How to Choose the Right Ecommerce Consultant
When do you decide that it’s time to get someone else to help you support your business?
Are you trying to scale but getting stuck because something in the business isn't working the way it should?
Maybe you’ve made the wrong platform decision in the past, or everyone is too busy trading the business to focus on the important strategic decisions. You know something needs to change, but you don’t know where to start.
Over time, the tech stack has just grown with band aid solutions and more things added over time, until nobody in the business can quite explain how it all fits together anymore and you know your customers are the ones suffering the most.
Whether you need a full scale audit or just some help on a key project, an independent consultant with the right experience can help.
So how do you find the right partner?
Ask if they've actually run ecommerce
Frameworks look great in a deck. They don't tell you what breaks at 2am on Black Friday, or why the warehouse team is working around a system nobody signed off on.
There's a difference between someone who's read about ecommerce and someone who's run it inside a retailer, owned the result and had to present to a board to get what they need to drive the business. A consultant that has never worked a day inside a retailer is basing their advice on theory and not reality.
Ask who they partner with
Having the right relationships is critical as long as it doesn’t land you with the wrong decision. A consultant needs to have relationships they can leverage when needed but if they are only recommending a platform because they get a referral fee, that’s something you need to know.
Ask if they think past the website
Ecommerce doesn't stop at checkout. That’s when the hard stuff actually starts. It's fulfilment. It's returns. It's what happens when a customer walks into a store holding an online order and the person behind the counter has no idea what to do with it.
Plenty of consultants can optimise a product page or increase marketing spend. Fewer can look at the whole business and explain why your online and in-store teams are fighting each other over the same customer.
Ask if they can actually run an RFP
Not send the same brief to five vendors and pick whoever discounts hardest. A proper RFP tests vendors against what your business actually needs, not a template checklist copied from the last client.
And it shouldn't stop at ecommerce platforms. The same discipline applies whether you're choosing a new platform, an agency or anything critical to your business. A consultant who can only run this process for one type of vendor can only solve one type of problem.
Ask if they can explain it to your board
A consultant who only knows the buzzwords will struggle to explain to a board why the recommendation matters. You need someone that can explain technology to a non-tech native audience. Otherwise it’s jargon that won’t get the funding to deliver on the objective.
Ask if they're built for your size
A big four consultancy can be great, if you have the budget. They will hand you a report built on frameworks and case studies from businesses that may be nothing like yours, priced for a business several times your size. But we’ve all seen it first hand where they'll come in to the business, charge you for the thinking, then leave. If it doesn't work, that's your problem now.
The value in someone who's actually worked inside a retailer is that the recommendation comes from having lived with a decision like this before. And if something does go wrong they’ll still be there to answer the call.
What’s the checklist I need to get the right consultant for me:
Independent advice
Experience inside a retailer
Solved problems like yours before
Thinks beyond the website
Runs a proper RFP
Explains things in plain language
Right size for your business
Fits your budget
What happens next
The link below books a 30 minute call. Bring the actual problem. You'll leave knowing whether it's worth talking further, and if it is, what that looks like and roughly what it costs.
Rebel Android has experience working with retailers including Bunnings, Country Road Group, Tool Kit Depot, Snooze and Early Settler.