Here’s Everything You Need to Know Before Hiring an eCommerce Consultant

If you own an eCommerce business, then you might already know how tough it can be to manage everything. That’s why a lot of online store owners take the assistance of dedicated consultants to make their job easier.

Though, there are several things that you need to consider before hiring an eCommerce consultant. Here, I will cover every vital detail about hiring a consultant that you must go through beforehand.

What Exactly eCommerce Consultants Do

In common terms, an eCommerce consultant can be an indivsidual or a team that can help you perform all kinds of operations and services for running an online store. Since they come with a diverse background and experience, a consultant can help you in operations like packaging, shipping, marketing, inventory management, and so much more.

You can hire a consultant or an entire team on a full-time basis (in-house), via a contractual job, or even as a freelancer. Ideally, if you think your online business needs more help that is beyond your expertise, then hiring a dedicated consultant is a good option. Thus, can consider getting in touch with an eCommerce consultant in the following cases:

• If you are planning to expand the overall operations of your eCommerce store.
• When you have opened a new online store or are planning to launch a new vertical.
• In case you are short-staffed or need people with specific expertise.
• If you want an external agency to perform an audit of your store’s operations.
• When you are in a deadlock and can’t seem to get more profitable results.
• You want to transition to a different technology or framework but don’t have enough experience.

Things an eCommerce Consultant Can Help you With

Ideally, an eCommerce consultant can help you in more ways than you can imagine. From optimizing existing processes to improving various deliverables, consultants come with different expertise. In most cases, online firms and eCommerce business owners hire consultants to get help in the following domains:

Conversation Rate Optimization

This is certainly the most common obstacle faced by online eCommerce businesses. Either they are not able to generate quantified leads, or they find it hard to convert those leads into prospective customers.

If you are losing leads in different stages of the marketing funnel, then there must be something wrong with your strategy. In this case, a marketing consultant can help you get more leads and improve the overall conversion rate of your campaigns.

Launch & Manage Different Verticals

Another common scenario is when an online firm wants to open and maintain a dedicated vertical. Let’s say you are already selling apparel for women and now you want to sell clothes for kids. In this way, you can consider extending your store and start a new vertical instead.

If you don’t have much time, then you can consider hiring an eCommerce consultant instead. They can easily take ownership of the new vertical and complete end-to-end tasks so that you can focus on your business instead.

Perform Audits & Identify Your Hero Products

Even if your online store is doing well, it is highly recommended to perform timely audits. In this case, an experienced consultant can help you identify your bestselling products so that you can push them instead.

At the same time, they can help you identify the products that are not doing well and why some marketing tactics didn’t work out. You can take their help to learn from your mistakes and improve your efforts in the future.

Streamline Supply Chain Process

This might sound surprising, but a lot of online stores suffer from an irregular supply chain model. Chances are that your store might be facing issues with getting a timely supply of products.

That’s why you can also consider getting in touch with a professional to resolve this issue. Since they are industry experts, they can help you directly get in touch with some top-rated suppliers easily.

Tap New Opportunities & Trends

You might already know how dynamic and competitive the online marketing space is. Therefore, if you want to be ahead of your competitors, then you must tap into new opportunities and trends.

You can hire a consultant to perform in-depth market research regarding the new opportunities in your business. They can also perform a competitive analysis so that you can be ahead of others in your industry.

Things to Consider Before Hiring an eCommerce Consultant

While hiring an eCommerce consultant might appear rosy at first, there are a couple of things that you should consider in advance. This will help you get better results and find the best consultant to meet your needs.

Have Clear Business Goals

Before you reach out to a consultant, make sure you have a thorough knowledge of your business. Also, you should try to identify the problem you want the consultant to resolve. For example, do you want to improve the results of your marketing campaigns, or would you like to streamline the supply chain process? Make sure you know what you are trying to achieve before you proceed with a professional consultant.

Communicate about Their Role & Workload

To avoid unwanted confusion, I recommend communicating with the consultant about their role. You can provide them complete autonomy or let them work with your existing team. Just make sure their workloads and responsibilities are clearly defined.

Set up an Estimated Budget

Chances are that you might end up overspending while working with a consultant. That’s why you can set up an estimated budget for a one-time or an ongoing process. You should also know the hourly or project-based rates of the consultant to set up your budget.

Read about Their Testimonials & Experience

Most professional consultants have a dedicated presence with their website and social media handles. Before you hire them, you can simply visit their websites to know about their past clients. You can also do some independent research and read the overall feedback of their previous clients.

Have Quantifiable Objects & Responsibilities

Great! Once you have set up a budget and set up their role, you can also come up with various objectives and key responsibilities for them. I would recommend that the OKRs you set for them should be easy to measure. In this way, you can instantly calculate the ROI of hiring an expert and check whether it’s a profitable investment or not.

Advantages of Hiring an eCommerce Consultant

By now, you can easily understand more about the working of an eCommerce consultant. If you are still not sure whether they are right for you, then consider these advantages:

Saves time and money

Most business owners hire a consultant since they can’t take care of specific business needs themselves. Instead of doing everything on your own, you can hire a third-party consultant. Compared to an in-house employee, hiring a third-party consultant will save a lot of money too.

Get unbiased feedback

Sometimes, businesses can get stuck in a restricted environment. That’s why getting someone from another environment will help you analyze your business with a new pair of eyes. A professional consultant will provide genuine and unbiased feedback, letting you identify your limitations.

Streamline your business needs

Most importantly, you can provide a better structure to your business. A consultant can help you identify your business needs. They can also provide a detailed roadmap so that you can attain your business requirements.

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Wrapping up

That’s a wrap from our end! I’m sure that this detailed guide on eCommerce consultants will come in handy to you. To make things easier for you, I have listed the overall advantages of hiring an eCommerce consultant and how they can help you excel in your business.

Make sure you do your bit of research about the consultant you are planning to hire in advance. Besides that, you can also take the help of DSers to find products to sell on your dropshipping store and manage its overall services.