How to Become an eCommerce Consultant

Whether you’re a beginner in the ecommerce world looking for a new career opportunity, or a Shopify developer in search of a new source of revenue, learning how to become an ecommerce consultant could be a great idea. In a market as competitive as ecommerce, business leaders are constantly looking for experts with the knowledge and experience to guide them towards growth.

As an ecommerce consultant, your job would be to help online retailers plan, launch, and grow their ecommerce platforms. If you have experience designing and developing Shopify stores, you could already be half way there!

Ecommerce consultants earn an average of around $58,500 per year, and often fit their consulting jobs around other workflows. For instance, you could design Shopify stores part-time, and consult with ecommerce business leaders when you’re not “on-the-clock”. 

Let’s take a look at the steps involved in becoming an ecommerce consultant.

What Does an Ecommerce Consultant Do?

Before you dive into a new career as an ecommerce consultant, it might be worth taking some time to understand what the job actually entails. After all, you’ll want to ensure this career path is suited to your skills, expertise, and interest. 

In general, ecommerce consultants are professional “advisors” who work alongside business leaders, helping them to develop strategies for selling their services online. These consultants might help business leaders to develop their own ecommerce website, set up payment gateways, configure shipment options, and create checkout pages. Some components also get involved with marketing, to drive new sales to an online store. 

The duties of an ecommerce consultant can vary, but they typically involve:

• Auditing existing ecommerce strategies and developing new ones
• Creating ecommerce websites in collaboration with designers and developers
• Setting up shipment and fulfillment strategies for ecommerce products
• Adding products to the website and creating compelling descriptions
• Configuring an ecommerce website to accept payments and process orders
• Managing day-to-day operations on the website, such as adding products, processing orders, and sometimes setting up customer-experience strategies
• Generating reports on website traffic, sales data, and opportunities
• Making recommendations to improve the performance of the store

What do You Need to Be an Ecommerce Consultant?

Most ecommerce consultants have a variety of skills, ranging from marketing to development and website design. However, the core demand for any ecommerce consultant is a deep understanding and passion for ecommerce. While most consultants do have a bachelor’s degree in fields like business administration, computer science, and marketing, this isn’t always a necessity. 

Most consultants receive on-the-job training, and can take a host of online courses to build out their understanding of the ecommerce world. However, you will need to gradually develop your knowledge in a few key areas, such as:

• Technical skills: Ecommerce consultants use various software solutions and tools to create and manage ecommerce websites. They should have basic coding knowledge, and know how to work with common ecommerce tools, such as Shopify.
• Marketing and sales skills: Your job as an ecommerce consultant is mostly to help the companies you work with increase their sales. Ecommerce consultants should know their way around concepts like SEO and content marketing, as well as social media and email.
• Business development: Ecommerce consultants need to know how to analyze business environments and pinpoint opportunities for growth. You should be able to assess data and make intelligent decisions on how to increase store performance.
• Communication: As a consultant, you’ll need to work with a range of business employees, leaders, and other teams. This means you should be adept at communicating clearly and consistently in a language your colleagues can understand. 
• Creative skills: Ecommerce consultants need a relatively creative mindset to help them overcome complex problems and find creative answers to issues. They need to be able to think outside of the box and explore new opportunities. 

How to Become an Ecommerce Consultant

So, how do you become an ecommerce consultant? 

There’s no one-size-fits-all path to this career. You can either start with a degree, or build your knowledge from your existing experience in the ecommerce world as a Shopify developer. However, there are a few areas you may want to focus on:

1. Develop your credentials

As mentioned above, you don’t always need a degree to become an ecommerce consultant, but it can make it more likely that you’ll be able to attract high-paying clients. Consider getting a degree in a related area like computer science, marketing, or business. 

At the same time, think about pursuing additional education outside of the traditional learning landscape. You can take courses in things like UI/UX design, earn credentials directly from Shopify, and gain a host of relevant certifications online. 

Focus your education on the skills you know your potential employers are looking for. For instance, many of today’s companies want their ecommerce consultants to help them with things like customer experience, user interface design, and payment processing. 

2. Build experience

Next, you’ll need to work on your experience in the ecommerce world. There are a few ways you can do this. If you’re already an experienced Shopify website designer or developer, you should always have a decent amount of experience dealing with ecommerce sites. If you’re starting from scratch, consider practicing building your own websites and ecommerce spaces for your portfolio.

You can sign up for an account with Shopify and start creating test websites to see how good you are at making all of the aspects of the store fit together perfectly. 

Once you feel confident enough to start looking for job opportunities, start with entry-level positions for ecommerce companies. These will give you a chance to harness your skills, build your network, and potentially improve your chances of being hired by bigger brands later.

3. Strengthen your marketing knowledge

Most companies searching for ecommerce consultants don’t just want help building a great website, they also want support bringing new customers into their sales pipeline. It’s helpful to have a good knowledge of the marketing landscape, so you can make some relevant suggestions along the way. 

Start with a basic knowledge of Search Engine Optimization, focusing on on-page, and off-page techniques, as well as technical SEO. Learn how companies use content marketing to drive attention to online stores, and practice on your content skills. It’s helpful to have a good understanding of the stages of the buyer funnel and how they translate into different content techniques. For instance, to appeal to customers in the “Awareness” stage, companies might create blog posts answering common questions about their industry. 

Don’t be afraid to branch out into email and social media marketing skills too. These can be extremely helpful when you’re looking for new ways to raise awareness for online stores. 

4. Choose your business strategy

Once you have the skills you need to thrive in the ecommerce landscape, and a little experience in the marketplace, you can begin to think about how you want to develop your career. You could consider working with a marketing agency, offering support to ecommerce companies who approach the brand for help building and growing their stores. 

You might work directly for an existing ecommerce company as an in-house consultant, designer, and marketing expert, guiding other members of a team. Alternatively, you could consider going freelance and developing your own “consulting” business. 

If you choose the latter route, you’ll need to be committed to developing your personal brand and advertising yourself to potential clients. It’s also crucial to have some decent networking skills, so you can branch out and build new lucrative relationships.

5. Stay Up to Date

Finally, make sure you stay up to date on the latest trends and changes in the ecommerce landscape. Expectations around online shopping are changing all the time. To be effective as an ecommerce marketing consultant, you’ll need to be on the cutting edge of the industry.

Sign up for newsletters from Shopify so you’re the first to know about the latest features, and pay attention to trending news in your industry. It might be helpful to regularly attend tradeshows and local conferences too, so you can network with other leaders.

You might even choose to join an ecommerce community, like Storetasker, where you can learn from other Shopify developers, hone your skills, and search for new job opportunities. 

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