San Diego Marketing Jobs: Ecwid seeks a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Manager (Encinitas, CA 92024)

Installing Ecwid takes two minutes: After inserting a few lines of code, your online store instantaneously appears. Immediately, your customers can check out securely right from your page without being redirected elsewhere. Behind the scenes, the Ecwid engine completes all transactions on Amazon EC2 servers.

When it was described to me, the first thing I thought about was selling an information product about recruiting on my website, and I was assured that such as thing would be a breeze. Plus, Ecwid-enabled storefronts are automatically responsive, so selling on a mobile device is automatic.

And unlike Square, Ecwid automatically updates the seller’s catalog to reflect the inventory drawdown so that items are not double sold elsewhere in the system. It’s quite a phenomenal solution that allows a small business to very quickly sell anywhere, anytime, on any device with minimal investment.

According to Ecwid President, Jim O’Hara, “Ecwid is the Number 1 shopping cart on Facebook, and we have a global partnership with PayPal. With 500,000 merchants in 175 countries, we’re leading the way for small businesses to do business worldwide. Ecwid is ideal for people who want to sell anywhere, anytime … online, at events, at car shows, at farmer’s markets, or wherever there’s demand.”

O’Hara continues, “It costs these users nothing to get started, and users only move from freemium to paid when they sell more than 10 SKU’s online. Naturally, Ecwid’s paid model offers more tools and more SKUs. We have some users who only sell $5000 per year, while others exceed $1 million through our solution. Our real sweet spot as a business is doing $250,000-$750,000 online.”

Worldwide, there are 400 million websites forecasted by 2016, not counting Facebook pages and blogs. Ecwid is available in 45 languages and 175 countries. Plus it has a vast network of a couple thousand agencies, IT consultants, and designers who refer Ecwid to their clients.

According to O’Hara, “60% of our business is international, and we are a leader in mobile ecommerce. Mobile is where most of the shopping journeys start, and it is a massive growth opportunity. We just did a deal with PayPal that enables people to sign up for PayPal Here through Ecwid, which effectively turns an iPhone into a turn-key POS system. This means you can sell what you have through Ecwid anywhere you are — at an event, car show, farmer’s market, etc. — just like you can on Square.

“The difference, however, is that Ecwid synchronizes your catalog and inventory in real time. Imagine having your whole product catalog available at your fingertips 24/7. For small businesses wanting to sell online, that’s huge. Ecwid covers physical point-of-sale, mobile selling, and online selling all syncing in real-time. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of that.”

Although this is a new position, the role has been open for approximately 3 months. Ecwid has interviewed a number of sharp local (San Diego) candidates. The firm extended only one offer, which was declined by the candidate on the grounds that Encinitas was too far from her home. The search is now national, although strong preference will be given to local candidates.

The job itself involves managing the Ecwid’s online customer web experience, enhancing web usability and optimizing conversion rate. Such roles are all about selling more stuff, to more people, more often, for more money. Easy to say. Hard to do. It takes a business-oriented marketer who lives by the 80/20 rule, and can get things done cheaply and effectively by understanding which levers drive results.

Little hinges swing big doors.

Every job post should revolve around one BIG IDEA, and the big idea here is that each month, Ecwid gets hundreds of thousands of visitors to its site. Visitors are encouraged to sign up for Ecwid on a free trial, and then free trial users must be converted later to paid users. That’s how the company makes money.

1. The number of new free trial users; and
2. The number of free trial users who convert to paid usage of the tool.

There are a bazillion ways to get customers to convert at a higher rate, including: Changing the way customers are billed; Making the product extremely easy to use so that customers derive tons of value from it during their free trial; or perhaps Ecwid’s customer service will “wow” free trial users to the point that they will convert to paid.

My point is that not only do free trial users need to see extraordinary benefit in Ecwid’s solution, but they need to sense the value in doing much more on top of the platform. Most candidates understand how to drive free sign ups. But how does one move the relationship beyond that?

There are a million great marketing books out there (I own nearly 200), but what I’m looking for in this candidate isn’t necessarily taught in books. I’m looking for someone who can “scheme” their way to success. To “scheme” is to develop a large-scale systematic plan for attaining some particular object. In my book, to scheme means to lay awake in bed at night tossing and turning, allowing one’s subconscious mind to work on a major problem. Plotting …

In marketing, this idea goes beyond “growth hacking,” which I hated at first but actually has merit as a concept. My notion of the word as it applies here is to look at every single step in a conversion funnel and ask “Why isn’t this number greater? What is preventing me from getting better results?”

I want someone to look at the entire conversion funnel, Awareness … Interest … Desire … Action … and obsess over the issue of “If there are 1000 highly qualified people who hear about Ecwid, why aren’t they signing up for a free trial? Where is Ecwid falling down in terms of our ability to develop trust and credibility with these highly qualified people?”

The same types of questions need to be asked about free trial users and why they are not converting to paid. Figure it out! Toss! Turn! Iterate! Make small bets and double down on the winners! Your answer could be related to usability. Or it could be related to the structure of Ecwid’s offer. Your answer could be both. Or neither. Whatever! Your job is to find the bottlenecks to Ecwid’s growth and blow them up.

If you are a marketing “schemer,” we loved to hear from you. You know who you are. Scheme on. Apply below.