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Increase profitability with unit economics for ecommerce

2h 00min | 14 lessons | 1 downloadable resource

In this course, you will learn how to:

  • Clearly explain what unit economics is, how it is calculated within the context of your business, and the purpose it holds within the broader growth strategy process.
  • Understand the interconnectivity of how pricing, margin, future purchase behavior, and invested capital affect each other when assessing performance and strategic decision-making.
  • Develop actionable questions to ask and steps to take toward understanding, measuring, and analyzing the health of your business.
  • Learn how to calculate unit economics for your business.
  • Understand the purpose of unit economics within the broader growth strategy process.

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English subtitles Certificate included
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Improve business health and optimize profitability

Many ecommerce businesses struggle to fully understand and optimize their profitability due to complex unit cost structures and hidden inefficiencies. Without clear insight into how pricing, margins, customer acquisition costs, and repeat purchases interplay, even successful businesses can miss growth opportunities and waste resources. This course gives you a deep understanding of unit economics, enabling you to analyze your business’s financial health, make data-backed decisions, and align your operations for sustainable growth and improved margins. Learn to identify key metrics, reduce wasteful spend, and drive profitability through smarter decision-making.

Master unit economics for ecommerce to improve operational efficiency and drive profitability

Course Length:
2h 00min. 14 lessons.

This course teaches you how to uncover key financial metrics, including cost structures, margins, and customer lifetime value, providing you with insights to increase revenue and reduce costs. Mastering unit economics will help you to make strategic pricing, acquisition, and retention decisions, leading to a more sustainable and profitable business model.

After completing this online course on unit economics for ecommerce you will be able to assist your team and company with:

  • Analyzing and optimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) ratios.
  • Identifying inefficiencies and cost drivers within your ecommerce model.
  • Making data-driven decisions for pricing strategies and promotions.
  • Evaluating and refining retention strategies to maximize customer value.
  • Improving gross margins through informed adjustments to costs and processes.

This course is for you if you are responsible for:

  • Ecommerce management and operations.
  • Financial strategy and analysis for digital businesses.
  • Marketing strategy and budget allocation.
  • Business growth and profitability initiatives.
  • Customer retention and lifecycle optimization strategies.

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Course Curriculum

Unit economics for ecommerce

Introduction to unit economics

This lesson introduces the concept of unit economics, what it represents, and how it is defined.

How is the unit economic value calculated?

This lesson provides the quantitative formulas behind the unit economics framework through the lens of two common definitions of a unit across consumer businesses.

Introducing primary component #1: pricing

This lesson explains what pricing means within the unit economics framework, how it is calculated, and what factors can change the pricing variable for your business.

Introducing primary component #2: margin

This lesson breaks down the differences in types of margin, how you can better understand which costs drive which margins, and how these margins are calculated through the lens of an income statement.

Introducing primary component #3: future purchase behavior

This lesson introduces the impact a customer’s future purchase actions can have on your company, the different ways future purchase behavior can be calculated, how other business models view this variable, and the risk associated with its variability.

Introducing primary component #4: invested capital

This lesson introduces the concept of invested capital within the scope of unit economics, how it is calculated, what it typically represents within your business and a few ways you can work to determine how best to allocate your spend.

Improving primary component #1: pricing

This lesson builds on the pricing introduction from Lesson 3 and details four specific levers available to drive growth via pricing within the unit economics framework.

Improving primary component #2: margin

This lesson builds on the margin introduction from Lesson 4 and details different optimization strategies that can improve margin performance through the lens of each variable cost bucket.

Improving primary component #3: future purchase behavior

This lesson builds on the introduction of future purchase behavior from Lesson 5 and details key behavioral questions you can ask to begin determining the underlying drivers of performance and a few common ways companies can gather information from their customers.

Improving primary component #4: invested capital

This lesson builds on the introduction of invested capital from Lesson 6. It details several ways a business can begin determining their best initial steps forward, key variables to consider when analyzing capital allocation vs. performance data, and how several core metrics can influence decision-making.

Example #1: rising CAC (customer acquisition cost)

This lesson explores a case study-style example where a business is seeing its costs to acquire customers increase rapidly and needs to find ways to maintain growth and efficiency while mitigating further reductions to their returns.

Example #2: not enough LTV (customer lifetime value)

This lesson explores a case study-style example where a business is struggling to maintain its pace of growth at its current acquisition costs and needs to think through ways to expand LTV before making changes to its investment strategy.

Closing

This lesson closes out the course, providing an initial set of questions to get you started in the process of analyzing unit economics and then ending with some important caveats to keep in mind as you explore.

Jeffrey Bantam

Head of Finance @ PetFriendly

I lead the FP&A team at Bloomerang. Bloomerang provides donor management software to nonprofits, empowering fundraisers to do what they love and build a world inspired by giving. Prior to joining Bloomerang, I served as Head of Finance at PetFriendly, a monthly subscription box service focused on providing pet wellness products to dog and cat parents. Prior to PetFriendly, my experiences span across Investment Banking and Growth Equity, exposing me to a wide range of business models, from traditional enterprise and SMB software, to direct-to-consumer, retail and other consumer products, to financial services.

I believe my diverse background of experiences and perspectives makes my finance knowledge a superpower, enabling me to help better founders and operators bridge the gap between weekly operational planning and quarterly/annual/multi-year forecasting. I combine experiences of sitting in board rooms of multi-billion dollar public companies with an unhealthy level of preference towards profitability and operational efficiency so that no matter if you’ve raised capital or are bootstrapped, whether you are big or small, whether you are high growth or steady-eddy, I can best position you for success in achieving your specific objectives.

This online course
comes with a
Certificate

Completing this course earns you an official CXL Unit Economics for Ecommerce Course Certificate to prove your achievement. CXL is recognized as an industry-leading qualification by employers worldwide, and it is an official qualification on Linkedin that can be added to your profile.

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