Vice President, Digital & Customer Experience

Empire Today; Northlake (IL); On-site; USD 240,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Wellness program

Professional development

Career advancement opportunities

Lots of perks

Job summary

Empire Today seeks a visionary leader to own the end-to-end web experience and drive growth through enhanced conversion and engagement. This executive role partners with Marketing, Paid Media, and Operations to transform traffic into booked appointments.

The VP will lead a cross-functional team across product, UX, development, SEO, and analytics, owning the digital stack, governance, and budget. A data-driven, AI-aware leader with 10+ years in digital growth is required.

Qualifications

• Conversion experience leading a large web environment with measurable lift.
• Data-driven, able to diagnose funnel drop-offs and justify interventions.
• Strong technical fluency to collaborate with engineers, SEO, and analytics.
• Deep UX/UI discipline and ability to evaluate designs against proven principles.
• Background in industries where conversions (booked appointments, forms, quotes) matter.
• Proven leadership in teams and roadmaps in dynamic situations.
• Excellent communication to explain tradeoffs to senior leaders.
• 10+ years in digital experience, growth, or eCommerce roles.
• Experience applying AI for personalization and onboarding within digital experiences.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end web experience for empiretoday.com, prioritizing backlog and delivering changes on time.
• Drive CRO with a continuous experimentation program and funnel analytics.
• Develop and optimize lead capture, forms, and retargeting in coordination with Paid Media and CRM.
• Lead organic search strategy including technical SEO, on-page SEO, and local GEO/AEO optimization.
• Ensure site performance, speed, accessibility, and Core Web Vitals with IT/engineering support.
• Own measurement framework for site performance and CRO dashboards with Analytics team.
• Collaborate with Paid Media to align campaigns with on-site experiences and outcomes.
• Partner with the Contact Center to maximize inbound conversions across channels.
• Evolve content and education to nurture prospects from first visit to booking an appointment.
• Shape digital commerce strategy and future service model in collaboration with leadership.
• Build and develop a digital-experience team covering product, UX, development, SEO, analytics, and CRO.

Skills

Conversion Experience

Data-Driven Approach

Technical Fluency

UX/UI Discipline

Relevant Industry Background

Leadership in a Dynamic Environment

Communication

Experience

AI Integration

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

The Vice President, Digital Experience & Growth will be responsible for Empire Today's end-to-end web experience and accountable for improving how that experience converts. Nearly three-quarters of Empire’s leads begin their journey on the website, which makes this role one of the most consequential in the company. Empire Today's iconic brand and nationwide marketing drive significant traffic to our website every day. Turning more of that traffic into booked appointments is a potentially transformative growth opportunity for the business. This role will lead that effort.

The Vice President, Digital & Customer Experience will report directly to the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer and partner closely with Paid Media, the Contact Center, and Operations.

We offer:

• Paid time off and holiday pay.
• Wellness program.
• Professional development & career advancement opportunities.
• Lots of perks.

Compensation Information: $240K -$260K annually plus bonus

Responsibilities:

• The Web Experience, End to End: Serve as the single accountable owner for everything that happens on empiretoday.com from the moment a visitor arrives—UX and UI, navigation, information architecture, site content, page‑level design, and the product roadmap. Set priorities, manage the backlog, and ensure changes are delivered on time and at quality.
• Conversion Rate Optimization: Drive measurable improvement in traffic-to-lead conversion. Build and run a continuous experimentation program, including A/B and multivariate testing, grounded in funnel analytics. Use data to diagnose drop‑off points before recommending interventions. Own the CRO roadmap and the metrics used to measure its impact.
• Lead Capture and Recovery: Develop and manage progressive lead capture, form optimization, and retargeting infrastructure. Expand opportunities to capture visitor intent before they leave the site. Partner with Paid Media and CRM to convert captured prospects into booked appointments.
• SEO: Lead organic search strategy and performance, including technical SEO, on‑page SEO, content strategy for high‑intent commercial queries, and local SEO across Empire's service markets. Extend organic search strategy to include generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO), ensuring Empire is discoverable and well‑represented in AI‑generated search results and answer experiences. Grow qualified organic traffic and make sure it converts when it lands.
• Site Performance and Technical Health: Responsible for site speed, uptime, accessibility, mobile experience, and Core Web Vitals. Partner with IT and engineering to ensure the technology stack supports conversion goals. Maintain a prioritized backlog of performance improvements and technical debt remediation.
• Analytics and Insights: Own the measurement framework for site performance, including the web analytics stack and funnel diagnostics. Work with Analytics team to build the dashboards and reporting that make conversion opportunities visible. Translate data into a prioritized roadmap and move quickly to execution.
• Partnership with Paid Media: Partner with paid media team and agency on campaign to page alignment, landing page strategy, and the feedback loop between media performance and on‑site experience. Co‑own the metrics that bridge paid spend and booked appointments.
• Partnership with the Contact Center: Partner with contact center leadership to maximize total inbound conversion across web and phone, including lead handoff quality, phone vs. form routing, call tracking and attribution, and the integrated customer journey. Shift volume between channels where conversion economics favor it. Ensure the web experience supports, rather than competes with, phone conversion.
• Content, Education, and Prospect Nurturing: Evolve the site beyond appointment‑taking into a destination that nurtures prospects from their first visit through to a booked appointment. Address the consumer need for education, discovery, research, and reassurance, including substantive content that helps prospects evaluate options and overcome common objections and hesitation‑drivers (cost, disruption, timing, product selection, installation concerns). Build the content strategy, content operations, and on‑site experiences that move prospects forward rather than leaving them to find answers elsewhere.
• Commerce and Future Service‑Model Innovation: Bring a commerce lens to the web experience and help define Empire’s digital commerce strategy over time, including the potential for a direct eCommerce capability alongside the appointment‑driven model. Partner with Operations and the broader leadership team on future innovation in the service model, including mobile measuring, remote and digitally‑enabled appointments, and other ways technology can compress the path from interest to installation. Shape the site’s role in that evolution.
• Team, Capabilities, and Tech Stack: Build, lead, and develop the digital experience team across product, UX, development, SEO, analytics, and CRO, along with any external resources supporting them. Lead development of our digital capabilities—what we do in‑house, what we partner for, and how the operating model evolves as we scale. Own the full digital technology stack end‑to‑end, including CMS, analytics, experimentation, tag management, personalization, and related platforms. Make the build‑vs‑buy and insource‑vs‑outsource calls that keep the team focused on the highest‑leverage work.
• Budget Ownership: Own the digital experience budget, including platform, tooling, agency, and development spend. Allocate resources against the highest‑leverage conversion opportunities.
• Governance and Standards: Establish and evolve web governance, design standards, content governance, and release processes.
• Cross‑Functional Leadership: Partner across marketing org and the rest of the business to align the web experience with business goals. Translate technical and UX constraints into clear, actionable tradeoffs for executive stakeholders. Serve as a trusted advisor to the CMO and broader leadership team on digital strategy and investment.
• Continuous Improvement: Stay current with digital experience, CRO, and SEO best practices. Bring a test‑and‑learn mindset and a bias toward additive, measurable interventions.

Qualifications:

• Conversion Experience: Demonstrated track record leading a large, complex, high‑traffic web environment and delivering meaningful conversion improvement, with specific examples of measurable lift delivered, diagnostic approach, and test results. Comfort operating at the scale and complexity of a national consumer brand. Manages for results, not a roadmap.
• Data‑Driven Approach: Validates drop‑off points with traffic data to prioritize interventions before committing resources. Prefers additive, measurable changes supported by the data, and can explain and defend decisions to stakeholders.
• Technical Fluency: Able to engage substantively with engineers, SEO specialists, and analytics leads. Strong working knowledge of modern web architecture, tag management, attribution, and technical SEO, sufficient to set direction and evaluate recommendations.
• UX/UI Discipline: Deep fluency in the science of UX/UI, including established heuristic frameworks (Nielsen, cognitive load, persuasion and behavioral design) and how to apply them to inform design decisions. Able to evaluate design proposals on their merits against evidence‑based principles rather than aesthetic preference, and to direct internal and external design resources accordingly.
• Relevant Industry Background: Experience in a business where the conversion event is a booked appointment, form submission, quote request, or cart checkout. Examples include home services, insurance, financial services, retail, travel, or similar. Candidates should understand that the priority is conversion yield, not traffic volume.
• Leadership in a Dynamic Environment: Comfortable leading in an environment where the team, roadmap, and operating model are still being defined. Able to set direction and drive execution in the presence of ambiguity.
• Communication: Able to explain technical and analytical tradeoffs clearly to the CMO, CEO, and other senior stakeholders. Able to provide constructive pushback when appropriate.
• Experience: Minimum 10 years of experience in digital experience, eCommerce, or growth roles, with leadership experience spanning UX, engineering, SEO, analytics, and CRO. Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree welcome but not required.
• AI Integration: Experience applying and integrating AI beyond team productivity, with potential use cases including customer‑facing agentic capabilities, AI‑driven personalization, on‑site assistants and guided commerce agents, and experimentation systems that learn and adapt. Candidates should be able to articulate a point of view on how AI will reshape digital experience in this category over the next three to five years.

Why Empire Today?

We empower our employees to strive for their unique goals. Within such an inclusive company with unlimited growth opportunities, how far you go is up to you.

We take care of our people. We start investing in you from day one. The perks and benefits we offer help you live well, both at work and at home.

We have an unmatched company culture. We’ve won multiple awards for employee and customer satisfaction, and we believe it all comes down to our culture of teamwork, creativity, and growth.

We’re one of the nation’s most recognizable brands. You’ll enjoy the stability that comes with a national company and a sense of pride when you’re a part of our team.