The clearest way to think about this is separating strategy from execution. A Director is a strategic hire, while a Manager is a functional one. The Director owns the big picture, the P&L, and the overall 'why' and 'what' of the ecommerce channel. The Manager owns a piece of the 'how,' focusing on execution within a specific domain like marketing, merchandising, or operations.
Andrew Youderian and Michael Jackness spend a whole episode on The eCommerceFuel Podcast discussing the decision of hiring a Director of eCommerce, and they frame it as a move you make when you, the founder, need to get out of the weeds. A Director isn't just a senior manager; they are a leader who can take over the entire business unit. They should be comfortable with strategic planning for eCommerce, setting KPIs, managing a budget, and leading the people who are doing the day-to-day work. This is the person who connects the dots between a marketing campaign, inventory levels, and the financial health of the business. As Michael Stebbins points out on Ecommerce Conversations, it’s about a deep understanding of strategy and leveraging data for sales, which are core Director-level competencies.
An ecommerce Manager, by contrast, is a specialist responsible for a function. You might hire a Marketing Manager, an Operations Manager, or a Site Merchandising Manager. On an episode of the eCommerce MasterPlan, Jonny Lomax from William May Jewellers is a great example—as a dedicated eCommerce Manager, his focus was on tangible results like doubling Christmas sales. He was deep in the execution, not necessarily setting the company's five-year vision. The Beadbrand founder’s discussion of his hiring process gets at this, too, by separating the needs for marketing, operations, and product roles. A Manager of one of these areas is an expert in their craft. A Paid Ads Manager lives in Google and Meta. An Email Manager knows Klaviyo inside and out. They execute the strategy the Director puts in place.
Timing is everything, and companies usually hire for these roles in a specific order. Most brands start by hiring Managers. The founder feels a specific pain point, like not having enough time for email marketing, and hires a specialist to take it over. As the business scales, you end up with several of these Managers—one for ads, one for email, one for operations. At that point, the founder becomes the bottleneck trying to coordinate them all. That’s the moment to hire a Director. The Director's first job is to lead that existing team of Managers, turning their individual efforts into a cohesive, multi-channel strategy.
Of course, in the real world, especially at smaller seven-figure brands, these lines blur. You often see a single 'Head of Ecommerce' who acts as a player-coach, spending half their time on strategy and budget and the other half executing a channel themselves. Over time, as revenue grows, that person should ideally transition into a true Director, building an ecommerce team of specialists underneath them. Karly Craig’s experience as a new COO, shared on The eCommerceFuel Podcast, shows how this specialization continues even further up the chain for larger brands, where a Director of Ecommerce might report to a COO responsible for the company’s entire operational footprint.
The titles themselves aren't as important as having clear roles and responsibilities. What really matters is that someone is accountable for the high-level strategy and financial outcomes (the Director), and that you have skilled people responsible for the expert execution of each key function (the Managers). This principle, a key theme in discussions around Delegation Strategies for Ecommerce Growth, helps ensure that both long-term vision and daily execution are handled effectively as you scale.
