVR to 2.8% without sacrificing AOV or contribution margin.
• the firm's 12-month repeat purchase rate is 22% and we want to get it to 35% in 12 months. Category is consumables-adjacent (replenishment exists but is not subscription-default). Walk through your plan + the year-1 forecast.

Smart-question anchors

• Unit economics + cohort posture — disclosed payback, contribution-margin trajectory, growth-vs-profit positioning
• Paid mix + creative engine — channel split, creative volume, in-house studio vs agency, MMM / incrementality maturity
• Onsite + funnel ownership — who owns the site, A/B cadence, merchandising + CRO team shape
• Retention + lifecycle + subscription — flow stack, subscription product if any, owned-channel revenue share
• Tech stack + data — commerce platform, attribution / MMM tooling, first-party + zero-party data programme

Sourced from

Andrew Faris / Common Thread Collective — DTC growth + unit-economic operating framework · Baymard Institute — e-commerce UX + CRO research benchmarks · Recharge + Klaviyo + Yotpo — lifecycle + retention + subscription playbooks · Eric Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo — post-iOS-14 attribution + paid-acquisition realities · DTC operator interview banks (RocketBlocks, Exponent commerce track, practitioner Substacks) · ICONIQ + a16z + Bain — DTC + consumer-retail benchmark surveys