Director, Digital Experience
Role Overview & Purpose
The Director, Digital Experience is responsible for defining and continuously evolving the digital product and customer experience across Empire’s retail banner websites and digital commerce experiences.
This leader will own the vision for how customers discover, shop, engage and transact digitally, translating customer needs and enterprise strategy into intuitive, frictionless and high-performing experiences. The role will lead the UI/UX and digital product agenda, establishing customer journeys, experience principles, product priorities and a roadmap that drives measurable improvements in customer engagement, conversion, satisfaction and loyalty.
Working closely with Technology, Site Merchandising, Marketing, Loyalty, Analytics and Operations, the Director will ensure the digital storefront evolves as a strategic growth platform while creating a consistent experience across banners and channels.
Key Responsibilities
Digital Experience Strategy & Vision
Define the digital customer experience vision and multi-year roadmap across retail banner websites and digital commerce experiences.
Translate enterprise customer and eCommerce strategy into clear digital experience principles, priorities and capabilities.
Establish a best-in-class view of the digital storefront, continually benchmarking the experience against leading retailers and digital platforms.
Identify emerging customer behaviours, technologies and experience innovations that can materially improve the shopping journey.
Digital Product Leadership
Own the business product vision and priorities for the digital storefront and customer-facing capabilities.
Translate customer and business needs into clear product requirements, outcomes and roadmap priorities.
Partner closely with Technology product and engineering teams to shape solutions, resolve trade-offs and deliver the experience roadmap.
Establish clear product outcomes and measures of success rather than defining success solely through feature delivery.
Balance enterprise capabilities with banner-specific customer and business needs.
Customer Journey & UI/UX
Own the end-to-end digital customer journey, including discovery, navigation, search, browse, product detail, cart, checkout, account and post-purchase experiences.
Lead UI/UX strategy, user research, journey mapping and usability testing.
Champion accessibility, intuitive interaction design and consistent experience patterns.
Ensure customer insights and behavioural data directly inform product and design decisions.
Identify and systematically remove friction across the digital shopping journey.
Experience Optimization
Establish a disciplined experimentation and optimization program across the digital experience.
Use behavioural analytics, customer research, experimentation and business performance data to identify opportunities.
Define KPIs spanning conversion, engagement, task completion, customer satisfaction and friction.
Build a continuous improvement backlog focused on measurable customer and business outcomes.
Cross-Functional Leadership
Partner with Site Merchandising to ensure assortment, promotions, product presentation and merchandising strategies are effectively translated into the digital shopping experience.
Partner with Marketing, Loyalty and personalization teams to create connected customer experiences across owned channels.
Partner with Operations to ensure digital experiences accurately reflect fulfillment capabilities and the end-to-end customer promise.
Act as the business-side experience leader with Technology, creating clarity on customer needs, priorities and desired outcomes.
Influence senior stakeholders across the enterprise to drive customer-first decision making.
Team Leadership
Lead and develop a high-performing team spanning digital product and UI/UX and experience design capabilities.
Build strong product management, customer insight and experience-design disciplines.
Create clear accountability while enabling teams to make data-driven decisions close to the customer.
Qualifications & Experience
10+ years of progressive experience across digital product management, digital experience, UX/UI or eCommerce, ideally within complex omnichannel retail or consumer businesses.
Demonstrated experience owning digital product vision, customer journeys and product roadmaps for high-traffic transactional digital experiences.
Strong understanding of UI/UX, customer research, information architecture, experimentation, accessibility and digital analytics.
Demonstrated ability to translate strategy and customer insight into product requirements, priorities and measurable customer outcomes.
Experience working closely with enterprise Technology, product and engineering organizations and effectively navigating business and technical trade-offs.
Strong commercial acumen with an understanding of the relationship between customer experience, conversion, engagement, loyalty and business performance.
Proven ability to lead through influence across Marketing, Merchandising, Technology, Analytics and Operations.
Strong people leadership with demonstrated ability to build modern product and experience capabilities.
Executive-level communication, strategic thinking and stakeholder management skills.
Scope Boundaries
This role owns the digital storefront product vision, customer journeys, UI/UX and experience optimization. Site Merchandising owns digital merchandising strategy and execution, including how assortment, promotions and product presentation are activated within the storefront. Technology product and engineering teams remain accountable for technical solution design and delivery, in partnership with this role.
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