What ecommerce consulting involves and covers

Ecommerce is booming. Well, it is not just booming now; it has been for more than a decade. And there is plenty more to come…

Not because I say so—although I do—but because the numbers say it, such as that annual growth rate, which reaches double digits without breaking a sweat.

Few sectors can boast the same.

Or the 6 billion dollars, which is no small amount, that it generates every year.

That makes it a tempting slice of the pie for many.

For people who like the idea of selling online.

And for people who like helping those who want to sell online.

That is why, over the past few five-year periods—even decades—different specialist players have appeared:

Marketing agencies —specialising in any of their channels (SEO, SEM, email, programmatic…) or related disciplines (Growth, CRO, UX, automation)—with expertise in ecommerce.
Companies specialising in web development for online stores.
Logistics partners dedicated to online sales.
Specialists in electronic payments.
Businesses providing photography for ecommerce.
Companies offering translation and product catalogue uploads.
Solutions SaaS for online stores (CMS, ERP, CRM, marketing platforms, chatbots, product search engines or website personalisation…).
Etc., etc.

The ecommerce ecosystem has led to the development of a good number of related sectors.

And I am talking about companies, but of course the same applies to the freelance world, with many professionals specialising in one of the areas above.

The fact is that it is difficult for an SME—and most ecommerce businesses in that country are SMEs—to cover all these areas.

That is where the need for ecommerce consulting.

arises: experts who make the knowledge gained from other projects available to these companies’ managers, helping them grow in an integrated way.

They must know how an ecommerce business can grow, the organisational processes involved, and the impact of growth in a specific area, usually marketing.

For that, you need an overall view of the business. And above all, you need to understand that selling more does not necessarily mean making more money.

Índice de Contenidos del Artículo

What does ecommerce consulting involve?
The consulting process
What knowledge do you need as an ecommerce consultant?
Insights your client will gain
Conclusions

What does ecommerce consulting involve?

Ecommerce consulting goes beyond the usual generic advice that, if you run an ecommerce business, you will have heard a thousand times: “invest X more”, “open this channel”, “negotiate with your packaging supplier”, “you need a CFO”, blah blah blah.

No.

What it involves is an in-depth analysis of everything relevant to the client’s business:

Of its entire digital strategy. Why it uses some channels and not others.
Of its products. And its margins.
Of its customers. And their repeat purchase rate. And their LTV. And their country of origin.
Of its analytics and reporting systems. Daily and monthly.
Of conversion optimisation. And the rest of the website.
Of the control over its logistics operations. And their costs. And incidents.
Of its systems and tools.
Of its staff, teams and the relationships between them.
Last but not least: the owner’s goals, which may not be aligned with those of the business. And you will notice it.

You need to uncover all of this, both in the initial interviews and throughout the process, by analysing the information obtained.

At this point, before discussing the necessary steps, you may wonder: if you already have all of the above clear, why do you need a consultant?

I will give you two reasons:

I do not believe that you have all of the above under control and are still an SME.
No matter how much you work in your business—or precisely because you do—you will always have blind spots that only an expert with an outside perspective can reveal.

The consulting process

A consultant does not simply review your store and hand you a report. At most, that is an audit.

At most.

Consulting is more than that. And the process usually follows these steps:

Initial audit: this analyses how each point in the previous section is performing. And there are quite a few. That is why the deliverable is usually long, depending on the business, of course. Do not be surprised if it exceeds 50 pages. Or 100.

Goal definition: based on the previous point, having clear goals is essential. Do you want more traffic? Higher conversion? A better shopping cart? Realistic goals must be agreed or it will achieve little. This is best done live, with the numbers in front of everyone and all relevant parties involved.
Business strategy: the result of the two previous steps will be a document containing findings, questions and scenarios to discuss, and doubts that should lead us to establish a roadmap with the initiatives that will take us from the current state—the audit—to the desired state defined in the goals.
Implementation and adjustments: once the map is set, it is time to follow it. And this is the hardest part because, as the Spanish saying goes, “man proposes, God disposes”. Applying improvements is almost always harder in practice than on paper.

In addition, by monitoring progress we will see whether we are on track to meet the goals. Adjustments will be needed according to the results. There is also a division of tasks: parts of the roadmap will be handled by the consultant, others by the company’s internal team, and some will be outsourced.

Of course, knowing the process is essential, but other kinds of knowledge are also required. Let us see which ones in the next section.

What knowledge do you need as an ecommerce consultant?

To be a good consultant, knowing digital marketing is nowhere near enough.

You need a very broad view of the digital sector in general and the ecommerce world in particular, which includes certain non-digital aspects that you may not have considered. And they are crucial.

You also need a 100% business-focused view. Profitability. Numbers.

Not opinions about what clouds smell like or whether the green in the logo needs five more points of saturation.

To make it absolutely clear, let us specify what I believe you will need.

Digital marketing and SEO

It is the first step in the funnel: attracting traffic to the ecommerce site. Every channel is valid as long as it is profitable.

I highlight SEO because, unless the client has a substantial social following or a qualified email list, it is the channel that will allow them to make profitable the investment in paid channels.

It also has its own rules, which strongly affect the content and code of the online store. So, if you want to audit and provide ecommerce consulting, you need solid foundations. Here are some resources:

General downloadable resources (includes an SEO Guide for CMS).
SEO tools.
Ecommerce demand analysis.
Requirements for an online store (including SEO requirements).
Email marketing for ecommerce.

CRO and UX

After attracting customers to the website, the next step is getting them to buy. That is why you need to know how to optimise the store to turn visits into sales.

You need to understand the psychology behind selling and the best practices that make navigation smooth, provide users with the options they need and remove friction, especially during checkout.

Of course, these disciplines have their own techniques, all well proven, which you need to know how to apply—user testing, recordings and heatmaps, feedback loops—as well as their tools.

Some articles and resources on the subject:

Data analysis

Yes, Google Analytics is a must. But it is nowhere near the most useful tool here.

The sales and customer reports are the main source you should use to audit the business.

And the invoices for marketing and logistics tools too.

Then come Analytics, Clarity and whichever digital platforms you want.

But an ecommerce business is, above all, a business. And a business exists to bring in more money than it spends, so that is the most important point and the main focus of both the audit and the consulting work that follows.

That is why traffic from Portugal, traffic from users accessing via iPhone, or the number of products added to the cart are not KPIs. At most, they are metrics—important or supporting ones.

The profit and loss statement is your friend. Embrace it and learn to read it as soon as possible.

On the other hand, you do not operate alone in the market, so knowing how to perform an online competitor analysis for an ecommerce business is another essential skill.

Technology

Yes, I have just told you that ecommerce is, above all, a business. But it is a business with a very important digital component .

And digital means technological.

That is why, if you want to be an ecommerce consultant, you need solid knowledge in this area.

Let us specify what I believe is essential:

Ecommerce CMS: having worked with one or more of these solutions, mainly PrestaShop, WooCommerce and Shopify.
Payment platforms: POS terminals, PayPal, Stripe, Adyen… Managing payments is fundamental. And it erodes part of your margin if you neglect it.
Marketing platforms: mainly Google Ads and Meta. Also some email marketing platforms. To a lesser extent, other networks such as TikTok or YouTube and affiliate programmes.
Web technologies: knowing what PHP is, how it differs from JavaScript, and how a server or database works. This will help you understand IT and any limitations.
Marketplaces: although I do not consider it essential to be an expert in them, you do need to understand how they work in general.
AI: we have barely scratched the surface, but it will be an essential pillar that you will need to handle with confidence. Here are some articles to help you understand how Artificial Intelligence can help your business.

You will need to know enough about each of these points. You do not have to be an expert in all of them—better if you are, of course—but you must meet certain essential minimums.

If you have major gaps in any of them, that is a problem. You will need to be clear about how to learn them or how to deal with that area in different projects.

But you should also be comfortable with…

Recommended ecommerce tools

Here is a list of digital tools for marketing and project management. But as it is quite long, I will highlight those I consider basic.

Excel: a minimum command of pivot tables, charts, VLOOKUP and COUNTIF—and related functions—is essential. Everything you learn will be hugely useful here.
Google Analytics: you probably know it. The best free digital analytics tool, present on 99% of ecommerce websites worldwide.
Microsoft Clarity: my favourite tool for UX and CRO work.
SEO tools: Google Search Console, Semrush, RankTracker, Google PageSpeed and Screaming Frog make up my basic stack. Except perhaps the last one—which is more technical—the others are quite intuitive and very easy to use.
Google Ads Keyword Planner: for both SEO and SEM.
ChatGPT: it is my assistant in Excel and when carrying out complex calculations.
Xmind: for creating mind maps where I add and organise consulting ideas.

They may seem like a lot, especially if you are starting out, but overall they are fairly easy to use. If you work with them for a reasonable period—six months or a year—you will have more than mastered them.

Honestly, I do not think one year of training is much to become comfortable and confident in your role as an ecommerce consultant.

Insights your client will gain

That is the point: to extract valuable insights that allow the client to make decisions that help achieve the goals:

Revenue: knowing where sales come from, mainly which channels, countries and products.
Profitability: of marketing in general and each channel in particular.
Customers: how much it costs to acquire one. And how much value they generate. Essential for calculating the previous point.
Conversion: establishing improvements that help increase it. From simplifying checkout to optimising website speed, small changes that together will have a huge impact on the business’s profitability.
Proposed goals: realistic ones, based on where we are, the resources we have and where we want to go. Always challenging, but never frustrating.
Proposed improvements: a roadmap covering the areas to improve—marketing, technology, logistics, customer service…—ordered by importance and difficulty, with defined dates and assigned to the person or team responsible.

All of this is what I believe a good ecommerce consultant must provide to the client.

As you can see, it is not a huge amount, but it is not little either. Being able to offer it will require several years of experience in the trenches—managing an ecommerce business, not just one specific area. At least a couple of years, and obviously the more the better.

Conclusions

Ecommerce consulting is the best way I know to grow an ecommerce business that has reached a certain ceiling—say, two million euros in revenue, for example.

It is about having someone external analyse your business and focus on the areas receiving less attention. That person must also have enough knowledge and experience to provide solutions tailored to the project. In other words, they need flexibility and must not arrive with an unchangeable stack of tools and processes.

What Van Gaal did when he arrived at Barcelona and signed all the Dutch players he had managed at Ajax does not work for most SMEs I know. It is doomed to fail because of resources and staffing.

That is why the consultant needs, first, a strong business mindset and second, a very broad view of everything happening in the sector: trends, tools, channels… Once they have that, it is a matter of translating that knowledge into the best solutions for each case. They will not always be the same, because repeat purchase and customer type are not remotely alike in every sector.

So, if you want to be an ecommerce consultant in Spain, once you have the necessary knowledge and experience, always keep Bruce Lee’s philosophy in mind. You know:

“Be water, my friend”.

I think that, after more than 15 years in this field, it is the best advice I can give you.

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