Ecommerce Consultant UK: Senior Advice on What to Fix First, and a Team That Can Build It

An ecommerce consultant is an experienced outside expert who reviews how your online store works and tells you what to change to sell more, spend less, or grow safely. They look at your platform, your site speed, your checkout, your marketing, your marketplaces and the systems behind the shop. The output is a clear, ranked list of fixes, not a vague report.

They spend most of their time looking at evidence. That means reading your analytics, testing your checkout on a phone, checking how orders flow into stock and accounting, reviewing your ad spend and search data, and talking to the people who run the business. Then they turn what they found into decisions: what to fix first, what to stop doing, and what to leave alone.

Ecommerce consulting is advice: working out what should happen and in what order. An ecommerce agency does the work: design, development, marketing. Pure consultants often stop at the plan, and some agencies skip the plan and start building. FactoryJet does both. Our senior people give you the plan, and our team can then build and support it, or hand it to your own developers.

If you already know exactly what needs building, a good developer is enough. If you are unsure whether the problem is the platform, the site, the marketing or the operations behind it, start with a consultant. Hiring a developer to fix the wrong thing is the most expensive mistake we see. A short ecommerce audit tells you where the real problem is first.

Yes, for businesses that control their costs. The ONS reports internet sales at 27.3% of all UK retail sales in August 2026, so online is a large, settled share of how people buy. What has changed is margin. Ad costs, returns and delivery eat into profit, so the winners watch profit per order, not just revenue, and fix leaks in all three.

There is no single official list, and different writers use different words. A common version is customer, content, commerce, community and convenience. In practice we use a simpler test: can people find you, do they trust you, can they buy easily, does the order arrive well, and do they come back. Each of those maps to something we can measure and fix.

Ask three things. First, what have they run or rebuilt themselves, on which platforms. Second, who exactly will do the work, and will that person still be there after the report. Third, how will success be measured, in numbers you already track. Also ask whether they are paid commission by any platform or app they might recommend. A good consultant answers all four plainly.

A freelance or independent ecommerce consultant is often very senior and quick to start, and is great for an audit or a second opinion. The limit is capacity: one person rarely has the engineering team to build, integrate and support a big change. A consultancy with its own delivery team can carry the plan through. Choose based on whether you need advice only, or advice plus delivery.

Usually only if you are a large retailer running a multi-year programme with many teams. Global strategy firms are built for board-level transformation, and that model tends to be heavy and slow for a UK brand selling online. Most small and mid-sized online retailers get more from a smaller ecommerce consultancy where senior people do the work and the same team can implement it.

It depends on what you need. Independent consultants such as Digital Juggler (James Gurd) and Adam Pritchard are well known. Firms such as Vervaunt, Heur, Unified and Visualsoft combine consultancy with delivery or marketing, and Digital Blueprint works with multi-channel retailers. FactoryJet is one option among them. We list each one, with a neutral note, further up this page.

Yes. We work with online retailers and brands in London and across the rest of the UK, including Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Scotland. Ecommerce consulting work is done over video calls, shared screens and written reports, so nobody needs to be on-site. Businesses outside London get the same senior people and the same depth of work.

No. The plan is yours. Every recommendation is written so that your own team, a freelancer or another agency can pick it up and act on it. Many clients do ask us to build it, because the people who wrote the plan already know the problem. But the audit is designed to stand on its own, and we say so before you sign anything.

It depends on scope, not a day-rate card. The main cost drivers are the size of your catalogue, how many sales channels you run, how many systems are connected (ERP, stock, 3PL, accounting), whether you are replatforming, and whether you want advice only or advice plus a build. We scope after a free first call and give you a fixed quote for each stage.

An ecommerce audit is a structured check of your whole online store: platform, speed, checkout, product data, search visibility, marketing spend, marketplaces and the operations behind orders. You get a short written report with a ranked list of fixes, the reason for each, the effort involved, and who should do it. It is written for decisions, not to be filed away.

For most UK online stores it takes around two weeks, depending on how many channels and systems are in scope. A single Shopify store with one warehouse moves quickly. A brand selling direct, on Amazon and to trade customers, with an ERP and a 3PL, takes longer. We agree the scope and the timeline on the first call, before anything starts.

Yes. Some clients want a senior ecommerce advisor on call rather than a one-off project. Ongoing advisory usually means a regular review of trading and priorities, a second opinion on agency and app proposals, help writing briefs, and a check on work before it goes live. It suits brands with a small in-house team that needs senior backup, not more hands.

Senior people, with the founder, Bhavesh Barot, involved in every engagement. FactoryJet was founded in 2014 and has worked with more than 500 businesses, most of them in commerce. There is no hand-off to a junior team after you sign. The people who run your audit are the same people who design and build the fixes if you ask us to.

Send your name and work email through the form on this page. The founder replies within 24 hours to book a short call. On that call we talk through your store, your channels and what is worrying you, and suggest whether an audit, a strategy project or ongoing advice is the right first step. That first conversation costs nothing.

Sometimes, but not by default. Shopify and Shopify Plus suit most direct-to-consumer brands that want less maintenance. Adobe Commerce (Magento) still fits complex catalogues, heavy B2B pricing and custom logic. WooCommerce works well for content-led sites on WordPress. BigCommerce suits some B2B and multi-storefront setups. The right answer comes from your catalogue, channels and integrations, not from which platform is fashionable.

For most UK direct-to-consumer brands, yes. It is fast to launch, reliable at peak times, and has a large app and partner ecosystem. It gets harder when you have complex B2B pricing, unusual product rules, or many integrations that apps do not cover well. A Shopify consultant should tell you where those limits will bite for your business before you commit.

An ecommerce SEO consultant makes your products and categories easier for search engines to find and rank. The work covers site structure, category pages, product data, page speed, duplicate pages from filters, and internal links. Increasingly it also covers AI search, meaning how your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. We cover this in the audit and in our ecommerce SEO service.

No, but it is changing. AI assistants and AI Overviews now answer many questions before anyone clicks, and they still rely on pages they can read and trust. For an online store that means clear product data, category pages that answer real questions, and a site that loads fast. Good ecommerce SEO and AI search visibility are now mostly the same work.

It depends on the route. HMRC’s guidance says goods sent from Great Britain to a destination outside the UK can be zero-rated for UK VAT only if you meet the conditions, including exporting within the time limits and keeping proof of export. The EU customer may then face import VAT and duty. Northern Ireland follows separate rules. We map this, then you confirm with your accountant.

For most goods sold online, gov.uk says you must tell customers they can cancel their order up to 14 days after it is delivered. If you do not tell them, they can cancel at any time in the next 12 months. So your returns wording, checkout and order emails need to be right. We check these as part of the audit.

HMRC has digital platform reporting rules that require online platforms to collect and check information about sellers and report details about them to HMRC. That applies to marketplaces, not to your own store software. Either way, your sales records should match your accounts. We often connect the store and marketplaces to Xero or your ERP so the numbers line up.

Yes. We look at which marketplaces suit your products and margins, how stock and orders should sync so you do not oversell, and how listings and pricing should differ from your own site. Marketplaces bring reach but take fees and control, so the plan covers which products go where, not just whether to list. We can build the integrations too.

Yes. Many UK brands sell both to consumers and to trade customers such as shops, salons or distributors. B2B ecommerce needs customer-specific pricing, account credit, bulk ordering, and invoices that flow into your accounts. We advise on whether your current platform can handle it or whether a separate trade portal makes sense, then build it if you want. Bombay Petals is one B2B client we support.