Kit Consulting: the E-commerce advisory service

When an SME tells me "I want to sell online and I don't know where to start," they're almost always confusing two different things: having a website with a buy button, and having an e-commerce strategy. Kit Consulting, Red.es's digital advisory programme, funded precisely the second one. In this article I explain what the e-commerce advisory covered within the programme, how it differed from "digital sales" understood more broadly, what deliverables you got, and which kind of company it made sense for. This is an informational piece: the application window is closed, so you won't find an "apply now" here — just the real mechanics of the service, so you understand how it worked and how to make the most of advisory work like this, with or without a grant.

What did the e-commerce advisory cover?

Within Kit Consulting's catalogue, e-commerce lived under the umbrella of the digital sales advisory. According to the official Acelera Pyme portal, the service helped a company establish the investment needed and the digital marketing techniques — including the use of artificial intelligence — to improve the performance of its online sales. In concrete terms, the advisor worked with you on these fronts:

• Diagnosis of your current online sales. If you were already selling online, it analysed what was working and what wasn't: traffic, conversion funnel, average order value, cart abandonment, acquisition channels.
• Definition of the store platform. Which technology fits your volume and catalogue (a dedicated e-commerce CMS, a marketplace, a mixed solution) and what investment it requires.
• Payment methods and logistics. Gateways, customer financing, shipping and returns management; e-commerce doesn't end at "pay" — it ends with the parcel delivered.
• Acquisition and conversion. The digital marketing techniques to attract qualified traffic and convert it: SEO, campaigns, email, content, and where AI helps personalise or automate.
• Measurement. Which indicators to track and how to set up a routine of continuous conversion improvement.

The result wasn't a working store, but an e-commerce plan: a document stating what to do, in what order, with what investment and what expected return. The subsequent execution (building the store, launching campaigns) was then up to you or your providers.

How does it differ from "digital sales"?

This is the question most worth clarifying, because in the programme's regulatory basis, e-commerce wasn't an independent category in its own right: it was part of the digital sales advisory. The difference is one of scope.

The digital sales advisory is the full digital commercial strategy: how your company sells using digital channels, including the B2B sales force, CRM, lead generation, consultative selling and, also, e-commerce. E-commerce is the subset focused on direct-to-customer sales through an online store (B2C or B2B with a cart). If your priority is selling products online with a cart and a payment gateway, your focus is e-commerce; if your priority is putting your whole digital sales engine in order, your focus is digital sales in the broader sense. I go into more detail in the article on Kit Consulting's digital sales advisory, which is the "parent" category of this service.

In practice, a good advisor didn't force you to choose artificially: they started from your business and sized the plan around where your growth lever actually was. If you sell products, e-commerce leads; if you sell services or B2B projects, the cart matters little and the weight falls on acquisition and CRM.

Did it help build an online store?

Let's be honest here: Kit Consulting's advisory didn't build the store. The programme funded consultancy, not development. The advisor handed you the plan — which platform, what investment, which gateway, what logistics, what acquisition plan — but the technical build of the store, the programming or the design fell outside the voucher.

So what's it for, then? For making good decisions before you spend. Many SMEs build an expensive online store and then discover the problem was never the website, but that nobody had defined the logistics, the acquisition cost or the real margin per order. Advisory work upfront avoids that mistake: it orders the strategy so the investment in the store (which can indeed be executed later, even with other grants) is built on solid foundations. It's the difference between "paying to have a website" and "investing to sell". To understand how it fits with the other major digital transformation grant, my comparison between Kit Digital and Kit Consulting may help: the former funds tools (including the store), the latter funds strategic advisory.

What deliverables did you get?

The accredited digital advisor had to leave documented deliverables, because the programme required the service to be justified. In e-commerce, it was typical to receive:

• A diagnostic report of the starting online sales situation.
• An e-commerce plan with the roadmap, estimated investment and timeline.
• A platform and architecture recommendation (technology, integrations, payments, shipping).
• An acquisition and conversion plan with prioritised digital marketing techniques.
• An indicator dashboard to measure performance and improve continuously.

That indicator dashboard is, in my experience, the most undervalued deliverable and the one that pays off the advisory the most over the medium term. Without metrics, an online store is a black box. If you want to dig deeper into what to measure, I have an article on the 20 sales indicators for a sales dashboard that applies almost as-is to e-commerce.

What kind of advisor provided this service?

The service was provided by the Accredited Digital Advisors on the programme's catalogue — companies or professionals who had passed Red.es's accreditation process and met the capability and experience requirements set out in the regulatory basis. For e-commerce, the ideal profile combined knowledge of store platforms, results-driven digital marketing, and a grasp of logistics and payment methods. Knowing "about websites" wasn't enough: the value lay in understanding the business and the P&L, not just the technology.

What kind of company did it make the most sense for?

E-commerce isn't a fit for everyone equally. From my work with SMEs in Castilla y León and Las Palmas, this advisory added the most value in these cases:

• Brands and manufacturers with a product catalogue that still sell only through traditional channels and want to open up direct sales.
• Shops with an online store already running but stalled, where the problem is conversion or acquisition, not the existence of the website.
• Companies dependent on a single marketplace that want to reduce that dependency with their own channel.
• B2B businesses with a repetitive catalogue that can automate recurring orders through a customer portal.

By contrast, it added less value for pure services companies or highly consultative B2B projects, where the sale isn't closed in a cart. For those cases, the right focus was digital sales in the broader sense or, directly, the digital transformation roadmap. And if your sector has its own particularities, my analysis of Kit Digital by sector shows how the digitalisation priority changes depending on the activity.

A concrete example: from "I have a website" to "I sell online"

To bring all of this down to earth, here's a pattern that repeats itself. A food-manufacturer SME, with a good catalogue and local reputation, builds an online store because "you have to be there". A year goes by and it sells four orders a month. The easy conclusion is "e-commerce doesn't work for us". The correct conclusion, after a serious advisory process, is usually different: the store never had a plan behind it.

A properly done e-commerce advisory would have spotted from the start that the shipping cost of fresh produce was eating the margin, that there was no acquisition beyond publishing the website, that the online catalogue was incomplete, and that there was no abandoned-cart follow-up at all. The plan would have prioritised three levers — solving the fresh-goods logistics, setting up a minimum-viable acquisition through email and local SEO, and activating cart-recovery — before touching the design. That reordering of priorities, which doesn't cost development but judgement, is exactly what the voucher funded. The value of consultancy isn't in the code — it's in avoiding investment in what doesn't move the needle.

How much does it cost, and what return could you expect?

Under the programme's regulatory basis, advisory services started from a reference amount (in the range of several thousand euros per service) that the voucher covered within the limits of the company's segment. The exact amount depended on the size segment and the service contracted; I break that structure down in my article on Kit Consulting segments, sizes and amounts. What matters for e-commerce is that the investment in consultancy pays for itself not through what it costs, but through what it avoids you spending badly: a wrong platform or logistics decision can cost ten times the advisory's amount. Thinking the plan through before executing is, almost always, the most profitable decision in the project.

How did e-commerce fit within the programme as a whole?

Kit Consulting offered a catalogue of advisory categories (artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics, processes, strategy, digital sales and a cross-cutting "360" service). E-commerce didn't compete with those categories: it complemented them. An SME opening a serious online sales channel needs, almost simultaneously, analytics to measure, cybersecurity to protect payment data and, often, AI to personalise the experience. That's why the programme allowed the voucher to be spent across several services. If you want the full map of options, I bring it together in my guide on what Kit Consulting is and in the guide to the programme's digital advisory.

If you want to put your e-commerce strategy in order, with or without a grant, feel free to get in touch.

Frequently asked questions

What does the e-commerce advisory cover?

It covers the strategic planning of online sales: a diagnosis of the starting situation, defining the store platform and the investment needed, payment methods, logistics, digital marketing techniques to acquire and convert, and the indicator dashboard for measurement. Within Kit Consulting it sat under the digital sales advisory. The deliverable is an e-commerce plan, not the store built.

How does it differ from digital sales?

E-commerce is the subset focused on the online store (cart, gateway, conversion), while digital sales cover the whole digital commercial engine: CRM, lead generation, B2B selling, automation and e-commerce too. If your priority is selling products online, your focus is e-commerce; if it's putting your whole digital sales strategy in order, it's digital sales in the broader sense.

Did it help build an online store?

Not directly. Kit Consulting funded advisory, not development, so the advisor delivered the plan (platform, investment, logistics, acquisition) but didn't build the store. Its value lies in making good decisions before investing, so that the subsequent build of the website — executable with your own providers or even with other grants such as Kit Digital — is built on a solid strategy rather than blindly.

What deliverables do you get?

The usual set was a diagnostic report of online sales, an e-commerce plan with roadmap and investment, a platform and technical architecture recommendation, an acquisition and conversion plan with prioritised techniques, and an indicator dashboard to measure performance and improve continuously. All documented, since the programme required the service provided to be justified.

Looking for straightforward help putting your e-commerce strategy in order? Let's talk for a free diagnostic of your online store. Presence across Castilla y León and the Canary Islands.