E-commerce consultancy measured by profit margin, not by sessions
Based in Madrid since 2012. We help your online shop sell more on Google, on AI-powered search engines and to customers who are already shopping independently. And we show you the full picture: what’s working, what isn’t and why.
An e-commerce consultancy isn’t just a to-do list for your shop. It’s about identifying where your profit margin is being eroded — acquisition, conversion, repeat purchases — and deciding in what order to tackle these issues, because a shop that generates good turnover with a slim margin isn’t the same as a catalogue of nine thousand products that Google can’t quite index.
We work with national shops and multi-country projects. We also tackle the tricky scenarios: the platform migration that wiped out traffic, Performance Max devouring the budget by bidding on its own brand, the shop that generates turnover but doesn’t make a profit, or the one that sells well in Spain but can’t get off the ground in France.
It’s clear that none of these cases can be resolved with the same one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why we always start with the diagnosis, not the tasks.
E-commerce Consultancy
What exactly does an e-commerce consultancy do?
Think of your online shop as a physical shop. The shop window is your product listings, the aisles are the navigation and the internal search function, and the till is the checkout. An e-commerce consultant is someone who measures how many people come in, where they get stuck between the door and the till, and how much it costs you for each person who walks through that door
Let me explain. Most shops that come to us don’t have just one problem: they have three that mask each other. They buy traffic that doesn’t convert; the low conversion rate is blamed on the price; and the price is adjusted without knowing the actual margin per order once delivery costs, returns and commissions have been deducted. I’ve seen shops achieve double-digit sales growth yet make less money than in the previous quarter.
Essentially, our job is to separate these three figures — how much it costs to acquire a customer, how much converts, and how much is left over — and use data to decide which one moves the needle first.
Even More Difficult
Why does your shop no longer compete solely on Google?
Because a growing proportion of purchasing decisions are made before the click. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s own AI Overview are already recommending specific shops and products, and there aren’t ten positions there: there’s a shortlist of cited sources.
Let me give you a figure from our own experience. When designing this service, we carried out the same exercise we’re suggesting you do: measuring demand before investing. Searches for ‘e-commerce consultancy’ and ‘e-commerce agency’ on Google Spain have fallen by around 40 per cent since 2024. Have people stopped needing help with their shop? No. They’ve simply stopped asking Google alone.
And there’s a second layer that almost no one will mention to you just yet: shopping bots. These are bots that compare, decide and buy without a human ever visiting your website. Your catalogue can either be ready for this scenario or remain invisible within it; that’s what Merchant Centre’s conversational attributes and the bot-friendly website are all about.
That said, we’re not going to sell you a pipe dream either: not all shopping searches currently involve AI. We measure which of yours trigger it and which don’t. That’s why we work on that second layer of visibility separately – optimising for AI engines – without averaging it with search engine results to produce a nice-looking average score.
E-commerce Consultancy
What does your shop gain from strategic e-commerce consultancy?
I’ll spare you the list of generic benefits. A well-run project produces four knock-on effects, and the order matters because each one funds the next:
1
Clarity
You know exactly where your shop is losing money: which categories, which channels, which hidden costs. It’s the only one of the four that becomes apparent within weeks.
2
Conversion
More orders from the traffic you already have. This is almost always the cheapest lever, and it’s the one that pays for the rest of the project. This is where CRO comes in.
3
Profitable acquisition
Each channel has its own account: organic, advertising, marketplaces and email are no longer lumped together in a single, meaningless figure.
4
Repeat business
The second order doesn’t incur customer acquisition costs. With tight margins, this is where the viability of the business is decided.
If anyone promises to double your sales within a set timeframe, be wary. What you can, however, stipulate in a contract is the method used, transparency regarding the work carried out, and a measurement system that you yourself can audit. That is our commitment to ethical SEO.
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How do we work on your e-commerce site?
Our process has four phases, and we don’t skip any of them. I’d advise you to be wary of anyone who starts tinkering with your shop before they’ve analysed it: in medicine, we’d call that prescribing without seeing the patient.
Actual demand in your market, competitors already ranking highly for those searches, technical and content audit, product feed, analytics and consent. We measure your visibility on search engine and your visibility in AI separately. This results in a list prioritised by impact and effort, not a 200-page PDF that nobody opens.
Where it’s worth fighting for and where it isn’t: which categories to prioritise, which markets, and which channels support which as they mature. And also what to stop doing – which is often the part of the plan that delivers the best return on investment.
SEO and AI optimisation of the catalogue, conversion, transition to Performance Max and the rest of the work in Google Ads, feeds and Merchant Centre, and the analytics that underpins it all. With your team or ours.
We tell you what’s improved, what hasn’t, and which part of the result is attributable to our work and which to market conditions. If something didn’t work, that’s included in the report too. It’s the only way the report can help you make informed decisions.
We’ve been managing online shops since 2012: from an accessories e-commerce site operating in six countries to niche markets such as motorhome accessories or direct sales of organic food.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between an e-commerce consultancy and an e-commerce agency?
To put it simply: an e-commerce agency usually focuses on execution — campaigns, content, development — whilst a consultancy emphasises deciding what to execute and why: analysing your data, prioritising and guiding decisions. At AMDT we do both: we advise you with sound judgement and, when your team can’t manage it, we also carry out the work. Ultimately, the label matters less than one other thing: that whoever runs your shop understands your profit and loss account, not just your traffic.
Is it worth hiring an e-commerce consultancy?
It depends on a calculation you can do before signing anything: orders per month, actual margin per order, and how much room for improvement there is in conversion rates and customer acquisition costs. If the figures don’t add up to cover the project costs and make a profit, we’ll tell you. We’ve seen it happen: there are shops whose problem isn’t visibility or conversion, but rather the product or the margin, and in such cases a consultancy firm merely postpones the conversation that needs to be had.
Do you work with Shopify, PrestaShop or WooCommerce?
We work with all three, as well as bespoke developments. The platform determines the ‘how’, not the ‘what’: demand, margin and conversion are analysed in the same way across all of them. A point to note from experience: switching platforms almost never solves the problem it’s attributed to, and it’s the most expensive project a business can undertake. Before considering a migration, ask us for a diagnosis and, if appropriate, a migration plan that won’t disrupt your traffic.
How long does it take to see results?
Clarity: weeks – the diagnosis provides figures where there were previously just hunches. Conversion: one to three months, depending on the traffic available for rigorous testing. Organic traffic: three to six months for solid signals. I know this isn’t the answer anyone likes to hear, but I’ve seen more projects held back by the speed of implementation of the team itself than by the algorithm.
What about AI and buying agents? Do I need to start preparing now?
It depends on your category, and it’s something that can be measured rather than speculated upon: we check which search queries in your sector trigger AI responses and whether your shop is mentioned in them. What I do recommend you prepare now—because it’s cheap to do early and expensive to do late—is the product feed: complete product attributes and structured data. That’s the language that buying agents read.
Is this service right for my shop?
If your shop hasn’t sold anything yet, then no. What you need first is to validate your product and demand, and we’ll tell you that during our first call. This service is for shops that are already selling and want to move from simply turning over to making a profit, whether you have your own team or an outsourced one to manage.
Do you offer in-person e-commerce consultancy in Madrid?
Yes, since 2012, whenever the project requires it: start-ups, sessions with the tech team, in-house training. That said, we’re not going to sell you on proximity as a technical selling point: a large proportion of the shops we manage are based outside Madrid, and some are even outside Spain.
