Assign three responsibilities instead of three job titles: offer and site merchandising, traffic and customer relationships, tools and measurement. Each one owns a number, and each number has a name on it.
The benchmark
Running a site with three people is common, even in large groups. Melvita, a brand of the L'Occitane group, is recruiting an e-commerce project manager who will report to the Digital Manager, as part of a three-person team responsible for the performance of a site on Shopify Plus.
The number that surprised me most comes from a study I'm currently running on fifteen digitally native brands, French and international. Across about 3,900 profiles reviewed, digital roles (e-commerce, site merchandising, UX, CRO, marketplaces) make up less than 4% of headcount on average, and never more than 10%.
So companies with several hundred employees entrust their site to a handful of people. The question is who, within that handful, owns which number.
| Responsibility | Their number |
|---|---|
| Offer and merchandising | Revenue per visit, average order value |
| Traffic and customer relationships | Acquisition cost, repurchase |
| Site and measurement | Uptime, speed, data reliability |
The rule
One person per metric, and only one. They check the number every week, can explain why it moved, and make the call when trade-offs come up, even if others do part of the work.
When two colleagues share a metric, each ends up assuming the other one looked at it.
The steps
- Assignment. Every row of the table gets a first name, written in black and white in the document the whole team uses.
- The weekly meeting. It lasts thirty minutes, with the numbers first and the decisions after, so the meeting doesn't turn into a recap of the week's tasks.
- Outside help. Development or media buying can go to external providers, as long as the person who owns the number stays on the team.
- The half-day of analysis. It gets blocked in the calendar of the person who owns measurement, and it doesn't get skipped for the first launch that comes along.
The test to run on Monday
Take the table and write, next to each number, who could explain how it changed last week.
Wherever you write "the agency" or two first names, you've found a gap. All that's left is to put it to your leadership:
"Of our six numbers, two have no owner in-house. I suggest [first name] take them over and our providers report to them."
The trap
The classic scenario is three generalists who are all preparing the next campaign. Between launches, nobody looks at the site, and small breakages pile up.
The third responsibility, tools and measurement, is the first to disappear, because it often goes to an outside provider without an explicit decision.
In the same study, ten of the fifteen brands have an A/B testing tool installed on their site, yet the entire sample has only three CRO profiles. So seven brands own the tool with no one in-house whose job it is.
Outsourcing the work is fine; trouble starts when the number goes the same way.
I know this trap from the provider side. A few months after a migration we had led, the person running the site at a brand we support told us plainly:
"what I would have liked from you, too, is perhaps a last look once the site is live."
SEO errors had piled up between her team, her paid search agency and us, and all three camps assumed site health belonged to the other two. She was right. On our side, too, no name was written on that row.
The other drift threatens whoever manages the team: every request lands at their desk, and their weeks go to handing out tickets, with no time left to make decisions.
Once every row of the table has a name, that desk can close.
