YOU DON'T NEED ANOTHER LIST OF THINGS YOU COULD DO. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT DESERVES ATTENTION NEXT.
The Next Stage Accelerator is a six-week implementation programme for established ecommerce businesses that know there is more growth available, but need a clearer view of what is actually getting in the way.
Over six weeks we will work through the numbers, the customer journey, the offer, conversion, email and advertising so that you can see where the biggest opportunities and problems are sitting. More importantly, you will apply that work to your own business while we are working together.
This is not about trying to improve everything at once. It is about understanding what is happening, deciding what deserves attention first and making focused improvements in a sensible order.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING ELSE YOU COULD WORK ON.
If you run an ecommerce business, you are unlikely to be short of things you could improve. You could spend more on advertising, rebuild a product page, change the offer, improve email, work on retention, increase AOV, redesign part of the site or test another channel.
The difficulty is not finding sensible things to do. The difficulty is knowing which of them is most likely to make a meaningful difference to your business now.
That matters because apparently sensible decisions can still be the wrong decisions when they are made in the wrong order. Buying more traffic will not solve a conversion problem. Changing the checkout will not fix an offer customers do not want strongly enough. Improving ROAS is not particularly helpful if the customer economics still make the business difficult to scale.
The Accelerator is designed to help you separate the things that are merely worth doing from the things that actually deserve your attention now.
UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING. MAKE THE RIGHT CHANGES. THEN DECIDE WHAT COMES NEXT.
We start with the business you actually have, not an idealised version of what an ecommerce business is supposed to look like.
That means looking at your numbers, customer behaviour and current commercial performance to understand where growth is being created, where it is being lost and which parts of the business are limiting what you can sensibly do next.
From there, each week focuses on a different part of the commercial system. You will learn the principles, apply them to your own store, bring the work back for feedback and then make the changes.
By the end of the programme, the aim is not for you to have accumulated another long list of things you could do. It is for you to have improved the business, understand it better and have a clear view of what deserves attention over the following 90 days.
SIX WEEKS BUILT AROUND THE DECISIONS THAT ACTUALLY MOVE AN ECOMMERCE BUSINESS FORWARD.
The programme follows a deliberate sequence. We start by establishing what the numbers are telling us, then work through the parts of the customer and commercial journey that determine whether additional growth is likely to be profitable and repeatable. Each week builds on what we have learned before it, but the work is always applied to your own business rather than treated as an abstract lesson.
UNDERSTAND THE NUMBERS AND FIND THE FIRST OBVIOUS OPPORTUNITIES
Before deciding what to change, we need a reliable picture of what is already happening. In Week 1 we establish your commercial baseline and look at the numbers that matter most for the decisions you are trying to make. We also start with the product journey because this is where buying intent becomes visible. If people are arriving at products but not taking the next step, increasing traffic is unlikely to be the first answer. The objective is to leave the week with a clearer understanding of where the business is now and which product-page or commercial issues deserve immediate attention.
A reliable commercial baseline and a clear first set of priorities.
FOLLOW THE CUSTOMER FROM INTEREST TO ORDER
A customer does not experience your website as a collection of individual pages. They experience a journey. This week we look at what happens from the point somebody becomes interested in a product through to the point an order is completed. We are looking for the places where confidence drops, questions appear, expectations change or the buying process becomes harder than it needs to be. The purpose is not to redesign the entire store. It is to understand where customers are most likely to be falling away and improve the parts of the journey that matter most.
A clearer buying journey with the priority conversion issues identified and addressed.
MAKE THE REASON TO BUY STRONGER
Sometimes the website is doing a perfectly reasonable job of presenting the product. The problem is that the reason to choose it, choose you or act now simply is not strong enough. In Week 3 we look at the customer, proposition and offer. We work through what the customer is really trying to achieve, what matters to them when making the decision, why they should choose you rather than another option and whether the overall offer gives them a sufficiently strong reason to act. This is not about manufacturing gimmicks or discounting everything. It is about making sure the value of what you are selling is clear enough and compelling enough for the customer you are trying to reach.
A clearer proposition and a stronger commercial offer.
MAKE EMAIL DO MORE USEFUL COMMERCIAL WORK
Most established ecommerce businesses have email in place. That does not necessarily mean it is doing enough. This week we look at the email foundations that should be supporting conversion, recovering potential orders and encouraging customers to buy again. The focus is on getting the important work right before adding unnecessary complexity. The objective is not to send more emails simply because email is inexpensive. It is to make sure the right messages are reaching the right people at the points where they can genuinely influence the next purchase decision.
A stronger email foundation supporting conversion and customer value.
DECIDE WHERE MORE ADVERTISING SPEND ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE
Advertising becomes much easier to scale when the wider business is ready to support it. By Week 5 we have a much better understanding of the numbers, customer journey, offer and retention foundations. We can now look at acquisition in the context of the whole business rather than judging it from one advertising metric. We will look at where your current acquisition activity is working, where it is not, whether the economics support more investment and which channels deserve greater or lesser attention. Sometimes the answer will be to spend more. Sometimes it will be to improve something else first. The important part is understanding why.
A clearer acquisition strategy and a better basis for deciding where additional advertising investment belongs.
TURN SIX WEEKS OF WORK INTO THE NEXT 90 DAYS
By the final week, we have built a much clearer picture of how the different parts of the business interact. We use that understanding to review the commercial model, the work completed during the programme and the issues that still deserve attention. From there we decide what should happen over the next 90 days and, equally importantly, what does not need to happen yet. The point of the Accelerator is not to leave you dependent on another programme. It is to leave you better equipped to make good commercial decisions once the six weeks are over.
A focused 90-day plan built around the next priorities for your business.
THIS IS AN IMPLEMENTATION PROGRAMME, NOT SIX WEEKS OF CONTENT TO WATCH LATER.
You are not paying £2,497 for access to information. There is already more ecommerce information available than any of us could reasonably consume.
The value of the Accelerator comes from applying the work to your own business while we are working together. Each week therefore follows the same rhythm, giving you time to understand the thinking, use it, get feedback and make the changes before we move on.
We work through the week's commercial principle, why it matters and what you need to examine inside your own business.
You apply the work to your store and start making the decisions or changes required.
We look at the work, discuss the issues that have appeared and work through the decisions that need more thought.
You complete the priority work and make the agreed changes.
We deal with questions, decisions and anything that is preventing you from completing the week's work properly.
The following week we move onto the next part of the business with what we have already learned in place. That sequence is important because it stops the programme becoming six unrelated lessons and allows the commercial picture to develop as we go.
ACCESS TO MORE INFORMATION IS PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOUR BUSINESS IS MISSING.
If you have been running an ecommerce business for any length of time, you have probably already watched the videos, read the articles, listened to the podcasts, attended webinars and tried more than a few tools or apps.
The issue is rarely access to information. It is deciding which advice applies to your business, what the evidence supports and which of the many sensible ideas available to you should actually be acted on.
That is why the Accelerator combines teaching with implementation, clinics and feedback. You are learning the principles, but you are learning them in the context of a business that already exists and has real customers, real numbers and real decisions to make.
The work is not hypothetical. It is your business.
IT WORKS BEST WHEN THERE IS ALREADY A REAL ECOMMERCE BUSINESS FOR US TO WORK ON.
The Accelerator is designed for existing ecommerce businesses rather than people who are still trying to work out what to sell or how to launch their first store. It is likely to be a good fit if you are already generating sales, know that the business could perform better and want a more structured way of deciding where to focus. You may be finding that growth has become harder, advertising is becoming more expensive, performance is less predictable than you would like, or simply that there are too many possible priorities competing for your attention.
You also need to be prepared to implement. The programme is deliberately structured around doing the work during the six weeks rather than collecting ideas to deal with at some unspecified point in the future.
It is probably not the right programme yet if you are still setting up your first store, have not yet demonstrated that customers will buy the product, primarily need help deciding what to sell, or want somebody else to run the ecommerce business for you.
The Accelerator works because we have a functioning business and genuine commercial evidence to work with.
I'M ROB McNICOLL.
I've worked in marketing for around 25 years, I'm a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I hold an MBA. My experience has covered a much wider range of marketing and commercial work than ecommerce alone, and the work I've been involved in across that career has generated more than £256 million in revenue for organisations.
These days, most of my time is spent working directly with ecommerce businesses. That means getting involved in the numbers, acquisition, product pages, conversion, email, offers, merchandising and the decisions that connect them.
One UK ecommerce retailer was generating around £20,000 a month when I became involved. Within three months that had grown to around £80,000, and the business is now generating approximately £125,000+ per month.
I don't think those results came from one clever tactic. They came from understanding what the business needed at different points, making good decisions and improving the things that mattered as the business developed.
That is the same approach behind the Accelerator.
Past results are examples of work inside real businesses. They are not promises of what every Accelerator participant will achieve.
THE £2,497 ISN'T THE EXPENSIVE PART. SPENDING ANOTHER SIX MONTHS WORKING ON THE WRONG THINGS CAN COST FAR MORE.
It is surprisingly easy to spend a lot of money solving the wrong problem in ecommerce.
A weak product page can make advertising appear to be the problem. A weak offer can make the website appear to be the problem. Poor customer economics can make apparently successful advertising impossible to scale. Increasing traffic into a conversion problem simply makes that problem more expensive.
The same applies to time. If you spend three months redesigning parts of the site that were not actually limiting growth, those are three months in which the real problem has remained untouched.
The value of the Accelerator is not that we will somehow eliminate every bad decision. No programme can promise that. The value is having a much better process for deciding what deserves your time, money and attention before you commit more of them.
THE AIM IS A BETTER BUSINESS AND A MUCH CLEARER VIEW OF WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
Every business entering the Accelerator will start in a different place, so the exact work and improvements will vary.
What should be consistent is that by the end of the six weeks you understand the business better than you did at the beginning.
- A clearer view of the numbers that matter
- A stronger customer and buying journey
- A better-defined offer
- More useful email foundations
- A more informed basis for deciding where paid acquisition deserves further investment
- A clear understanding of which problems still need work and which can wait
- A practical 90-day plan built around your next priorities
That all feeds into the final 90-day plan, so you leave with a practical set of priorities rather than another oversized to-do list.
SIX WEEKS WORKING ON THE BUSINESS YOU ALREADY HAVE.
The Accelerator is a fixed six-week cohort with teaching, implementation, clinics and Q&A every week.
It requires time and participation. If what you want is another ecommerce course that you can buy today and perhaps watch at some point in the future, this is not the right product.
If you want six focused weeks to understand the business better, make meaningful improvements while we are working together and leave with a clearer direction for the next 90 days, then it may be a very good fit.
Backed by the Accelerator Guarantee
Do the programme, get your 90-day plan and decide whether it was worth the £2,497. If it wasn't, I'll refund you.
The application is there to make sure the Accelerator is appropriate for the stage your business is currently in. If I don't think it is the right option for you, I would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong programme.
DO THE SIX WEEKS. GET YOUR PLAN. IF YOU DON'T THINK IT WAS WORTH IT, I'LL GIVE YOU YOUR MONEY BACK.
Full refund. No questions asked.
I'm asking you to invest £2,497 and six weeks of your time in the Accelerator, so I think it's reasonable that I take some of the risk as well.
My expectation is that you will get significantly more value from the programme than you paid for it. You should understand the business better, have made meaningful improvements while we're working together and leave with a clear 90-day plan for what deserves attention next.
But ultimately, you get to decide whether it was worth it.
If at any point during the six-week programme you decide the Accelerator isn't for you, tell me and I'll refund what you paid.
And if you complete the programme, receive your 90-day plan and still don't feel that the Accelerator delivered enough value to justify the £2,497 investment, tell me within 7 days of the final scheduled session and I'll give you a full refund.
You don't need to prove that revenue went up by a certain percentage. You don't need to show that conversion improved. You don't need to argue your case or persuade me that your reason is good enough.
If you genuinely don't think it was worth the investment, I'll give you your money back.
YOU COULD SPEND THE NEXT SIX MONTHS TRYING MORE THINGS. OR YOU COULD SPEND SIX WEEKS WORKING OUT WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERS.
There will always be another campaign, channel, app, tactic or idea that looks worth trying. Some of them may be excellent ideas.
The question is whether they solve the problem your business actually has.
The Next Stage Accelerator gives you six focused weeks to understand what is happening, work through the priorities and make meaningful improvements while you have support around you. You then leave with a clearer understanding of the business and a practical 90-day direction for what comes next.
If the Accelerator is not the right fit for your business, I would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong programme.