Role Purpose
As the Head of Ecommerce, you will own the full online and telesales P&L, taking direct accountability for accelerating revenue, conversion and average order value (AOV). In this role, you will steward our digital modernisation programme while maintaining a sharp focus on daily trading performance and the evolving needs of our customers. You will work in close partnership with Commercial, IT and Marketing to ensure the right products are merchandised effectively, presented to the right customer segments and converted through a frictionless path to purchase. Oak Furnitureland is a thoroughly omnichannel retailer. Recognising that customer journeys are highly fluid, you will focus heavily on the bidirectional relationship between our digital channels and physical showrooms. The website must serve as an inspiring digital gateway that drives online researchers into our showrooms, while simultaneously supporting customers who choose to move from a showroom back to the website to complete their purchase.
You will lead and develop the department across two core functions. One focus is on driving daily trading performance and managing the telesales team to capture live demand. The second function is dedicated to ongoing digital optimisation and experience, covering product ownership, user experience design and conversion testing. Your focus will be on coaching and building the capability of the team across these areas, ensuring clear alignment between daily trading activities, user experience improvements and customer insights. You will not have direct management responsibility for the developer team. Instead, you will work closely with IT and our development partners to deploy our established modernisation roadmap. Your primary objective is to use data to identify growth opportunities, understand what our customers want, and establish a continuous, insight-driven testing and web redesign programme.
Core Responsibilities
* Commercial performance: Own the daily, weekly and seasonal ecommerce and telesales trading plans to deliver business revenue, conversion and AOV targets.
* Omnichannel alignment: Champion an end-to-end customer journey mindset across web, telesales and showrooms, actively optimising for the dual-flow traffic between online browsing and physical store visits.
* Modernisation programme deployment: Deliver the agreed digital modernisation programme in close partnership with IT, driving the implementation of the website redesign, architecture and functionality upgrades to support future growth.
* Team leadership and development: Manage, coach and mentor the team, including the Ecommerce and Telesales Manager, Product Owner, UX Designer, Optimisation Specialist and the telesales team.
* Trading calendar execution: Guide the trading team to build and execute a data-driven trading calendar aligned to key range launches, promotions and marketing campaigns, adapting in real time to maximise demand.
* Commercial and buying integration: Partner with Commercial and Buying to shape the online product assortment, pricing and merchandising strategy, using website analytics to provide detailed performance insights that influence commercial decisions.
* Marketing collaboration: Collaborate with the Digital Marketing, CRM, and broader marketing teams to ensure high-quality traffic is driven to the website, surfacing the right products to align spend with efficiency targets.
* Telesales customer feedback loops: Oversee the telesales team, developing scripts and processes to convert calls, while establishing a regular feedback loop to capture customer insights on why they call or drop out of the online journey.
* Conversion and web optimisation: Lead the conversion rate optimisation, onsite search and personalisation programmes, using robust data analysis to build a continuous test-and-learn roadmap.
* Performance reporting and analytics: Interrogate web performance metrics and establish clear dashboards to understand what is working on the website, driving accountability across the entire team.
* Future-proofing for AI search: Ensure the website content and metadata structures are optimised for the changing search landscape, keeping the platform highly visible across modern conversational and generative AI search engines.
Skills and Experience
* Proven commercial leader with a strong track record of delivering online revenue, conversion and AOV targets within an omnichannel retail environment.
* Deep understanding of retail trading, web merchandising and customer behaviour for high‑SKU consumer businesses.
* Demonstrated success managing multi‑disciplinary teams, with experience leading digital product, user experience and trading specialists alongside customer‑facing sales teams.
* Collaborative partner capable of working alongside technical IT departments and development teams to land established digital roadmaps or major redesigns without needing to manage developers directly.
* Strong analytical capability, comfortable interrogating data suites such as GA4, Contentsquare, Google Data Studio and Tableau or Looker to extract customer insights, evaluate website performance and inform trading decisions.
* Hands‑on experience overseeing conversion rate optimisation, A/B testing, onsite search and personalisation initiatives.
* Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across Commercial, Buying, Marketing and Showroom operations, and upwards to Board‑level colleagues.
* Forward‑thinking awareness of digital search trends, including an understanding of how to structure platforms to remain searchable as consumer behaviour adapts to AI search ecosystems.
* Ability to stay informed and educated on a fast‑changing e‑commerce environment, bringing new ideas and opportunities for growth into the business, engaging stakeholders on such potential initiatives, and owning implementation to ensure these ideas turn into performance‑increasing deliverables.
Benefits
* Car allowance
* Employee discount: amazing discounts available on all Oak Furnitureland products after successful completion of probation
* Life assurance: free cover of a minimum of two times your annual salary up to the age of 65
* 25 days holiday per year plus bank holidays
* Birthday: an additional day off for you to celebrate your birthday
* Hybrid working
* Pension: 5% basic salary employer contribution with 4% employee contribution
* Employee Assistance Programme: gives all employees access to both telephone and face‑to‑face counselling services
* My Rewards Programme: offers discounts on everything from restaurants and supermarkets, to entertainment and holidays
* Free on‑site parking
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