E-Commerce Strategy and Business Models Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends E-commerce Managers, Digital Marketing Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-DM-051

Before you join: Participants should have basic familiarity with marketing, sales, retail, customer experience or digital products.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

E-commerce growth depends on more than launching a storefront or buying media. Commercial teams must choose viable business models, define an offer customers will trust, connect customer acquisition to profitable retention, and manage fulfilment, returns and service without eroding margin. These decisions are harder where firms sell through multiple channels, rely on marketplaces, operate across borders, or must integrate legacy ERP, CRM and warehouse systems.

This course develops the practical skills required to design and manage an e-commerce strategy. Participants assess D2C, marketplace, subscription, wholesale and platform models; define priority customer segments; improve conversion journeys; set assortment and pricing rules; and plan acquisition, CRM and loyalty activity. They also build the financial logic behind e-commerce, including contribution margin, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, inventory exposure and marketing payback. Coverage includes platform architecture, product data, payments, fraud controls, GDPR principles and consumer protection requirements.

Teaching combines short instructor briefings with sector cases, group analysis, trading simulations and structured application planning. Participants work with realistic commercial data, including funnel reports, customer cohorts, campaign performance and product margin information. Each participant leaves with an e-commerce strategy workbook containing a business model assessment, customer journey priorities, KPI framework, trading calendar, financial model structure and 90-day action plan. Successful participants receive a certificate of completion.

The course is designed for professionals responsible for digital revenue, online customer experience, commercial planning, marketing performance or e-commerce operations. It is delivered over five instructor-led days in classrooms in more than 50 cities or live online. Training runs from 08:30 to 16:30, providing approximately 6.5 contact hours each day.

What you will be able to do

  • Assess e-commerce business models using the Business Model Canvas and unit economics
  • Define target segments, customer journeys and value propositions for online propositions
  • Design conversion journeys using UX heuristics, funnel analysis and checkout friction reduction
  • Select commerce platforms, operating models and fulfilment approaches against business requirements
  • Construct assortment, pricing and promotion plans that protect contribution margin
  • Plan acquisition, CRM and loyalty activity using RACE, RFM and cohort analysis
  • Build e-commerce KPI, financial and experimentation frameworks for commercial decision-making
  • Produce a prioritised 90-day e-commerce action plan with governance and milestones

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Build a defensible e-commerce strategy for a current business challenge
  • Interpret online trading metrics beyond traffic and revenue figures
  • Make stronger platform, channel and fulfilment investment recommendations
  • Connect marketing spend to customer lifetime value and contribution margin
  • Lead cross-functional e-commerce planning with clearer priorities and ownership

For your organisation

  • Improved alignment between digital marketing, merchandising, operations and customer service
  • More profitable channel decisions based on unit economics and contribution margin
  • Reduced conversion loss through better journey and checkout prioritisation
  • Stronger retention activity using customer cohorts, RFM segments and lifecycle triggers
  • Clearer e-commerce roadmaps, KPIs and governance for investment decisions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can assess e-commerce business models and identify the economics of a viable online proposition.

  • Digital commerce models: D2C, marketplace, subscription, wholesale and platform ecosystems
  • Business Model Canvas mapping customer segments, channels, revenues and cost drivers
  • Value proposition design using jobs, pains, gains and proof points
  • Unit economics: contribution margin, customer acquisition cost, retention and returns
  • Marketplace liquidity, network effects and the chicken-and-egg launch problem
  • Select model-market fit criteria before committing channel and fulfilment investment

Participants can define priority customers and map the journeys that influence online purchase decisions.

  • STP segmentation based on needs, behaviour, value and buying context
  • Personas grounded in interviews, search data, CRM records and analytics
  • Customer journey maps from discovery through purchase, delivery, use and advocacy
  • Jobs-to-be-Done interviews identifying functional, emotional and social purchase drivers
  • Competitive benchmarking of assortment, pricing, delivery promises and service policies
  • Prioritise segments with market attractiveness and competitive strength matrices

Participants can diagnose conversion barriers and specify improvements to key commerce journeys.

  • Information architecture using category trees, faceted navigation and on-site search
  • Conversion funnel diagnosis from landing page through checkout confirmation
  • UX heuristics: clarity, relevance, friction, trust signals and error prevention
  • Mobile-first product pages with imagery, specifications, reviews and delivery information
  • Checkout design reducing form fields, unexpected costs and payment uncertainty
  • Accessibility checks against WCAG 2.2 requirements for commerce journeys

Participants can define the technology, data and operational capabilities needed to support e-commerce growth.

  • Commerce platform selection: SaaS, headless, composable and bespoke architectures
  • Core integrations among PIM, CMS, ERP, OMS, CRM and payment gateways
  • Product data governance covering attributes, taxonomy, imagery and variant rules
  • Order management workflows for allocation, split shipments, cancellations and refunds
  • Fulfilment models: owned warehouse, 3PL, dropship and click-and-collect
  • Service-level agreements measuring dispatch, delivery, availability and customer response

Participants can create trading rules that balance customer appeal, stock availability and margin.

  • Assortment architecture using good-better-best tiers, bundles and long-tail ranges
  • Merchandising rules for category placement, recommendations, search ranking and campaigns
  • Price architecture incorporating margins, competitor positions, elasticity and perceived value
  • Promotion mechanics: thresholds, bundles, coupons, gift-with-purchase and clearance
  • Inventory availability metrics: in-stock rate, sell-through, ageing and stock cover
  • Build trading calendars around seasonality, launches, peak events and replenishment

Participants can plan acquisition activity across paid, owned and partner channels using commercial objectives.

  • RACE planning across reach, act, convert and engage customer stages
  • Paid search structure using keyword intent, match types, bids and negatives
  • SEO priorities: technical crawlability, category content, structured data and internal links
  • Lifecycle email flows for welcome, browse abandonment, cart recovery and reactivation
  • Affiliate, influencer and partnership models with tracking, commissions and disclosure
  • Channel attribution limits under cookies, walled gardens and cross-device behaviour

Participants can use customer data to improve repeat purchase, loyalty and service recovery.

  • First-party data strategy covering consent, identity resolution and preference management
  • RFM analysis grouping customers by recency, frequency and monetary value
  • Cohort retention analysis separating acquisition periods, repeat orders and churn
  • Personalisation rules using declared preferences, behaviour and purchase history
  • Loyalty programme economics: earn rates, redemption liability, tiers and benefits
  • Service recovery playbooks for delivery failures, returns disputes and negative reviews

Participants can establish measurement systems and use evidence to prioritise commercial improvements.

  • Measurement plans linking commercial objectives, hypotheses, KPIs, sources and owners
  • Funnel metrics: traffic, conversion rate, average order value and repeat purchase
  • Marketing efficiency metrics: CAC, ROAS, MER, payback period and incrementality
  • Customer lifetime value models using contribution margin, retention and purchase frequency
  • GA4 event taxonomy for product views, carts, checkouts and transactions
  • A/B test design with hypotheses, sample size, guardrails and decision rules

Participants can evaluate e-commerce profitability while addressing operational, legal and payment risks.

  • Profit-and-loss models connecting revenue, discounts, cost of goods and fulfilment
  • Contribution margin waterfalls incorporating payments, returns, marketplace fees and marketing
  • Working capital effects of inventory turns, supplier terms and refund timing
  • Payment fraud controls: velocity checks, 3-D Secure and chargeback management
  • Consumer protection requirements for pricing, delivery, returns and cancellation disclosures
  • Data protection controls under GDPR principles, consent records and retention schedules

Participants can translate strategy into an owned, prioritised and measurable e-commerce implementation plan.

  • Operating models defining e-commerce roles, decision rights, agencies and partners
  • OKRs translating strategy into quarterly outcomes, measures, initiatives and owners
  • Roadmap prioritisation using RICE scoring, dependencies, effort and expected impact
  • Trading cadence: weekly performance reviews, campaign planning and issue escalation
  • Risk registers covering platform outages, stockouts, fraud and supplier failure
  • Draft a 90-day e-commerce action plan with milestones and governance

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. E-commerce Business Model Canvas
  2. Customer journey prioritisation matrix
  3. Digital trading calendar template
  4. E-commerce KPI and measurement plan
  5. Contribution margin waterfall model
  6. 90-day e-commerce action plan

Who should attend

  • E-commerce Managers — need a structured method for improving online revenue and profitability
  • Digital Marketing Managers — need to connect channel activity to conversion and retention outcomes
  • Commercial Managers — need to evaluate online propositions, pricing and trading performance
  • Customer Experience Managers — need to improve digital journeys, service recovery and loyalty
  • Product Managers — need to prioritise commerce platform, content and conversion improvements
  • Retail and Marketplace Managers — need to manage channel economics, assortment and fulfilment choices

Skills and tools covered

E-commerce strategyConversion rate optimisationDigital tradingCustomer lifecycle marketingCommercial analyticsE-commerce profitability

Tools and standards

Business Model Canvas, RACE Planning Framework, RFM Analysis, Google Analytics 4

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short briefings to introduce frameworks, followed by cases from retail, banking, consumer goods, travel and B2B distribution. Participants analyse e-commerce propositions, customer journeys, trading reports and channel economics in small groups. Simulations address competing decisions on pricing, media spend, fulfilment and customer retention. Guided discussions compare operating models and implementation constraints. Individual application planning helps participants adapt the methods to a current product, market, channel or commercial objective.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have basic familiarity with marketing, sales, retail, customer experience or digital products. Experience reading simple performance reports, such as website traffic, campaign results, sales figures or customer data, is useful. The course assumes participants can discuss their organisation's customers, offer, sales channels and commercial objectives. Prior e-commerce management experience is helpful but not essential. No coding, web design, data science, accounting qualification or advanced analytics expertise is required. Participants do not need access to live company systems during the course.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should understand basic marketing, sales, customer experience or commercial planning concepts. No coding, web design or advanced data analysis experience is required.

Bring a laptop for live online delivery and, where possible, a current e-commerce challenge or online proposition to consider during application planning. Participants may also bring non-confidential examples of KPIs, journey maps or trading reports.

It suits managers and specialists working in e-commerce, digital marketing, commercial planning, product, retail, customer experience or marketplace operations. It is particularly useful for professionals moving into broader responsibility for online revenue.

Digital marketing courses often focus on channel execution, campaign planning and content. This course treats marketing as one part of the e-commerce system, alongside business models, conversion, trading, fulfilment, customer retention, finance and governance.

Participants can use the templates to assess their current proposition, identify funnel losses, compare channel economics and prioritise improvements. The final action plan is structured for discussion with managers, agencies, technology teams and operational partners.

The five days provide approximately 32.5 contact hours, with training from 08:30 to 16:30 each day. Time is divided across ten connected modules covering strategy, customer experience, technology, trading, acquisition, CRM, analytics, financial management and implementation.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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