Ecommerce Consultant Tasks and Rate Ranges

A consultant is one who provides expert advice in a particular area. What about consultants for eCommerce? There are eCommerce consultants with a vast array of knowledge who can not only provide excellent advice, but can also take tasks off your plate and complete them faster and better than you!

Tasks For Ecommerce Consultants

Conversion Optimization

Ecommerce consultants know what converts and what doesn’t, or at least how to go through a systematic process to find out. Whether you’re selling through your own Shopify store, an Ebay store, or some other channel, eCommerce experts can likely either make small tweaks or large changes to improve your conversion rates.

Often eCommerce consultants have worked with lots of companies and run hundreds of tests to determine what works, and possibly more importantly, what doesn’t. For example, a consultant who specializes in Amazon may point out that certain key information is missing from your infographics, forcing your visitors to find that information in other parts of the listing, which often lowers conversion rates.

A Shopify expert, for instance, may point out that the process to order products is too confusing and needs to be simplified, leading to fewer shoppers abandoning shopping carts. Often, even small changes can immediately start to have an impact on sales.

Advertising

Ads are often where consultants can make the biggest impact. Depending on the type of ads, a great ad can have exponentially greater results than a “good ad.” You can have someone run your Google ads. They’ll be able to constantly monitor which ads are performing well and determine ways to increase the relevance and click-through-rates on ads, resulting in increased conversion rates and, in turn, sales and/or the quality of leads.

With Facebook ads, eCommerce consultants will be able to help determine how to create a winning offer that sells, what type of process to send your leads through, and how to actively engage your audience. You may have noticed that Facebook ads need to be well thought out, targeted, and engaging for your audience, but you also need to have a well thought-out, seamless process for re-engaging and following up with that audience.

Amazon ads are much simpler than Google and Facebook ads. Instead of showing an ad, you’re really just showing your listing. The success of the ad is mostly determined by the quality of the product, the listing, and reputation on Amazon. However, Amazon ad campaigns can quickly become a mess without a structured process for organizing and optimizing those campaigns over time. Your campaigns can also illuminate areas of improvement for your listings. Having an expert take this task off your plate can be an excellent way to free up some of your time to focus on other aspects of your business while increasing your conversion rates.

Choosing Products

Ecommerce consultants often know what makes a winning product and what makes a losing product. Whether you’ll be keeping your existing products or looking to find totally new products, many eCommerce consultants have been through the process countless times. They’ll be able to help you determine improvements to make on your existing products, decide which products to add to your selection, and establish the proper pricing for those products.

For an Amazon store, for example, many consultants have a set criteria they’ve used to select winning products in the past. They’ll know what level of search volume, sales, and competition you’d expect to see in a winning product and help determine which opportunities are winners and which are losers. You could also find someone who knows how to do product research and find the products that will do well on your Shopify store.

Choosing and negotiating with suppliers

Many consultants know the process of sourcing products from suppliers inside and out. They may be able to help you negotiate better prices with suppliers, improve the quality and consistency of your products, and save time by closing deals faster. A lot of issues can arise from improperly sourced products, and an expert will help you avoid those mistakes, increasing the viability of your products and, ultimately, your business.

Monitoring Reviews & Customer Service

Watching your reviews is very important, but can be tedious and time consuming. By outsourcing this necessary task, you can stay on top of how your customers are responding to your products, have needed changes for your website or listing pointed out for you, and ensure that problems are solved before the negative reviews lead to large amounts of lost sales. Customers and potential customers may have questions about your product; you’ll need someone who can respond appropriately (and quickly) to help address any concerns they have to close the sale.

Navigating additional marketplaces

With all the marketplaces that exist online, there’s plenty of room to expand your eCommerce business to additional platforms. However, with each one of these marketplaces comes a new set of rules, processes, and strategies. Using an eCommerce consultant can get you live on additional marketplaces sooner, and raise your sales faster. With these marketplaces, simple mistakes can take weeks to solve. The processes and terms can also be confusing and may take time and research to get right.

Ecommerce Consultant Costs

There’s a large variety in the rates for eCommerce consultants. The primary factors will be the level of expertise and location.

Someone to whom you outsource simple tasks (which you may have to teach them to do) will be much cheaper than an expert who can look at your business and immediately see what needs to be done and provide valuable insight. Someone in the United States is going to be much more expensive than someone in the Philippines, where the cost of living is much cheaper; however, time differences can sometimes make communication difficult if you don’t what times they work.

International freelancer rates tend to range from $4/hour to $10/hour. In more industrialized countries, expect to pay up to $50-$100/hour, as you would for US consultants. In the US, consultants will usually start at $30/hour for mid-/lower-level work, and cost $50-200/hour at the expert level. You may pay an hourly rate or a flat project rate depending on the work.

The larger your business, the more valuable the advice of an eCommerce consultant may be! If your eCommerce business is doing $10,000/month and some tips from an eCommerce consultant increase your revenue 10%, you’ve just got an extra $1,000/month! What if your business is doing $150,000/month? Then you’ve got an extra $15,000/month. Targeted improvements can make a big difference!

Conclusion

Consultant advice can often pay for itself almost immediately. If you’re done wasting time wondering how you can get your sales up or expand to that next platform, an eCommerce consultant may be the answer. It doesn’t make sense to run your business in a vacuum.

Look through your business and find where you are struggling or need help. You may find that something that seemed like a difficult business problem for you is an easy problem for someone else!

Need help finding someone? Use FreeeUp to put in a request and be introduced to an eCommerce consultant within 1 business day.