Ecommerce Coach: 5 Ways to Choose the Very Best

Do you have an idea for an online store but are not sure where to start?

Have you already launched your eCommerce business but don’t understand why it’s not receiving the traffic or sales conversions you imagined?

Are you already running a successful eCommerce business and now looking to expand and scale-up?

An eCommerce coach can assist in any of these scenarios!

There’s a reason coaches exist with sports teams, even when the unit is composed of all adults. Sure they are certainly old enough to know how to play the sport and if they are playing professionally, they are probably pretty good at what they do.

A coach is there to continue leading the players and holding them accountable for working out, training, and practicing their skills. If the team loses a game, a coach is there to see what went wrong and help them strategize a different approach for the next time.

This scenario is the same for an eCommerce entrepreneur. Except when you’re just starting, you usually don’t have quite the same number of teammates to support you.

When you’re in business for yourself, it can be hard to balance the thin line of what you can handle by yourself, and when it may be time to ask for help. Before you move towards hiring any employees or outsourcing tasks to outside help, working with an eCommerce coach should 100% be your first move.

What’s the Difference Between an Ecommerce Coach and an Ecommerce Mentor?

These two terms are easily confused because, honestly, they are really similar! Yet both are essential for a successful business to run smoothly. They both bring different approaches and skillsets to the table to aid you in your business venture.

In simple terms, an eCommerce coach is meant for more short term support while an eCommerce mentor works for the long game.

A mentor is there to aide and advise you from the start of your business and cheerlead you as you move through the ups & downs of the entrepreneur lifestyle. An eCommerce mentor is focused on you as the individual and guiding your personal and professional development.

Meanwhile, an eCommerce coach has a similar mission of bringing you success, but they are more for pinpointing specific skills or areas of your business that you would like to improve. A coach tends to be more task-driven with a focus on completing to-do lists. Then a mentor is there to advise on how to handle certain situations.

An eCommerce coach will help you determine the best strategy for increasing your Facebook Ads conversion rates and make sure that you hit checkpoints along the way. While on the other hand, your eCommerce mentor will be who you can chat with about what they did when they hit this snag in their marketing efforts and advise through their experience.

As we mentioned above, both bring different areas of expertise to the table, and both are essential for success.

How Your Business Can Benefit From an Ecommerce Coach

An eCommerce coach can provide the structure and guidance to get your business started on the right foot. They can give invaluable advice on handling specific problems and business troubles and hold you accountable for completing tasks.

While there are plenty of general benefits that an eCommerce coach can bring to the table, here are just a few of the specifics:

• An eCommerce coach can advise on how to optimize Facebook & Instagram ads to increase conversion rates.
• He can build on your email marketing strategy to increase leads.
• She can teach you how to optimize your online store’s website to bring more traffic to your site.
• He can show you how to structure your social media accounts to increase engagement rates and grow your brand awareness.
• She can help you discover ways to become more efficient in product research and warehouse and inventory management.
• An eCommerce coach can also show you which areas of your business could be outsourced to freelancers or new team members so that you can keep focusing on the big picture.

Now we’ve gotten your attention and reeled you into realizing the great benefits of hiring an eCommerce coach. Now, the question is, where do you start?

The Choosing Process

First, Evaluate Your Business

There’s no point in putting money towards an eCommerce coach if you don’t even know what you need to be coached about in the first place. The first step to pulling in support is to take a critical look at your business as a whole and ask yourself a few questions to discover essential problem areas. Some of these questions could include:

Are all of my ads converting to justify how much I’m spending?

Are there any areas of my business that I’m spending over 50% of my time working on?

Are your sales conversion numbers increasing as you grow your business?

Determine Your Budget

It’s also hard to think of where an eCommerce coach will fit into your business without first knowing how much you can spend. It can be challenging for new business owners to justify increasing expenses when you’re just getting started. Yet it would be best if you took the time to look critically at your financials.

It may be that there is a greater area of wiggle room than you thought, or you may also see where funds could be re-allocated to make room for the opportunity to hire an eCommerce coach.

Is that daily Starbucks run more important than investing in your business?

Switching to a pot of homemade coffee in the mornings might mean the difference between struggling and succeeding!

Start Looking!

One of the best ways to find an eCommerce coach is through referrals. If you have friends or professional acquaintances who run their own online businesses, start there! It is a good start if someone you already know and trust has already had a positive experience with that specific individual and is more than willing to refer them your way.

If you don’t have anyone in your close circle who can give a recommendation, the next stop should be scouring the internet. Many websites do reviews of eCommerce courses such as this Justin Woll review to provide visitors a complete picture of what they’re getting into when looking for an eCommerce coach.

Interview a Potential eCommerce Coach

This one should be an obvious step because essentially, you’re hiring a new person to bring onto your team (even if you’re the only other employee). Treat this as a job interview and work to feel out the potential eCommerce coach. For an experienced individual, they can be relatively expensive, so you certainly don’t want to waste your money on someone who isn’t going to fill the gap you need.

Meanwhile, this is also a time when the individual on the other side of the hiring process will be feeling you out as well. A good eCommerce coach will be just as critical of if they feel like they’ll be able to build a good working relationship with you and help your business.

What to Look For in a Potential Ecommerce Coach

When feeling out a possible eCommerce coach and general fit, there are a few critical areas that you should assess before you hire.

Experience

We all learn from experience, and an eCommerce coach is no different. An experienced coach will have all the tools and knowledge to evaluate your business’ standing and develop a strategy for getting started and moving forward. Hopefully, they come so prepared to the point that you simply get to follow along.

Eagerness

A strong eCommerce coach will also be eager to help you move your business forward. Along with experience, it takes dedication and energy to coach someone. If they aren’t keen to solve problems and find that perfect solution to your issues, how can they encourage you to be?

Accountability

Communication is key to a strong professional working relationship. For your eCommerce coach to hold you accountable for meeting goals, they need to be just as strict on themselves. A potential coach should show that they have the processes and systems to help move you forward above all else.

You wouldn’t buy a car without testing it, right?

It’s important to note that an eCommerce coach is supposed to alleviate your burden and move your business forward. If you end up choosing someone who isn’t the right fit, it’s okay to move on.