5 Minute Read

All eCommerce business owners need to work with a consultant at some point. At least ones that plan to succeed. When your business starts to grow, you’ll need to work with an eCommerce consulting agency to implement proactive, growth-oriented strategies that are proven to work. 

Here’s how it often goes:

eCommerce teams put a lot of effort into marketing products and increasing revenue. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. So, they try everything and hope they’ll get lucky enough to have the success outweigh the loss. And that’s called wasting your time. 

Trying random techniques and taking different approaches hoping they work is like reinventing the wheel. The solutions you’re looking for probably already exist. All you have to do is talk to the right people. That’s how you grow your online customer base and increase revenue as quickly as possible.

As a business owner, you can’t and don’t know it all about online eCommerce strategies. Hiring an eCommerce consultant will help you increase your revenue and maximize the ROI of any investment you make into your online business. That’s always a good idea. 

As soon as you notice any of the following, it’s a sign you need to start working with an established eCommerce consulting agency:

Your eCommerce Website Stinks

Bad websites are one of the biggest reasons why eCommerce businesses fail. When people visit your website and don’t like what they see, they’ll simply just leave.

And when we say don’t like “what they see”, we’re not just talking about the visual design of your website. We’re talking about the entire experience. Since more businesses have jumped on the eCommerce bandwagon, selling anything online has become super-competitive. You need to keep up. 

According to a recent study, it takes customers 0.05 seconds to form an impression about a website. That’s the window of opportunity you have to make the right impression, and design plays a vital role in this process. 

In addition to taking its toll on your conversion rates, a poor eCommerce website gives a bad impression of your business. Just like with physical stores, people buy with their eyes first. Consumers aren’t excited to buy anything from poorly-designed eCommerce websites. Not to mention that no one wants to provide credit card details on a shady-looking website. 

If you want people to trust your business and buy from you online, you’ll need a website that walks the talk. According to another study, 94% of people evaluate websites based on their design, -looks DO matter. 

While winging it yourself with an inexpensive freelancer may have worked in the past, it’s not a scalable approach. If your eCommerce business becomes a real business, enterprise-level, you need a real website.

If you’ve reached a point where your eCommerce website is too much for you to manage, or you know it can perform better, that’s a strong sign you need an eCommerce consulting agency to step in.  

Managing Reviews is a Nightmare

No matter how good your product or service is, bad reviews are inevitable. And it’s not your fault. Some people just simply don’t like anything. That’s the way it is. While a smaller mom-and-pop shop can filter out the unfairly-bad reviews that come from time to time, it’s not that simple for larger-scale enterprise eCommerce websites.

The number of products sold and, as a result, the number of reviews coming in can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it’s simply impossible to handle. At least if managing those reviews is not your full-time job.

When you sell hundreds—or thousands— of products on different online marketplaces, reviews can get out of control quickly. The process of handling and responding to negative reviews is not the same across all marketplaces.

If you find yourself trying to keep up with managing customer reviews—or your online reputation in general—it’s a clear sign that you’ve outgrown your current process and need professional help. 

You’re Not Sure What’s Working

Nobody ever succeeds at anything without trying and failing. That’s how you know what works and what doesn’t. And it’s true for business as well. As an eCommerce business owner, you probably wear different hats and try different things to gain customer loyalty, increase online conversions and ultimately increase revenue. 

You try promoting your products on different social networks, optimizing your website to improve your conversion rates, and the list goes on. You won’t always succeed, and that’s perfectly normal. 

What’s not normal is not knowing what’s working and what’s not. Not collecting and interpreting data defeats the purpose of experimentation. Unless you can accurately measure results and use them to improve, your efforts are completely fruitless. 

Knowing what’s working and what’s not for an eCommerce business is not that simple to track. There are many moving parts and, even if you knew what to track, you simply may not know how to track it.

If you’re experimenting with new ways to market your products and improve your online sales in general but aren’t sure what you need to double down on, you need professionals who can point your business in the right direction. 

An experienced eCommerce consulting agency will know how to work with you to establish the right KPIs and performance metrics (and how to measure them). Even if you are employing never-before-seen approaches or strategies, a great consultant will have the experience and technical know-how to identify and track the right metrics. They’ll also with A/B testing to identify what works best for you and your online business. 

Your Customers are a Mystery

Knowing your customers and thinking you know your customers are two different things. In most cases, businesses make assumptions regarding who their customers are and what their behavior is like. And that’s particularly true for an eCommerce business. 

When you sell products in a physical store, you get to see and chat with your customers. You really know who those people are, what they like, what they don’t like, and how to market your products and services to them.

When selling online, understanding who your customers are isn’t that simple. You need someone who knows how to collect accurate data with tools like Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, and Woopra. This data includes everything from your customers’ locations to their age, the devices they use, cart abandonment patterns, and more.

Using this data, an eCommerce consulting agency can build a data-driven persona that will guide all your marketing efforts. Without an accurate, data-driven customer persona, you can’t tailor your customers’ online experience to increase conversions.   

Your Back Office Systems Aren’t Integrated

Every business has its back-office systems. Whether you’re selling pizza or a SaaS product, there are processes and systems that you need to keep your business running. Customers don’t see these; that’s why they’re called a “back” office.

Back-office systems are the glue that holds your entire operation together. These systems include everything from order fulfillment and shipping to collecting payments, and they can definitely affect your customers’ experience. For your organization to streamline processes and increase operational efficiencies, integrating your back-office systems is a must. 


Everything from your eCommerce ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and accounting software should work together seamlessly. If you haven’t integrated your systems yet, you need to work with an eCommerce consulting agency that has experience with integrations like yours to make it happen. 

TL;DR

If running your eCommerce business starts to feel overwhelming, that could actually be a good sign (it’s called growing pains). This may also be a sign that you need an eCommerce consulting agency. These agencies have worked with businesses like yours before and have helped them solve the exact problems you’re facing. 

Instead of figuring it out on your own—and throwing away your valuable time and money in the process—you should work with an experienced eCommerce consulting agency. It’s how you get your business the predictable, measurable growth you’re after.