Turning a 25% online sales target into a working ecommerce roadmap

A premium automotive brand set itself a hard number - 25% of sales online by 2025. We were given four days to say how. What follows is the ecommerce business development work behind that answer, from the market gap we found to the JIRA backlog we handed over.

01What is ecommerce business development in this case?

Ecommerce business development here means finding where a premium automotive brand can actually grow online sales, then converting that into initiatives a product organization can build. The brand had committed to a number in public: 25% of sales online by 2025. Our job was to make that number buildable rather than aspirational.

The starting position was awkward. A brand-driven website built to impress, not to sell. The company itself put the ambition plainly.

That single sentence set the bar. Not “sell more cars.” Match the digital service standard of the people who sell luxury handbags online.

02Why does the premium price gap matter?

The premium price gap matters because it defines the size of the prize. Online direct-to-consumer for a premium car sits at roughly 39K EUR. The luxury equivalent sits at roughly 55K EUR. That spread is the room to grow, and it only opens if the online experience earns the luxury price.

The customer research backed it. 67% would pay more for a genuine luxury experience. So the question stopped being “can we charge more” and became “does the shop feel worth more.” At the time it did not.

These figures anchored every recommendation. The brand also carried an EBIT target of 1 bn by 2025 and expected 80% of customer leads to come through data-driven channels. Growth was not optional, and the online store was where a large share of it had to land.

03What were the eight initiatives?

The eight initiatives were the working shape of the strategy: user experience, a unified online shopping portal, balancing commerce and brand, a marketplace strategy, omni-channel, merchandise, social commerce, and a B2B portal. Together they covered where the brand sold, how it sold, and how it felt to buy.

We did not treat them as equals. User experience was short-term and urgent. The rest ran from medium to long-term, sequenced by how much market knowledge or organizational change each one demanded.

04How did we tackle the user experience initiative?

We tackled user experience first because it was the cheapest fix with the fastest payoff. The store had a complex check-out, filters that confused models with sub-brands, core services buried below the fold, and an address field with no autofill function. Each one was a small friction that a luxury buyer does not expect.

The recommendation was concrete. Bring core services above the fold. Give each sub-brand a dedicated shopping landing page. Offer sales advisory 18/7. Turn product pages from “engineers for engineers” into product inspiration, with video and richer imagery. Small changes, real money.

The check-out told the clearest story. It was written “from legal unit for legal people,” not for customers, and the reservation flow read like a contract before it read like a purchase. The address field lacked an autofill function, and a single pay feature usable across all shops was the change that would remove the most friction.

05How did we make the strategy buildable?

We made it buildable by turning the top initiative into a JIRA roadmap, backlog and sprint plan the product organization could start on immediately. Strategy that stops at a slide gets admired and ignored. We wanted the user experience work broken down to the point where a team could pick up a ticket.

The delivery model matched the artifacts. We combined Lean Startup and Design Thinking to frame the problem, program management to sequence the work, and Agile/Scrum inside a product organization to ship it. That is the machine that keeps eight initiatives from collapsing back into a wish list.

06What does this case say about ecommerce business development?

Ecommerce business development works when a public target gets translated into initiatives with owners, sequence and a backlog. A 25% online sales goal is a slogan until someone maps the price gap, the friction and the build order. In four days we did that: one market gap, eight initiatives, and a worked backlog for the first one.

The lesson is the same for any brand chasing online growth. Find the experience gap the numbers already point to, pick the initiative with the fastest payoff, and hand over something a team can start Monday. The rest is delivery.

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