From flash audit to interim Head of eCommerce at Laboratoires Rivadis: conversion up from 4.2% to 7.15%

The causes of the decline were both strategic and organizational: repeated changes of direction, the end of the brand-ambassador sales model, and a price increase when moving to organic formulas.

A team of 6 to 8 people had been left to itself after the departure of its two managers, without eCommerce expertise or performance management, on a Salesforce platform oversized for the size of the business.

The engagement ran in three successive contracts, from diagnosis to handover:

• Flash audit: about 8 days built on a 6-dimension operating model grid (organization, processes, partners, governance, measurement, tools), 11 interviews, a deep dive into analytics and channel reports, then a restitution with 2 target organization scenarios, 7 job descriptions, and a prioritized backlog of 15 UX fixes.
• Interim management: governance installed (monthly steering committee, weekly rituals on paid, SEO, releases, and commercial animation), the integrator and agencies put back under active management, the media budget rebuilt, and a shared Looker Studio dashboard for the whole team.
• Strategy and handover: a 12-month strategy in 10 initiatives presented to the executive committee, hands-on coaching of the team, then the recruitment of a successor and a handover formally closed at executive committee level.

• Conversion rate up from a 4.2% average to 6.18%, then 7.15% two months later.
• Checkout drop-off on the delivery page cut from 97% to 74% after a targeted release.
• One month at 101% of the revenue target, the next at 95%.
• A team coached and equipped, and a permanent Head of eCommerce position filled.

The honest part: the last two months of the year missed their targets. Conversion recovers in months, audience does not. Rebuilding traffic on weakened SEO and an over-solicited email base takes more than 8 months.

Key takeaway. Making yourself replaceable is a deliverable: job descriptions, a recruited successor, a trained team, and a handover on record. That is what separates a clean interim from an installed dependency. The audit also told the client something uncomfortable: its Salesforce platform was oversized for the business. The choice was irreversible in the short term, and saying it anyway is what made the rest of the diagnosis credible.