Independent ecommerce consultant for UK retailers
Barking Cat Advisory is what most UK retail boards would call an independent ecommerce consultant: Steve Webster, advising founder-led, PE-backed and listed businesses from £20m to £1bn on ecommerce performance, independent of any platform, agency or vendor. Its independent ecommerce diagnosis names the one thing holding your ecommerce performance back, in two to four weeks, before any money is committed to fixing it.
Barking Cat calls itself an advisory practice rather than a consultancy, for a practical reason: it diagnoses and does not deliver. If you searched for an ecommerce consultant, this is the practice that will not quote you for the build afterwards.
What the diagnosis does
Most leaders learn about their website from inside the building: dashboards, agency decks, and the opinion of whoever spoke last. The diagnosis reports from the side of the screen that spends money. Your proposition is walked the way a customer walks it, from the first search to the parcel and the return, and read through eleven commercial lenses, from proposition and brand to checkout, paid media and retail. Every finding is measured against your filed results, starting with what a single point of conversion is worth in your business.
Who you get
Steve, in person. He has run retail and ecommerce P&Ls since 1999 across the UK, Europe, the US and the GCC: ecommerce P&Ls up to £240m, marketing budgets up to £12m and teams of up to 52. The results most often asked about:
At Steinhoff UK (Bensons for Beds, Harveys Furniture and Cargo Homeshop), ecommerce grew from negligible to £30m in three years, at 82% a year for three consecutive years, after he set it up as a business unit with its own platform, team and P&L.
At eXtra, a £1bn listed electronics retailer, ecommerce grew from £60m to £240m in three years and from 9% to 22% of total revenue.
At Barbour, priority international markets grew by more than 50% and profit contribution rose 60% on a flat marketing budget, with five-year targets met in two.
He has also run ecommerce inside businesses the size most UK retailers are: Boohoo while the whole business grew from £12m to £25m, and Hotter’s UK and US ecommerce inside a £70m business.
What you receive
One binding constraint, named and evidenced, with everything else sequenced behind it. Forty findings without a hierarchy is a spreadsheet, and a board cannot act on a spreadsheet. The diagnosis tells you what to fix in a fortnight, what to build in a quarter, and what not to spend on at all, and the second list is usually the more valuable. The findings are argued with your leadership team in a working session; the written audit stays as the record.
How long, and how it is paid
Two to four weeks, fixed scope. Analytics access, a handful of conversations and the working session. It does not review your operations.
A fixed fee, stated in writing before instruction. No implementation work, no referral fees from platforms, agencies or vendors, no success fees. Sometimes the finding is that the work is yours to do, or belongs with someone already in the building. You get the diagnosis either way.
The method in full
How the Barking Cat Review is undertaken, including the eleven lenses and a redacted specimen of a finished Review.
What happens next
Thirty minutes, no pitch. If there is work worth doing, a fixed-fee proposal in writing within two working days. Then the engagement, or a plain no.
Contact
Thirty minutes, no deck.
Tell Steve what is not moving. If there is a problem worth solving, the conversation will find it. If Barking Cat is not the right answer, you will hear that first.
steve@barkingcat.ai