Senior Taxonomist, Zappos.com, Inc., Las Vegas NV
Posted July 19, 2013
Product Management:
Senior Taxonomist
Zappos.com, Inc is looking for a Senior Taxonomist!
Why join us? Our unique culture has made Zappos.com, Inc. and its subsidiaries one of FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 5 years straight. Find out why:http://money.cnn.com/
Why else? We offer an extensive benefits package for all full-time employees, including medical, dental, vision and 401k!
And . . . we’re hiring like crazy right now and looking for smart, forward-thinking problem solvers to join our world-class and fairly wacky team.
Oh, and one more thing! Cover letters are cool, but do you know what’s even cooler?! Show us who you are with a cover letter VIDEO! You will be able to upload one when applying for this position. (Video cover letters are not required, but if you wanna do one, we wanna see it!)
The General Idea:
Zappos is looking for someone to help improve and build a world-class, extensive and intuitive Taxonomy to help further optimize our customer experience when searching and browsing. This person will own the strategy, implementation and maintenance of the content and data structure that deliver this browse experience and make it easy for our customers to shop for products across all Zappos websites.
Position Summary:
The Taxonomist is responsible for creating the data structure that drives the browse and attribute-based navigation portions of all Zappos websites. This person is responsible for the documentation that allows Zappos’ Retail/Merchant teams to easily classify and showcase their products on Zappos’ internal classification tool. This person is responsible for data mining Zappos’ catalog to identify the best ways to categorize all products. Must be able to troubleshoot website classification issues, tool, and system issues. This person also advocates for data quality standards that provide the best customer experience for Zappos.com, 6pm.com and couture.zappos.
The Taxonomist will have full control over the taxonomy, deciding what gets added/removed/changed based on input from data sources, the business and customer feedback. This role will need to coordinate with multiple cross-functional teams (spanding across Merchandising, Marketing and Technology Teams) to ensure all products are accurately represented on Zappos’ websites.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Develop, evaluate, and manage taxonomy strategies, including audits, controlled vocabularies, classification, and developing synonyms
- Expand into a synonym dictionary for use by internal teams
- Use custom reporting results to enrich Taxonomy
- Work with business and technical stakeholders to find solutions and resolve issues in creative and intelligent ways
- Plan and lead meetings /working sessions with IA (UX), Search (Tech), Merchandising, and Site Operations teams
- Coordinate with the UX Researchers to run surveys, card sorts, tree tests, etc…
- Balance top down (the business) v. bottom up (the users) and facilitate integration, building consensus across all Zappos business units
- To improve our customers’ ability to consistently find items across the site
- Support cross-selling and up-selling efforts
- Champion the establishment of and adherence to Taxonomy and term synonyms
- Implement Taxonomies in conjunction with navigation systems, search mechanisms, and search engine optimization
- Study and understand user behavior (internal and external) and provide the best overall experience
- Work with Subject Matter Experts (Merch, Site Ops, UX)
- Develop governance models, procedures, and policies for Taxonomy
- Increase Taxonomy quality, accuracy and integrity
Required Skills:
- 5+ year e-Commerce experience with a focus on the customer
- 3+ years taxonomy experience
- Ability to use data/research/reporting to make informed decisions
- A team player with a positive attitude
- An ability to see the big picture, tie vision and strategy into the best long-term customer experience
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills / team player
- Advanced time management and organizational skills with the ability to prioritize and balance projects
- College degree desired
New downtown Las Vegas headquarters described at: http://www.ktnv.com/news/
Apply online: http://about.zappos.com/jobs/