Why should you invest in hiring an eCommerce consultant for your business?
Here we have mentioned few of the reasons why a business should consider hiring an eCommerce consultant:
- In order to boost sales – In case of shoppers abandoning their carts on the business’s website, the eCommerce business consultant will go through the website to find out the reasons why it is happening. They will help in designing the website to make it more user-friendly and welcoming.
- They give feedback which is free of bias – Once a company shows their website to the consultant; they thoroughly perform audits for giving unbiased feedback on what the company is doing right and wrong simultaneously. Even a slight mistake in the website could lead to a downfall in sales. They might, for example, recommend putting more focus on marketplaces which are of multi-vendor type.
- Help the business to focus on the right audience – Oftentimes when businesses cannot identify their target groups, which are narrow but mostly profitable, their sales suffer and so, they are not able to reach them. With the help of eCommerce consulting agencies, they are being helped on focussing their resources on marketing to their right audience.
- Creating a roadmap – The ecommerce consultant will develop a roadmap which best suits the business’s needs and is customizable. This can help in tracking and quantifying the business’s objective as well as allow tracking growth in business in both short and long term.
How does an eCommerce consulting company work?
If a business wants to successfully sell a product, all they have to do is to set up a website, with the supervision of reputed e-commerce website consultants, and start selling the product or service right away.
In the landscape of modern business, consultants for eCommerce services play a progressively important role. A variety of services are offered by an eCommerce marketing consultant which focuses primarily on ecommerce stores analysis, evaluation of their position in markets, and helping the store owners of ecommerce on achieving their goals. Apart from these, they also provide services of advisory for growth and management of ecommerce stores.
- Ecommerce consultants have a wide ranging process to highlight the areas in an online store which are in need of improvement. They will also give recommendations for higher traffic generation and for ways to improve sales.
- They also provide assistance on ways of tracking objectives of growth, introducing accountability as well as optimizing the hierarchy of the store.
- An ecommerce consultant would possess extensive understanding of key trends in digital marketing, which includes blogging, social media marketing, search engine optimization, branding in online space, and other tactics which the ecommerce business can use for product promotion.
- The work of an ecommerce marketing consultant can span different stages of ecommerce stores’ growth lifecycle. They can help young stores in identifying their opportunities of growth and stores which are already established by identifying their main cost centres for lowering operational cost.
Overall eCommerce consulting companies will create tactics and strategies customized to a company’s needs for boosting their ROI and lower costs, these mainly depend on the role of the ecommerce store, the groups of products being sold as well as the target market the company is focussing on.
How does an eCommerce consultant differ from an eCommerce developer?
Even though ecommerce consultants and ecommerce web developers are tangled up in occupations which are similar i.e. web solution implementation for sales online, they have varied approaches and goals towards the process of development.
Ecommerce developers are mainly responsible for fulfilling technical tasks. Simple, these developers implement the ideas of other people. Their primary purpose is creating code and developing websites with smooth navigation, after following visions of their client.
The problem is that sometimes the client's vision is not always clear and might not bend towards the fluctuating conditions of the market. The result of which, a newly produced website may be able to provide basic services to customers but for modern users, its suitability will be not alright. In scenarios like these eCommerce consultants come into view for addressing this issue.
Ecommerce consultants do not easily follow the visions of their clients as they are mostly concerned with the success in terms of long term for the business of their clients. In this sense we can say that if eCommerce developers are implementers then eCommerce consultants are said to be architects of the business.
Only when these fundamentals have been determined, the initiation of the development process is done by the eCommerce consulting companies:
- A competitive market research which aids in identifying a name of domain, niche, business mode, technology stack, etc.
- The approach towards development, which depends upon the preferences of the client and their willingness to invest.
- Functionality of project, methods for monetization, etc.
Overall it can be said that, the work of ecommerce consultants is to delve deep into the problems of the business and broadly tackle the process of development while eCommerce developers mostly focus on the technical sides of the projects handed to them.
How to estimate the cost of hiring an eCommerce consultant?
The cost of hiring an eCommerce consultant varies largely. The main factors of which will be the location and the level of expertise.
It is cheaper mostly to hire someone for outsourcing simple tasks rather than hiring a professional who can examine a business and point out what needs to be done while also offering insights which are valuable. Hiring somebody from the United States is going to be much more costly than doing so from someone residing in the Philippines, where the cost of living is cheap, However the difference in time zones can be a problem too as they make coherent communication different at the same time.
The rates for international freelancers range from $4 to $10 per hour. In countries which are more industrialized, the pay usually ranges from $50 to $100 per hour, as expected for example, from a consultant based in the US. In the mid to lower level work, the US consultant’s fee starts from $30 per hour and at expert level, the fee ranges from $50 to $200 per hour. The payment regarding hourly or project rate depends solely upon the work.
If an eCommerce business is earning $10k per month, then with the help from an eCommerce consultant, the revenue figure will roughly increase by 10%(let’s say). This results in the business getting an extra $1k per month. Thus we can infer that improvements which are targeted can make a huge difference.
Questions to ask before hiring an eCommerce consultant for your business
The Questions that should be frequently asked before hiring an eCommerce consultant for a business are:
- Can I have access to the Names and Resumes of the team members my company will work with, most of the time?
- Do you think we can bring success by working together? Why?
- Out of all the partner service providers, which one impresses you the most?
- With reference to each of those partners, when do you think they would not be a decent fit for your client? And if that might be the case, who would you recommend instead?
- To prove your expertise and experience in the domain of Ecommerce consulting, which case studies can help?
- How will our data be used for the purpose of our growth?
- What are the services you will provide as an Ecommerce Consultant?
- Which kind of services won’t be offered from your side? And why?
- While working with you, what can clients do which can magnify their returns?
- In E-Commerce nowadays, what are some of the biggest blunders by clients have you seen?
- Why do you think the products or services of my company have the potential to surpass our competitors?
