Certified specialist in e-commerce · Advanced training · Chamber of Industry and Commerce · DQF Level 6
Table of Contents
The recognized IHK degree for all those who want to penetrate online retail strategically, operationally and commercially and actively shape the digital future.
🎓 DQR Level 6 – Equivalent to Bachelor, Master Craftsman & Technician The qualification is classified at level 6 in the German Qualifications Framework – the highest level of professional training before the Certified Business Economist.
What is this training?
Certified Specialist in E-Commerce is a nationally recognised advanced training course in accordance with the Further Education Ordinance of 5 December 2019. The degree is aimed at commercial specialists with professional experience who would like to qualify for management and technical responsibility in online retail.
As an all-round specialist in e-commerce processes , graduates are able to independently and responsibly sell goods and services via digital channels – including multi-channel sales channels. In doing so, business, legal and organizational contexts are equally mastered.
Tasks and fields of activity
📊 Strategy development
Evaluate technological developments, select business models, plan assortment and implement e-commerce strategies in the company.
⚙️ Process design
Managing online sales channels, managing the range of goods and services, calculating national and international business.
🔍 Analysis & Optimization
Analyze changes in customer behavior, optimize process organizations, implement quality management and promote sustainability.
🤝 Leadership & Communication
Managing internal and external partners, designing customer- and service-oriented communication, cooperating with business partners.
Areas of action of the audit
Area of action
1. Develop strategies for e-commerce
2. Designing processes in e-commerce
3. Analyze and further develop processes in e-commerce
4. Ensuring communication and collaboration with internal and external partners as well as managing internal and external partners
Procedure of the examination
Written exam
Two days of exams on consecutive days
300 minutes processing time each
Situation-related tasks from all areas of action
Basis: Description of an operational situation
Oral examination
Presentation of an operational problem including solution
Followed by a technical discussion (approx. 20 minutes)
The technical discussion is weighted twice over the presentation
Topic from one of the three core areas of action (§ 5, 6 or 7 of the Ordinance)
To be carried out no later than two years after notification of the passed written part
Admission requirements
Anyone who meets one of the following requirements will be admitted to the examination:
Completed training in a recognised commercial and administrative profession + at least 1 year of professional experience
Completed training in another recognised training occupation + at least 2 years of professional experience
At least 90 ECTS credits in a business administration degree + at least 2 years of professional experience
Note: The professional practice must be substantially related to the tasks of a certified business administrator in e-commerce and must only be completed at the time of the examination.
Special advantages of the degree
AdA exemption: Successful graduates are exempt from the written part of the trainer aptitude test (according to AEVO).
Career path: The passed degree meets the admission requirements for the advanced training to become a certified business economist (DQR level 7).
Funding: The training is fully eligible for funding under the Upgrading Training Assistance Act (Aufstiegs-BAföG) – up to 75% of the course and examination fees can be funded.
Tax deductible: All costs are fully deductible as income-related expenses (employees) or business expenses (employers).
✅ Exam successfully passed – May 2022
I successfully passed the final exam to become a certified specialist in e-commerce in May 2022 . The degree confirms comprehensive expertise in strategy development, process design and commercial management in digital commerce.
Education partner: IHK Akademie Koblenz gGmbH
As an educational institution of the Koblenz Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Koblenz Chamber of Industry and Commerce has been offering qualified and subject-specific further education in the commercial and technical fields for over 50 years. More than 800 specialist lecturers accompany the participants competently, inspiringly and motivatingly on their learning path.
The offer includes courses, seminars, in-house training, distance learning and higher vocational education and training – regionally anchored in Rhineland-Palatinate and active nationwide.
Nadine Huss has been a lecturer for over 20 years and has more than 10 years of experience in her own agency in the areas of analyses, concepts and strategy development – especially in e-commerce. She is an examiner for the e-commerce manager as well as for business administrators in e-commerce at several chambers and in nationwide committees.
Their motto: "Pressurized refueling with knowledge."
Nadine Huss is also the author of the standard work "E-Commerce Manager – The Handbook for Training and Career", published by Rheinwerk Verlag – an indispensable reference work for further education and practice in e-commerce.
A very special thank you goes to Anke Hagedorn from the IHK Akademie Koblenz for her extraordinary support and guidance during the entire training - she helped to ensure that the path to the exam was not only feasible, but pleasant.
My heartfelt thanks also go to Nadine Huss, who, as a lecturer, played a decisive role in the learning success with her practical, engaging and extremely competent teaching. And of course I would like to thank all the other lecturers who have made this course a real enrichment with their expertise and commitment.
Many thanks to Anke Hagedorn (IHK Akademie Koblenz), Nadine Huss and all lecturers for their tireless commitment and valuable support!
Frank Burek: Certified Specialist in E-Commerce (IHK) · Exam passed May 2022 · burek.biz
After ten years of Divi, the time has finally come: With the official release of Divi 5 on February 26, 2026, it was clear to me that it was time for a complete relaunch of my personal website. burek.biz is released in a new guise – and Divi 5 is the reason for that.
In this post, I'll explain why I'm excited about Divi 5, what makes the new version so special, and what I want to build on burek.biz here in the future.
10 years of Divi – and now the best is yet to come
I still remember my first contact with Divi well. What started as an experiment quickly became my go-to tool for all things WordPress. Over the years, I've implemented countless projects with Divi – from small business sites to complex e-commerce projects.
As Marketing Manager for E-Commerce & Sales at GNV GmbH in Geisa , WordPress and Divi are also a daily companion professionally. I'm currently relaunching the company website with Divi 5 – and at the same time I'm renewing my own homepage. So it is obvious that burek.biz should also benefit from the new generation.
Divi 5 is no ordinary update. It's a completely fresh start on a technical level – and for me as a long-time Divi user, this is exactly what I've been waiting for for years.
What is Divi 5?
Divi 5 is the latest major version of the page builder from Elegant Themes – one of the most well-known and widely used WordPress theme and plugin providers worldwide. After over a year of public beta and intensive development, Divi 5 was officially released on February 26, 2026.
The core philosophy behind Divi 5 can be summed up in four words: performance, stability, scalability, extensibility. The entire system has been rewritten from the ground up – no compromises, no patches, but a clean, modern foundation.
"Divi 5 is a foundational update focused on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability." — Elegant Themes
The most important innovations in Divi 5
⚡ Blazing Fast – 2 to 4× faster than Divi 4
This is not a marketing statement, but measurable: According to Elegant Themes, Divi 5 is two to four times faster than its predecessor – both in the visual builder and in the frontend.
What this means in practice:
The Visual Builder loads 2-3× faster. Changes are rendered instantly, even on large pages. Divi 5 is so fast that a caching mechanism is no longer necessary – which permanently solves the annoying "double reload" problem of the past. Presets are now class-based, which drastically reduces the amount of CSS required in the frontend.
For anyone who's ever struggled with a sluggishly responsive editing view, Divi 5 feels like a different product.
🏗️ Complete Site Editing – the entire website in one step
One of the most significant innovations: In Divi 5, you can edit the entire website in a single editing session for the first time. Headers, footers, body layouts and page content – all accessible at the same time in the Visual Builder. No more constant back-and-forth between different areas.
This sounds inconspicuous, but it makes an enormous difference in daily work – especially when it comes to relaunches and major design changes.
🎨 Global Design Variables – Consistency at the Push of a Button
Divi 5 introduces a powerful system of global design variables : colors, fonts, spacing, images, texts and URLs can be defined centrally and integrated into thousands of settings fields.
Anyone who has ever had to change a color and manually clicked through dozens of modules knows how valuable it is. With global variables, a design change can be implemented sitewide in seconds.
This is complemented by class-based presets: you create a preset for a specific style, assign it to multiple elements – and a single change to the preset immediately affects all assigned elements.
📐 Flexbox & CSS Grid – precise layouts without code
The new layout builder in Divi 5 is based on Flexbox and CSS Grid. What used to require complicated custom CSS is now available natively in the builder. Precise grid control, flexible alignment options, and modern layout structures – all visual, all without a single line of code.
📱 Seven customizable breakpoints
Most page builders work with three fixed responsive views (desktop, tablet, mobile). Divi 5 goes further: seven predefined breakpoints, the widths of which can be individually adjusted. This is real, granular control over a website's responsive behavior.
🔄 Loop Builder – dynamic content without coding
With the Loop Builder , you can create fully customized, dynamic content loops – posts, custom post types, WooCommerce products – without any code. In combination with the new link modules, drop-down modules and the new menu query type, real, dynamic website structures are created.
⌨️ Command Center Keyboard-Driven Workflow
The new Divi Command Center is a keyboard-driven command system right in the builder. If you like to work with keyboard shortcuts, you'll love this feature – it speeds up the workflow considerably and keeps your hands off the mouse.
🚫 No more shortcodes – clean, block-based code
Divi 4 saved content in a shortcode-based format – a legacy from another WordPress era. Divi 5 has completely broken with this: content is stored in a block-based format, compatible with Gutenberg. That means cleaner code, better long-term stability, and improved interoperability with the native WordPress editor.
🛒 WooCommerce Integration
Divi 5 comes with full WooCommerce modules . E-commerce projects can thus be implemented seamlessly in Divi 5 – from the product display to the checkout area. For me as an e-commerce specialist, this is a particularly important point.
Provided by Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes offers an extensive library of free layout packs with professional stock photos and graphics that can be used royalty-free for personal and commercial projects – no attribution, no royalties.
To build burek.biz, I use images from these sources:
The image material is part of the Elegant Themes ecosystem and, according to their statement, may also be used without restriction in commercial projects.
burek.biz: A Wiki for Ecommerce, WordPress & Divi
The relaunch is more than a new design. burek.biz is to become a personal knowledge hub – a kind of wiki around the topics that accompany me professionally and privately:
E-commerce — strategies, tools, best practices from the practice of a marketing manager. What really works in online retail? Which platforms, which approaches, which mistakes should be avoided?
WordPress — From installation and plugin selection to performance optimization and security. WordPress remains the most used CMS in the world – and there's always something to learn.
Divi — Tutorials, tips, tricks, and deep dives around Divi 5. As a long-time user, I have learned a lot, which I would like to share here. From simple layout tricks to advanced techniques with the Loop Builder and global design variables.
The content is created from daily practice – both from my own work on burek.biz and from projects such as the relaunch of the GNV website.
Conclusion: Divi 5 is the right time
Ten years of Divi have convinced me that Elegant Themes is a reliable partner for WordPress projects. Divi 5 is the biggest step forward so far – a real refoundation that makes the builder fit for the next decade.
For the relaunch of burek.biz, the decision was therefore simple: Divi 5 offers everything I need – performance, design freedom, dynamic content and a clear future perspective. The parallel work on the GNV project makes it possible to combine both worlds: professional requirements and personal creation.
I'm looking forward to publishing new content here regularly and exploring the possibilities of Divi 5 and WordPress together with you.
Stay tuned – the wiki is growing.
Frank Burek is Marketing Manager for E-Commerce & Sales at GNV GmbH in Geisa. On burek.biz, he shares his knowledge about WordPress, Divi, and digital marketing.
