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 commerce outcome — site comp, CVR, AOV, BOPIS attach.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you have worked on.
4. Why specialty-retail digital ecommerce — versus native DTC, marketplace PM, or pure brand marketing?
5. Why this category — apparel vs beauty vs outdoor vs home vs sporting goods?
6. Why the firm?
7. Walk me through the firm's site, funnel, and omni offer in your own words.
8. How does the digital-ecommerce function actually drive value at a specialty retailer?

Technical concepts to master

• Digital funnel + KPIs — comp, CVR, AOV, omni

  Site comp = Traffic × CVR × AOV · Digital penetration + the omni overlay · Blended MER vs platform ROAS (post-ATT) · Loyalty + first-party-data flywheel · Cohort + repeat-rate read

• Onsite search + browse + PDP — the multi-vendor funnel

  Onsite search anatomy · Category browse + faceted navigation · PDP (product detail page) anatomy for multi-vendor · Checkout flow + wallets + guest checkout · Hypothesis-driven A/B + primary + guardrail

• Omni-channel — BOPIS, ship-from-store, endless aisle

  BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick up In Store) · Ship-from-store · Endless aisle · OMS + inventory visibility · Same-day + accelerated delivery

• Digital merchandising + personalisation + lifecycle

  Digital merchandising calendar · Personalisation (logged-in + behavioural) · Lifecycle flow stack · Loyalty + member-tier mechanics · First-party + zero-party data

Practical drills

• the firm reports last quarter: digital revenue $120M, sessions 18M, orders 540K, AOV $222, vs LY $113M / 16.5M / 500K / $226. This quarter site comp is flat — digital revenue $115M, sessions 18.2M, orders 480K, AOV $239, vs LY $115M / 16.8M / 510K / $225. Walk through the diagnosis and the first three moves.
• Search drives 15% of sessions at 4.5% CVR; browse drives 60% of sessions at 2.3% CVR; overall site CVR is 2.6%. Walk through a 90-day plan to push search to 5.5% and browse to 2.8% without sacrificing AOV.
• the firm's BOPIS attach is 18% of digital orders; we want it to 30% in 12 months. The fleet is 350 stores, digital revenue is $400M / year, AOV $220, contribution margin per digital order is $32, average shipping cost is $9 / order. Walk through the plan + the year-1 comp + margin math.

Smart-question anchors

• Site-comp + digital-penetration trajectory — disclosed direction + composition + binding constraint
• Omni roadmap — BOPIS attach, ship-from-store share, same-day, endless-aisle adoption
• Onsite craft + tech stack — search, personalisation, OMS, A/B platform, redesign cadence
• Merchant-digital seam — calendar partnership, digital seat at line reviews, joint KPIs
• Loyalty + member share — member share of digital revenue, repeat-rate trajectory, lifecycle maturity

Sourced from

Baymard Institute — e-commerce UX + checkout + onsite-search research · National Retail Federation (NRF) + Retail Dive + RIS News — specialty + omni-channel coverage · McKinsey + Bain + Deloitte — specialty retail digital + omni reports · Eric Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo — post-ATT attribution + paid-acquisition realities · Specialty retail digital operator interview banks (Exponent commerce track, RocketBlocks, practitioner Substacks) · Klaviyo + Bloomreach + Algolia — onsite search + personalisation + lifecycle vendor playbooks