E-commerce UX Consultant vs Agency: Which Do You Need?

Two stores, same conversion problem. One hires a UX consultant and moves in 2 weeks. The other hires an agency and gets results in 5 months.

Both were right for their situation. Both would have been wrong for the other’s.

Here’s how to decide which one you actually need.

What You’re Really Choosing Between

A UX consultant is a single expert. One person with deep knowledge in e-commerce UX who works on your store directly. No account manager, no layers between you and the person doing the work.

A UX agency is a team. Strategists, designers, researchers, sometimes developers. More resources, more process, more overhead.

The difference is not just speed and price. It’s scope, accountability, and what “done” looks like.

The Case for a UX Consultant

Speed

No onboarding a team. No kickoff presentation to seven stakeholders. No brief → review → revise cycle across three departments.

A good consultant starts looking at your actual store within 48 hours of engagement. Initial findings in a week. First implementation-ready fixes in two weeks.

For stores where conversion is actively bleeding revenue, this speed has real monetary value. Every week at a broken checkout is another week of unnecessary abandonment.

Specialist depth

Consultants usually specialize. A strong e-commerce UX consultant has done 40–60 audits. They recognize patterns immediately. “I’ve seen this exact checkout issue on 12 WooCommerce stores — here’s what happens and here’s the fix.”

Agencies distribute that depth across a team. The senior strategist who pitched you might do your kickoff and your final presentation. The middle of the work is done by someone with two years of experience.

Cost

A UX consultant typically charges €1,500–€5,000 for an audit. A mid-sized agency charges €8,000–€25,000 for the same scope of work. The difference is overhead. Agencies carry office costs, account management, project management, and a business development team. You’re paying for all of it.

For stores in the €1M–€5M range, the consultant’s fee is proportionate. Agency fees at that level often aren’t.

Direct accountability

With a consultant, there’s one person to call. One person who knows your store, knows what they recommended, and is accountable for the quality of the advice.

With an agency, responsibility diffuses. “The strategist recommended it, the designer interpreted it, the project manager approved it.” When something doesn’t work, you’re arguing with a process.

The Case for a UX Agency

Team resources

Some UX projects genuinely require a team. A complete ground-up redesign of a large catalog store — 500+ SKUs, complex filtering, custom checkout — needs more than one person.

An agency brings UX researchers, interaction designers, visual designers, and sometimes front-end developers working simultaneously. A consultant doing the same project works sequentially. That’s fine for audits and targeted improvements. It’s a bottleneck for large-scale redesigns.

Full-service capability

If you need UX + development + analytics setup + email integration as a single engagement, an agency can cover all of it. A consultant covers UX. You still need someone else for development.

For stores that want a single point of accountability across design and implementation, a full-service agency makes sense.

Institutional process

For publicly traded companies, heavily funded startups, or enterprises that require formal documentation, SOWs, and multi-stakeholder sign-off at every stage, agencies are built for this. Consultants are not.

Decision Framework

Answer these questions honestly:

1. How big is the project?

Targeted audit + fixes for specific pages → consultant
Full redesign of the entire store → agency

2. What’s your timeline?

Need results in 2–4 weeks → consultant
Can run a 3–6 month engagement → agency viable

3. What’s your budget?

Under €10,000 → consultant
Over €25,000 and you need design + development → agency

4. Do you have a development team already?

Yes, they just need UX direction → consultant
No in-house dev, need full delivery → agency or design subscription

5. What’s your primary constraint?

You know what’s wrong, need someone to fix specific things fast → consultant
You don’t know what’s wrong and need comprehensive research + strategy → agency for larger research scope

The Third Option: A Design Subscription

There’s a model that sits between consultant and agency: an ongoing design subscription from a small specialist studio.

You get a dedicated UX designer working on your store continuously — not project-by-project, but as ongoing operational capacity. No account management overhead. No six-week engagement kickoffs. Monthly output with measurable results.

For Dutch e-commerce stores doing €1M–€10M, this often hits the right balance:

The speed and directness of a consultant
The ongoing capacity of an agency
Costs are predictable (flat monthly fee)
The designer learns your store deeply over time — month 3 produces better work than month 1

BTNG’s design subscription works this way. One designer, dedicated sprints, monthly results review. Priced for stores that need ongoing UX work without agency overhead.

What the Data Says About UX Investment Returns

Regardless of which model you choose, the ROI case for dedicated UX investment is consistent.

Forrester Research: every €1 invested in UX returns €100 on average. That number skews high for some industries and low for others, but the direction is unambiguous.

For e-commerce specifically: Baymard Institute’s research across 4,500 stores found that the average checkout has 39 unnecessary friction points. Fixing 10–15 of them moves checkout conversion by 0.5–2%.

On a store doing €200K/month with a 1.8% checkout conversion rate:

Moving to 2.3% = 75 more orders/month
At €85 AOV: €6,375/month additional revenue
An annual investment of €20,000 in UX work: break-even in under 4 months, net positive every month after

The question isn’t whether to invest in UX. It’s which delivery model fits your current situation.

Common Mistakes When Hiring

Hiring an agency for an audit-only scope. You’ll pay agency rates for consultant-level work, plus an account manager you didn’t need.

Hiring a consultant for a large redesign project. One person, sequentially, on a complex 500-SKU store redesign will take 6 months. A team would do it in 8 weeks.

Not asking to see e-commerce-specific work. A strong B2B SaaS UX designer isn’t automatically a strong e-commerce UX designer. Conversion patterns, checkout flows, and product discovery are specialized. Ask for e-commerce case studies specifically.

Prioritizing portfolio aesthetics over conversion impact. A beautiful redesign that doesn’t move conversion metrics is expensive decoration. Ask for before/after conversion data, not just screenshots.

Skipping reference checks. For engagements over €5,000, talk to at least one previous client. Ask specifically: “Did the work produce measurable results? How were they to work with when something didn’t perform as expected?”

Questions to Ask Before You Hire

For a consultant:

What’s your specific experience with stores at my revenue level and on my platform?
Can you share 2–3 case studies with conversion data?
Who implements the changes — your team or mine?
What does your reporting look like — how do I know the work is producing results?

For an agency:

Who actually does the work on my project? Am I meeting them today?
How do you handle it when a recommendation doesn’t perform?
What’s included in the fee and what’s billed additionally?
What does your post-launch support look like?

The Honest Summary

Factor	Consultant	Agency	Subscription
Speed	Fast	Slow	Ongoing
Cost	€1.5K–€12K	€8K–€50K+	€2K–€4K/month
Best for	Targeted fixes	Full redesigns	Ongoing optimization
Accountability	Direct	Diffuse	Direct
Dev included	Usually no	Sometimes	Usually no
Min commitment	One project	3–6 months	3 months

Most stores in the €1M–€10M range do better with a consultant for initial audits and a subscription for ongoing work. The agency model makes sense when you’re doing a complete rebuild and need cross-functional delivery.

Not Sure Which One You Need?

Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at your specific situation — store size, current conversion rate, what you’re trying to fix — and tell you honestly whether BTNG is the right fit, and if so, which engagement model makes sense.

Book a free 30-minute consultation →