An eCommerce consultant, with the prices on the page.

Most brands at this size have already bought a great deal of eCommerce advice, and most of it arrived attached to something else: a platform, a retainer, a piece of software with a dashboard. The advice was fine. The problem is that nobody in the room was paid to disagree with it. An independent eCommerce consultant earns the same whether you replatform or not, whether the agency stays or goes, whether the AI plan is a programme or a paragraph. That independence is the whole product, and the rest of this page is what it costs.

I have spent twenty years on both sides of the table, running the eCommerce P&L inside brands like Missguided and building an agency that sold to Brainlabs, so I know where each side hides its problems and what it costs to find them. The method underneath everything here is three questions asked in order. What do we know. What is the pattern. What is the play. It sounds simple, and the discipline is in refusing to skip to the third one.

Who it’s for

Consumer brands selling direct, between £20M and £150M.

Usually founder-led or private-equity backed, often on Shopify, always with an eCommerce operation that has outgrown the way it is being run. The board knows the numbers. What it lacks is someone who can read them without an agenda, say which three of this year’s hundred initiatives deserve the money, and stay in the room while the decision lands. If your trading is under £20M, the Clarity Index and the library are yours and free, and they are not a consolation prize.

A consultant, or an agency

An agency sells you hands. I sell you the decision about where to put them.

I ran an agency for five years, so this is said with affection. A good agency on a well-written brief is worth every penny, and most of what goes wrong between brands and agencies goes wrong in the brief, which is usually written by somebody who has never run the channel. What an agency cannot be is independent of its own scope. The retainer has to be fed, the account has to grow, and the honest recommendation to do less rarely survives the renewal meeting.

A consultant at board level is the other half of that arrangement. I don’t sell software, I don’t run a delivery team, and the advisory is designed to be stopped rather than renewed, which changes the kind of advice it is possible to give. Most of my clients keep their agencies. The agencies tend to do better work once somebody in the business owns the brief and reads the invoices.

Questions people ask

The questions that come up on the first call, answered here so the call can be about you.

How much does an eCommerce consultant cost in the UK?

Day rates run from about £250 to £2,000, and the number tells you what a day costs rather than what it is for. I publish fixed prices instead: a Board Session is £3,500, the Clarity Diagnostic is £15,000, Advisory is from £8,000 a month. The longer answer, with the rest of the market’s prices in it, is in the library.

Why fixed prices rather than a day rate?

Because a day rate rewards the consultant for taking longer, and the brands I work with have had enough of paying for time. The three questions take roughly as long as they take, and twenty years of asking them means I know how long that is before we start. A fixed price also means the number the board agreed is the number the board pays.

What does an eCommerce consultant actually do?

At this level, less than you’d think and more than it looks. I read the trading, the data, the tech and the team, find the pattern underneath the symptoms, and give the board a ranked set of moves it can defend. I don’t build the site, run the ads or manage the agency. I make sure the people doing those things are pointed at the right problem.

Should I hire a consultant or an agency?

If you know what needs doing and need hands to do it, hire the agency, and write the brief carefully because the brief is what you are paying for. If you are not sure what needs doing, or three agencies are each telling you the answer is their thing, that is the moment for someone independent. The two are not in competition, and the better agencies will tell you the same.

When is the right time to bring one in?

Four moments, in my experience. The investment has landed and nobody can show what it bought. Growth has flattened and the explanations have run out. The board has asked the AI question and the room went quiet. Or you are being pitched a solution a week and the data takes a fortnight to agree with itself. Each one starts the work in a different place, and all four arrive earlier than people usually call.

Why not just hire an eCommerce director?

Often you should, and part of my job is sometimes to say so. A permanent director at this size costs £150,000 to £200,000 a year once the employer’s costs are in, takes most of a year to hire and settle, and is the right answer when the shape of the role is clear. When it is not clear yet, a fractional seat buys the judgement first and lets you write the job description from what actually needed doing.

What is a fractional eCommerce director?

Senior eCommerce leadership a day or two a week, without the permanent seat. It is the fractional shape of Advisory: I sit inside the business, govern the roadmap, hold the agencies to the brief and answer the board’s questions in plain commercial language. One seat a quarter, three to twelve months, designed to be stopped.

How do I know if it worked?

Every engagement ends with a decision the board can point to, and the decision has a number attached: the replatform that didn’t happen, the agency contract that was renegotiated, the five moves that were funded and the ninety-five that weren’t. If you can’t name what changed because I was in the room, it didn’t work, and I’d rather you said so.