What is Ecommerce Consulting?

Get ecommerce help for your online business, not just your website.

What is Ecommerce consulting? Ecommerce consultants can help you figure out why your website isn’t converting that precious traffic, how to get more of it, and how to position your business for success.

Ecommerce consultants can improve sales, inventory systems, and market share rapidly without you having to reinvent the wheel, saving you time and headaches. It’s an all encompassing scope of work, not just marketing services, digital strategy, ad bids and copy. The key difference between digital marketing services and ecommerce consulting is the ecommerce business advisory aspect that can only come from an ecom entrepreneur that’s done it successfully.

An ecom consultant doesn’t provide digital marketing services or web development services, it’s advisory based. An ecommerce assessment will often review ad agency and development agency performance as part of the engagement.

This is what I do every day for a handful of select clients with guaranteed results. I only take clients that I know we can help.

Is an ecommerce consultant right for your business?

If you want help from a successful e-commerce entrepreneur that’s done all this before, yes it’s for you. If you want the learn how to do e-commerce the right way and build an e-commerce business instead of just a website a consultant is a great asset.  Investing in someone with experience to show you the ropes can help you achieve success for yourself and your company. Ecommerce brands often get stuck in ecommerce marketing and don’t look at the big picture.

The objective of hiring an ecommerce consultant is to gain control over your ecommerce business through advisory and proven best practices not just advertising.

Success is the result…whatever that looks like to you, more time with family, more money, less stress, better e-commerce systems, and teams that run themselves…this can be achieved through working with the right person.

I personally help you not only move your business forward but train you or your team members on why and how to keep building it above and beyond. Working with an ecommerce group like Sharp Commerce can take some of the stress out of growing your company using experience and proven strategy from experts that know what works.

If you want someone to do everything for you or you won’t do the work, no soup for you.

Consulting is just that, comprehensive recommendations from an experienced professional, it’s done with you, not down for you. If you want done for you….hire a freelancer or a typical digital agency and hope for the best.

You can hire an ecommerce consulting firm or an individual consultant. There are benefits to both. A firm can have increased synergy similar to an ad agency with a group of talented marketers. However; hiring an individual that is laser-focused on your account and knows your business can have great results at a fraction of the price. A top agency can cost upwards of 100k for a 6-month engagement; I know because I’ve worked with clients that used the big agencies in the past.

Here are a few guidelines on the types of e-commerce problems I help solve through ecommerce consultancy. If you answer yes to any of the below, we can help.

• I want/to understand the value of coaching and guidance while growing my eCommerce business.
• I want to get my sales numbers back up where they once were.
• I’m tired of weak-sauce digital agencies that don’t deliver for me
• I can’t tell if my SEO team is even doing anything meaningful
• My conversion rate is low and I want to fix it and know why
• I want my website to rank higher on google
• I want to fix my abandoned cart rate
• I’m willing to do the work Travis lines out for me to improve my e-commerce business from the ground up.

Best Ecommerce consultants for Shopify?

Shopify is by far the most popular ecommerce website platform on the market. If you’re not using Shopify yet you likely will be soon. Hiring someone who is not only super familiar with Shopify but who is a quality ecommerce consultant is key to having a good engagement. When you hire an ecommerce consultant, they will often have an ecommerce technology consulting background as well, so use it.

Shopify has a ton of tools and it’s easy to get lost in what’s important and what’s going to move the needle and help grow your brand. For example, I’ve seen stagnant Shopify stores grow like crazy after getting proper help and guidance from an experienced ecom consultant.

Knowing how to optimize and what it looks like when it’s right can make all the difference in your ecommerce website sales.

There are some ecommerce consulting companies that are basically just marketers trying their hand at Search Engine Optimization and have never had success or ran their own ecommerce business before. It’s very different working with an experienced professional instead of an ecommerce startup consultant with limited experience and track record.

Hiring ecommerce help for your business?

Expect a deep dive into your business, website, workflows, and SOP. At Sharp, we assess your online business comprehensively in a holistic fashion. From there we listen to your pain points and goals. From this point, the low-hanging fruit initiatives are targeted based on the lowest cost and highest impact. You’ll work directly with Travis (a successful entrepreneur who has made millions online) to accelerate growth and get the step-by-step guidance required to improve and grow your ecommerce business. Ecommerce strategy consulting is difficult even for experienced professionals; make sure you go with someone you trust that has a great track record of success.

A big part of ecommerce is organization. Making a plan and sticking to it using tasks, lists and milestones for accountability is key. That has been a consistent factor in how I’ve personally grown companies since I started my first highly successful startup in 2005.

Another key element in creating a successful ecommerce business is creating a vision and mission for your business and understanding your weak points and strong points. These building blocks are needed for brands of all sizes and missing more than you’d think. Having a good grip on who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it is so important to establish early on.

 

“Travis here, I’ve been in your shoes. I actually built and ran a high-performance, multi-million dollar e-commerce business, and team before I started consulting (Read more about why I consult now rather than run an online store). The current eCommerce climate is increasingly competitive. In short, I provide recommendations to make you more money, be more efficient and take the stressful unknowns out of your ecommerce business.

 

I’ll personally help you locate the easiest lowest-cost opportunities for growth and solutions to move your business forward. I’ve worked with many different e-commerce business types and have strategy and experience to help you build a sustainable, scalable ecommerce business the right way.”

 

I provide advisory, and business consulting for your e-commerce business, not just your website. I help my clients take the stress out of running an online business and help them achieve their business goals and improve how they operate their online business.

What Do Ecom Consulting Firms Do?

Ecommerce consultancy is paying for someone with ecommerce experience for a comprehensive strategy and gameplan on how to increase sales and the value of your business with minimal disruption and drain on resources. What to do, and in what order. Seems simple right?

To do this correctly, it’s a tall order, and few can deliver it. This can include huge crossroads like what ecommerce platform to use or migrate to. It also can include inventory strategy, conversion rate optimization, catalog merchandising, specialized customer experience, SEO optimization recommendations, and digital marketing tweaks and overhauls. It’s also super important to review competitors and do market research in the category for brand voice, offer threshold, and current competitor tactics.

Here’s an example of a recent client story

A hobby craft e-commerce business signed with me 2 years ago wanting help migrating to Magento. After my full assessment, I realized their business model and needs didn’t match Magento as a solution at all. It made more sense and was going to be more beneficial to the client to keep their rickety Volusion site for the moment and work to optimize it. Within a year, sales improved by $3.74MM/yr, their processes are vastly improved, less stress, and there are still more big moves to make.

We found the customer experience was lacking overall, the SEO company was ripping them off with poor results, and the checkout had issues which was hurting sales. These were the key issues targeted and quantified as most important during the assessment.

We ended up offering recommendations on how to improve the checkout properly, then advised on how to properly redesign their website on their current platform to improve the user experience.

We also audited their current SEO and PPC vendors and found their SEO agency was essentially fraudulent and not doing jack shit.

I typically like to work in a complementary fashion with existing vendors and SEO agencies my clients use. There is a tangible cost to unnecessary disruption, and if something is performing ok, don’t mess with it. In this case, the SEO agency was blowing smoke and taking advantage of this client’s trust.

We worked with this client to train them on processes on how to measure search engine optimization (SEO) progress, attribution, and what types of organic traffic, keyword phrases, etc. were amounting to actual sales.

Today, this client is not only out of their sales slump but has increased sales dramatically as well as Average Order Value and conversion rate (see below).

The biggest takeaway from years of being a consultant is to do a proper assessment. An expert-level e-commerce website consultation and business review is essential before any moves can be made so you know what the most valuable moves will be in what order.

 

Consulting Rates

This is a great question! If you’re going to trust your business in the hands of another person, would you go with the cheapest option? Do you hire a bargain brain surgeon, lol?

Also, how much would you charge to coach and help other e-commerce owners build a business…if you’d made millions of dollars a year as a successful e-commerce store owner?

Ecommerce consulting rates and the consultants themselves come in a wide variety of flavors and prices. You’ll find there are consultants that have an hourly rate. The problem with offering to consult by the hour is there’s no skin in the game and no guarantee of results. An hourly consultant is also not going to take the time to get to know your business properly and won’t be on the hook for results.

Entry-level consultants can charge $70-$150 an hour, and results…will vary wildly. Some are just marketers trying to branch out and haven’t ever truly run a large-scale e-commerce business and just don’t have the experience with the systems to make a tangible difference.

Other consultants charge $500+ an hour with no guarantee of success. These flash-in-the-pan-type engagements are not the most beneficial for your business. I know because I used to charge by the hour. I found the amount of time needed to truly assess the business, the client, their style, and their goals, was immense.

How much does Sharp Commerce Charge for Ecommerce Help?

I like to charge based on results. Doing this for years has taught me where the line is for how much e-commerce assessment is needed to create positive results for a new client.

I prefer to heavily research a client’s competitors, staff, website metrics, and UX/UI, organic rank, and a host of other areas before making any actionable business recommendations. This approach is lengthy but delivers powerful insights and recommendations. There are only 2 clients on record I wasn’t able to get results for, it was sadly because they didn’t do the work. If you do the work, you’ll get results guaranteed.

I require a minimum 6-month agreement for all ecommerce consulting clients to guarantee results. I offer a retainer-based fee which includes weekly calls, lite project management, and as much coaching and guidance as needed to produce results.

I’m committed to getting results for my clients, and many clients keep me on retainer for many years, continuing sales growth for the business and improving marketing strategy, e-commerce systems, SOP, and efficiency.  Ecommerce Consulting Service Pricing

Beware of weak ecommerce consultants

A good e-commerce consultant is hard to find. You’ll often find e-commerce consultants that are truly unqualified or are just not very skilled. Most truly skilled entrepreneurs aren’t coaching others; they are out there slaying dragons in the business world.

Maybe they took a few Facebook courses and call themselves an e-commerce consultant, but they’re not. I have seen more of these poor-quality consultants over the recent years, gurus, etc.

All of these people are coming from a place where they haven’t actually done it before. They’ve never shipped a package, they’ve never truly built an e-commerce business from the ground up. When you review a candidate for consulting services, ask them if they’ve ever run an e-commerce store, how much money they made and why they would consult if they could make more money running an online store.

When you hire a consultant, they don’t want to get their hands dirty with implementing, and it’s inappropriate. They’ve done the implementation part for years and that part of their journey is over.  It’s enough of a challenge to learn enough about a business and offer perfect recommendations. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Ecommerce partnerships

I have a professional services team to help get things done when needed. I take pride in pushing through roadblocks whether it’s web development, market strategy, SEO, customer engagement, Google Ads, or some other area of your business. Some clients have their own implementation teams, I often work in concert with them to improve the results you’re already getting.

If you have a Google Ads agency that’s great, we can work with them. If you don’t, we have a whole separate digital marketing team just for Google Ads that has a holistic approach that we can loop in as needed.

I have another similar team for Facebook and Social Media when needed that we trust. Not all e-commerce consultants or firms will offer these services, this is my approach because I’ve found having trusted specialists in all of these areas gets results for our clients.

Ecommerce website consultation services are much different than using a digital marketing agency. An agency is comprised of marketers that typically specialize in a few areas of e-commerce, not your business as a whole. They also haven’t made millions of dollars directly selling products in the proverbial trenches; none of them have, I’ve checked.

Using an e-commerce consultant who’s actually built and managed a 7 and 8-figure e-commerce business adds rare experience to help steer your company. You’re not just getting best practice recommendations; you’re getting them from someone who’s earned this knowledge, making the mistakes and eventually enjoying success with real-world e-commerce business experience.

It might surprise you how detailed some e-commerce consultants can be in their assessment. I typically start with a 30,000-foot view, wide sweep, touching lightly on everything from SEO, online merchandising, Social Media, Email Marketing, list building, positioning, inventory management, and forecasting systems to hiring techniques, digital marketing, marketplaces, solutions providers, and management infrastructure, Whew!

So Travis, why do you consult for other e-commerce merchants instead of running your own store?

This is a question you must ask every and any consultant you look at.

My answer is simple, I lost my business at the end of year 9 to a surprise hostile takeover. I decided to help others while I regrouped and I ended up really enjoying helping businesses succeed and helping them get results.

(My sappy sad story below)

My silent partner betrayed my trust and I lost everything in the course of a year due to a loophole in a contract that my partner took advantage of. And no I don’t consult on contracts… I consult on how to build a successful online business.

Once the business was to a highly profitable point my partner pulled the rug out from under me. Word to the wise, use an independent lawyer to look over any partnership agreements, lol. I concentrated on running the business instead of how to protect myself from a partner I mistakenly trusted.

After a year in court and a $100k lawyer bill(damn lawyers), I lost the 55% stake in the business I built and my 27,000-square-foot building.

However; I was left with… my field-tested and proven e-commerce skillset + e-commerce strategy playbook.

My story made the rounds on LinkedIn. Then industry friends started asking for help with their e-commerce projects as a side hustle.

Shortly after I was formally helping “strangers” with e-commerce businesses who contacted me for help and to date I’ve made my clients a combined 60MM+ in sales growth. Some clients have been with me for 5 years+ and I’ve become a remote part of their team.

I’ve been in ecommerce since 2005 and switched from selling online as a merchant to ecommerce consulting in 2015 formally. Feel free to contact me with questions but keep in mind I only help a few businesses at a time as it’s fairly involved and I don’t have an assembly line type of service, it’s all customized to get results.