Rapid eCommerce pivot that enhanced sales
Responsibilities:
- Project Management
- Front-end Development
- Backlog Refinement
- Problem-Solving
- Requirements Definition
- Shopify
- Collaboration
- HTML Email
Outcomes:
Rapid launch of an eCommerce storefront that aligned with COVID safety protocols, legal compliance, and business goals. Value-driven iterations were performed through product lifecycle.
Agile eCommerce MVP & iterations
I spearheaded the launch of a $60k eCommerce initiative to facilitate the distiller’s business pivot during the pandemic. The MVP (minimum viable product) was deployed in less than two weeks and realized a cost savings of $10k under budget.
I collaborated closely with the sales team to establish a baseline scope and choose a hosting platform (Netsuite, Salesforce, Magento, Shopify, or Square). We established several core features needed, based on strict legal requirements for selling alcohol across various states and counties:
- Provide purchase name and verify over 21
- Lot numbers for each bottles
- Limitation for bottle sales
As the project manager I had to liaise with several departments, ensuring their needs were met:
- Hospitality: Develop safety protocols for curbside pickup, as well as the methods for communicating these policies (such as staying in one’s vehicle while picking up orders) to customers.
- Legal: Ensure the shop and all its policies were compliant.
- Accounting: Ensure all required sales data was captured and exportable to accounting software.
- Production: Draft and check informational copy for accuracy.
- Design: Negotiate template look vs premium brand guidelines with minimal customization to reduce development time as well as risk. Design HTML transactional emails.
- Marketing: Develop all copy for launch announcements.
- IT: Test transactions, tax compliance, and transactional emails before launch. We created and tested the digital process to provide guests with a safe and convenient pickup experience.
- Company leadership: Stakeholder management, keeping sponsors updated on project progress and timeline.
After launch, I facilitated a lessons-learned meeting that produced launch checklists and improved processes in the hospitality department for future projects. We curated a backlog that included items such as automatic Netsuite integration, a task that we had suggested for launch but later deemed a "nice-to-have" as it proved far more challenging than anticipated, and manual sync sufficed for the MVP).
We continued to iterate and learn from the shop until the end of its life. During close-out I worked with accounting to export all sales data from Shopify, checking that it was intact and contained each kind of data the accounting team would need in case of an audit—a mission-critical task in the alcohol industry. On my recommendation the the company built out process checklists and kept the Shopify account open well after closure in the interest of compliance, justifying the cost-benefit of a small fee versus data retention.