OMOSA Meets: Martin Charrouset, Head of eCommerce at Sodastream France
Intro
How do you take over an eCommerce division in a complex international organization, with layered processes, multiple tools, and immediate business expectations? Martin Charousset, now Digital Manager at SodaStream France, shares a highly practical look at stepping into a role like this. Formerly at Faguo, and with several years of hands-on eCommerce leadership, he brings a short-term, impact-first mindset and a rare ability to get things moving, even within large and sometimes rigid organizations. A candid, operational deep dive for experienced eCom professionals looking to benchmark, learn, and sharpen their own methods.
Understanding before acting: navigating a complex organization
Joining SodaStream means entering a global structure where each country runs its own eCommerce, while still relying on decentralized hubs. Martin oversees France, but the tech teams are in Israel, the data is centralized in Australia, and the processes are abundant.
“Just figuring out who does what and where to find information took me weeks.”
One of his first priorities was to map out stakeholders, understand the workflows, and identify silos. For instance, eCom revenue is tracked in Shopify, but corporate reporting is based on shipments, in a custom internal tool. The result? Constant discrepancies, and a complicated performance tracking system.
Building your own compass: Excel before BI
Martin avoids using Looker Studio:
“Too slow, out of date, and I couldn’t trust how it was set up.”
Instead, he built a Google Sheets dashboard, just like he did at Faguo. Every month, he tracks: revenue, number of orders, conversion rate, average order value, items per order, traffic, ROAS, and ad budget.
“It was a way to get things back into familiar boxes. When you arrive in a new setup, you need your bearings.”
By analyzing these KPIs month by month, he spotted a red flag: despite rising ad spend, traffic was dropping fast (down 20% to 60%). A clear signal that acquisition needed serious attention.
Diagnose fast, act smart
The diagnosis was clear: conversion rates were rising, AOV was up, but traffic was tanking. Meanwhile, the marketing budget had increased. Tracing things back, Martin realized Meta Ads accounted for just 10% of traffic, while a DTC site should be seeing 20–50%. Worse: sessions were costing €4. CTR was really low.
“That’s alarming.”
He called in external experts, including the OMOSA agency, to audit the Meta strategy. Together, they uncovered underperforming campaigns, tracking misalignments, and a major data gap between Meta’s back office and GA4. Within months, they brought the cost per session down from €4 to €0.80.
Prioritizing based on business impact
“I’m not here to launch a redesign in two years. I need revenue now.”
Martin builds his roadmap in Excel, assigning a rough score (0 to 3) for each project based on estimated revenue impact.
One example: reactivating Bing Ads, which had been shut off due to a billing error. After chasing down the issue, the platform was relaunched, and in April, the results came in:
€3K spent → €15K revenue → ROAS x5.
Not revolutionary, but concrete. A smart way to claw back market share.
Conversion: a tried-and-tested checklist
When the conversion rate drops, Martin turns to his go-to checklist. First: traffic source changes? Past promotions? Recent deployments or GTM container updates? Site speed issues? Stockouts? He also digs into device/browser/OS breakdowns and tunnel step drop-offs.
“Sometimes you go through it all and still don’t find the issue. You just have to accept some months are off.”
Onsite engagement: what really matters
At Faguo, Martin tested a dynamic merchandising app that reorders product grids based on performance, updated hourly. He also shares a few quick wins:
- Displaying Klarna at the top of product pages
- Using lifestyle/“worn” images as the primary visual
- Featuring customer reviews prominently
He also tested more engaging landing pages, like “Top 5 Reasons to Buy a SodaStream”, which performed well, but were hard to scale without proper creative resources.
A deliberately minimal tech stack
Martin sticks with GA4, GTM, Shopify, and Google Sheets. Simple but reliable data beats a beautiful dashboard.
It’s all about actionable metrics that actually help drive business.
Redesigning instead of patching
The current site, Martin says, is too outdated. He’s pushing for a complete overhaul, not just a facelift. He wants to rebuild on solid foundations that meet today’s customer expectations (for example, adding a search feature). For him, this “product debt” is actually an opportunity to drive quick value.
Test, fail, learn
Some of his most revealing tests:
- Google Pay: tested, but too few users to justify it.
- Product reviews: initially resisted internally, turned out to be a conversion booster.
- Landing pages for best sellers vs. category pages: curated landings win.
Hero image testing: lifestyle shots outperformed packshots every time (at Faguo).
A ground-level view of eCommerce
“eCommerce isn’t magic. It’s acquisition, conversion, retention. If your product’s good and your strategy’s clear, it works.”
Martin brings a hands-on, craft-like approach to eCom. He focuses on the fundamentals, prioritizes clearly, and knows what levers to pull. In less-than-perfect orgs, this is what delivers real results.
Conclusion
Martin Charousset brings a rare ability to operate through the fog. He defines his own KPIs, finds the reliable data, tackles problems in order of urgency, and executes fast. His vision of eCommerce favors agility over grand strategies, Excel over Looker dashboards, and operational clarity over tool overload.
A must-read for anyone steering eCom performance in imperfect environments.