# How the Review is undertaken > An independent diagnosis of why your ecommerce performance is not where the investment says it should be. Eleven commercial lenses walked from the customer’s side, one binding constraint, two to four weeks, fixed scope. Source: https://barkingcat.ai/review/ ## The Barking Cat Review Most leaders learn about their website from inside the building: dashboards, agency decks, and the opinion of whoever spoke last. Your customers see something else entirely, and they vote with their baskets. The Review is a clear-eyed account of the experience you are actually selling, seen from the only side of the screen that spends money. It is not an operations review, and it is deliberately light on your organisation: analytics access and a handful of conversations, two to four weeks, and a working session to land it. The Review is a fixed-scope engagement. ## Before you commit £3m to a replatform, establish whether the platform is the constraint ## The method ### 01 · The honest conversation Thirty minutes. What is happening in the business, what the Review would examine, and whether there is work worth doing. Both sides decide. ### 02 · The walk Your proposition, walked the way a customer walks it: the first search, the landing, the product page, the basket, the checkout, the parcel, the return. Alongside it, your filed accounts and your competitive context, because the site only means something against the numbers. ### 03 · The lenses Eleven commercial lenses, one diagnosis. Each lens reads the same business from a different seat, and the findings converge on a single constraint rather than eleven lists. Behind them sits [the Cat’s Whiskers](https://barkingcat.ai/the-cats-whiskers/), the practice’s readiness framework: seven foundations, thirty-six readiness checks, built from running these businesses rather than observing them. ### The governing thought The eleven lenses are independent inputs, not a web. Nothing here is scored, only combined, so nothing here is coloured. ### 04 · The numbers Every finding is measured against the figures that pay the wages: traffic, conversion, order value, margin, repeat. The working is shown, starting with what a single point of conversion is worth in your business, against your filed results. ### 05 · The binding constraint Forty findings without a hierarchy is a spreadsheet. Every Review names the one constraint that holds the rest back, and sequences everything behind it: what to fix in a fortnight, what to build in a quarter, and what not to spend on at all. ### 06 · The working session The findings are argued with your leadership team, the sequence agreed, the owners named. The written audit remains as the record, not the event. The Review earns its keep whether or not the next step is Barking Cat. Sometimes the honest finding is that the work is yours to do, or belongs with someone already in the building. You get the diagnosis either way. An advisor who does not depend on the follow-on is the only one who can tell you that. ## A specimen Slides from a recent Review, with the client’s identity and traceable figures redacted. Every Review lands in this form: the governing thought, the constraint, the commercial anchor, and the sequence. The governing thought: the whole diagnosis in one sentence, argued before it is itemised. The binding constraint: the one thing holding the rest back, and why that is usually good news. The commercial anchor: what a single point of conversion is worth, working shown, client figures redacted. The first week: corrections at or near zero engineering, scored and sequenced. The close: what the leadership team leaves the room holding. ## What the Review is not It is not an operations review, and it is not a pitch for a build. Part of the job is naming the spending that should not happen: the replatform the platform does not warrant, the rebrand the brand does not need, the media budget that would subsidise a leaking journey. Sometimes the honest finding is that you do not need what you are being sold. That answer is only available from an advisor who does not earn from the build. ## 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. [BOOK THE CONVERSATION](https://calendar.app.google/8udhezX71BHZaB5NA) ## Contact steve@barkingcat.ai Barking Cat Advisory Limited. Registered in England and Wales, company number 17338003.