How to Sell an Ecommerce Business in the UK

Plan to sell an ecommerce business and you will find the process both easier and harder than selling anything physical.

Easier, because the buyer pool is national rather than local. A cleaning company in Preston sells to someone within an hour's drive. An ecommerce business sells to anyone in the country, or beyond it, which means more competition for your business and better prices.

Harder, because the diligence is forensic. Everything you do leaves a data trail, and a buyer will read all of it: analytics, ad accounts, marketplace dashboards, payment processor records, supplier invoices. There is nowhere to hide a weak month or an inflated claim, and buyers in this space are usually numerate people who have bought before.

The structural backdrop is firmly supportive.

ONS data shows internet sales at 28.3% of total Great Britain retail in June 2026. The 2020 spike to 32.8% receded, as everyone expected, but it did not return to the 18.3% of June 2019. Online settled about ten percentage points higher, permanently. Buyers know that, and it underpins their willingness to pay for online businesses.

What they will not pay for is a business that depends on one traffic source, one supplier or one product. This guide covers what ecommerce businesses actually sell for, why concentration risk cuts the multiple more than anything else, how to prove your numbers, and what to fix before you list. Our guide to buying an online business covers the same transaction from the buyer's side.

Online businesses are valued on earnings, and the multiple bands are reasonably well established even though no official dataset exists.

Profile	Typical basis	Multiple
Under £250k SDE, owner-run	SDE	2.5x – 3.5x
£250k – £1m SDE, some team	SDE or EBITDA	3.5x – 5x
Above £1m EBITDA, managed	EBITDA	5x – 8x

A caveat worth stating plainly: there is no published UK dataset of ecommerce transaction multiples. These ranges reflect how brokers and marketplaces in this sector price deals rather than an official statistic, so treat them as a sense-check rather than a valuation.

Some businesses sit outside those bands for structural reasons:

Single-channel Amazon businesses typically price lower, often 2x to 3.5x SDE, because the platform can suspend an account, change fees or compete directly with a private label. That risk is real and buyers price it.

Subscription businesses price higher, sometimes well above the bands, because revenue is recurring and predictable. If you have a genuine subscription base with measurable churn, present it as such.

Content-plus-commerce businesses with substantial organic traffic can attract a premium, provided the traffic isn't dependent on a single algorithm change away from disappearing.

What "SDE" means here. Net profit, plus your salary and benefits, plus one-off costs, plus any genuinely personal spending running through the business. Buyers will strip out anything necessary to run the business, so don't add back a virtual assistant you actually need. Our normalised EBITDA guide explains how to present adjustments that survive scrutiny.

The trailing period matters. Most buyers work from trailing twelve months, some from a weighted average favouring recent months. If your business is growing, push for TTM or a weighting. If it's declining, expect the buyer to use the most recent quarter annualised, and expect that conversation to be uncomfortable.

Every discount a buyer applies to an ecommerce business comes back to the same question: what single thing could go wrong and destroy this?

Traffic concentration. If 80% of your revenue comes from paid Meta ads, the buyer is buying an ad account and an agency relationship, not a brand. If 80% comes from one Google keyword ranking, they're one core update from disaster. Diversified traffic, a genuine mix of organic search, direct, email, paid and social, is worth a meaningfully higher multiple than the same revenue from one source.

Platform concentration. Amazon-only businesses trade at lower multiples than the same earnings across Amazon, a Shopify store and a couple of other marketplaces. Adding a second meaningful channel before you sell is one of the highest-return preparations available.

Supplier concentration. One supplier, no written agreement, no second source. Buyers ask what happens if that factory raises prices 20% or stops answering emails. Having a documented second source, even one you use lightly, removes a real discount.

Customer concentration matters in B2B ecommerce and wholesale-heavy businesses, less in consumer DTC.

Product concentration. If one SKU is 60% of revenue, the buyer is underwriting that product's lifecycle. Not fatal, but they will want to see the trend and understand competitive threats.

The one that surprises founders. Founder concentration. If you personally are the brand, you're the face on the ads, the voice on the emails, the person in the videos, a buyer is acquiring a business whose marketing engine leaves at completion. Building brand assets that aren't you takes a year and it changes the price materially.

Notice where raw revenue growth sits on that chart. Growth helps, but a growing business with one traffic source and one supplier is riskier than a flat business with five channels and two suppliers, and buyers price accordingly.

Ecommerce diligence is more forensic than in any other sector covered in this series, because the data exists and buyers know how to read it.

Expect to give screen-share or read-only access to:

1. Google Analytics, going back at least two years, showing sessions, sources, conversion rate and revenue.
2. Google Search Console, for organic traffic and query data.
3. Every ad account, with full spend and return history. Buyers will calculate your true blended acquisition cost, which is often higher than founders realise.
4. Marketplace seller dashboards, including account health, policy warnings and any suspension history.
5. Your ecommerce platform back end, for order data, refunds and repeat rates.
6. Payment processor records, which are the hardest thing to manipulate and therefore the number buyers trust most.
7. Supplier invoices and, ideally, agreements.
8. Statutory accounts and VAT returns.

Where deals fall over. Three patterns recur.

Revenue in the accounts that doesn't reconcile to payment processor deposits. Usually innocent, usually a timing or refund treatment issue, always alarming to a buyer until explained. Reconcile it yourself before they find it.

Advertising spend that has been quietly rising while revenue is flat, so the real trend is margin compression disguised as stability. Show it yourself with an explanation rather than letting the buyer discover it.

Inventory that isn't what the balance sheet says. Dead stock valued at cost, goods in transit counted twice, or returns not written down. Do a genuine stock count and write down what won't sell.

Trademarks and IP. Own your brand name. If your trademark isn't registered, or is registered to you personally rather than the company, sort that out before you market. The same goes for the domain, the social handles and any product photography you commissioned. Buyers check ownership, and a missing registration is a real negotiating lever for them.

Our due diligence checklist covers the general process, though ecommerce adds this whole data layer on top.

The work that changes your multiple

Diversify one channel. If you're Amazon-only, launch a store. If you're store-only, add a marketplace. Even a channel producing 15% of revenue changes the risk conversation completely.

Build the owned audience. Email and SMS lists you control, with measurable open and conversion rates. An owned audience is the asset that survives an algorithm change, and buyers value it accordingly.

Reduce paid dependence. Work on organic search, content, retention and repeat purchase. Every point of revenue that arrives without ad spend is worth more than a point that doesn't.

Document everything. Standard operating procedures for order fulfilment, customer service, supplier ordering, returns and content production. Two reasons: it proves the business is transferable, and it makes the handover shorter, which lets you negotiate a shorter tie-in.

Get out of the daily operations. A virtual assistant handling customer service and a freelancer running the ads costs you margin and gains you multiple, because it converts an SDE valuation into an EBITDA one and demonstrates the business runs without you.

Fix the stock position. Sell through dead inventory even at a loss. Carrying it into a sale means arguing about its value during completion accounts, and you'll lose that argument.

Clean up the company. Statutory filings up to date, VAT correct, and if you're selling internationally, your overseas VAT and customs position in order. Post-Brexit EU distance selling arrangements are a common source of unexpected liabilities.

Register the trademark if you haven't.

Twelve months sounds like a long time. In practice the channel diversification and the audience building are the parts that need it, and they're also the parts that move the multiple most.

Share sale versus asset sale matters here in a specific way. Ecommerce buyers often prefer asset purchases so they take the brand, domain, customer list, inventory and supplier relationships while leaving your company's history behind. Sellers prefer share sales for the tax treatment.

The compromise usually lands on price. If you're being asked for an asset sale, model the tax difference and reflect it in what you accept, because the gap can be substantial once you factor in extracting proceeds from the company afterwards.

Business Asset Disposal Relief. GOV.UK confirms the rate is 18% from 6 April 2026, up from 14% in 2025-26 and 10% before April 2025, with a £1m lifetime limit. For a share sale you generally need at least 5% of ordinary share capital and voting rights, plus an officer or employee role, held for two years before disposal.

That two-year condition catches ecommerce founders more than most, because this sector restructures often: bringing in a co-founder, issuing shares to an employee, or moving the trade into a new company. Any of those can reset the clock. Check your position now, not when you have an offer.

Where the business is a sole trade rather than a company, you're selling assets and goodwill directly, and BADR can apply to the disposal of the whole business provided the two-year trading condition is met.

Inventory is normally valued and paid for separately at completion.

Earn-outs are common in this sector and worth negotiating hard. Buyers like them because online revenue can move fast. Push for measurable triggers based on revenue or gross profit rather than net profit, because the buyer controls the cost side after completion and you don't. Cap your downside, define the measurement period precisely, and get information rights so you can actually verify what you're owed.

Our Business Asset Disposal Relief guide covers the qualifying conditions in detail.

This worked example is an illustrative composite built from typical market figures, not a record of a specific transaction.

A UK DTC brand selling homeware. Revenue £1.24m, run by the founder with one part-time assistant.

Starting position:

Line	Annual	Notes
Revenue	£1,240,000	88% from paid Meta and Google
Cost of goods	£471,000	Single supplier in China
Advertising	£397,000	Blended ROAS 3.1
Fulfilment and shipping	£112,000	Third-party logistics
Platform, apps, software	£29,000
Assistant and freelancers	£34,000
SDE	£197,000	Founder takes no formal salary

The offers. £197,000 of SDE at 3x suggests £591,000. Actual offers came in at 2.4x to 2.6x, so £473,000 to £512,000.

The discount had three named causes: 88% of revenue from paid ads with a single ad account; one supplier with no written agreement and no second source; and the founder personally appearing in most of the creative, so the marketing engine walked out at completion.

What fourteen months of work changed.

Launched on two marketplaces, taking non-paid channels from 12% to 34% of revenue. Built an email list to 41,000 subscribers producing 11% of revenue directly. Qualified a second supplier in Portugal and moved 20% of volume there, which cost a little margin and removed a large risk. Replaced founder-led creative with user-generated content and a brand ambassador. Hired a part-time ecommerce manager on £28,000.

Rebuilt position: revenue £1.41m, SDE after the manager's salary around £216,000, paid dependence down to 66%, two suppliers, and a transferable marketing system.

Sold at 4.1x, so £886,000, with 20% earn-out over twelve months against revenue.

Same underlying business. The multiple moved from 2.5x to 4.1x, and the earnings grew as well. Nearly all of it came from removing single points of failure rather than from selling more.

That's the whole lesson for this sector. Buyers aren't paying for growth. They're paying for the absence of things that could go catastrophically wrong.

Your buyer types. Individual operators buying a business to run, usually under £500,000 and often first-timers with savings and a loan. Portfolio buyers and small aggregators who own several online businesses and can plug yours into existing infrastructure, typically £250,000 to £3m. Strategic trade buyers, competitors or complementary brands who want your customers and can strip out your overheads, and who pay the most when they engage. And private equity above roughly £1m of EBITDA.

Routes to market. Specialist online-business marketplaces are the default for this sector and they work, though fees run 10% to 15% at the smaller end, which is high. Broker-led processes suit larger businesses and cost 5% to 10%. Direct listing on a general business marketplace keeps the commission, reaches UK buyers specifically, and works well where your business has a real brand rather than being a generic drop-shipping operation. Direct approaches to three or four strategic buyers are underrated and often produce the best price.

Protect yourself in the process. NDA before you share analytics access, because your traffic sources and margins are competitively sensitive. Redact supplier names until heads of terms. Never give away your full keyword and ad data to someone who hasn't demonstrated funds.

Prepare the pack. Trailing twelve months P&L with SDE clearly derived, traffic by source for two years, revenue by channel and SKU, repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value, ad spend and return by platform, supplier terms, inventory schedule with ageing, and your standard operating procedures.

Expect a shorter but sharper process than in bricks-and-mortar sectors. Three to six months from listing to completion is normal, because there's no property, no lease and no licence. What takes the time is diligence, and preparation is what shortens it.

When you're ready to sell an ecommerce business, you can list it on NewOwner to reach UK buyers directly without a marketplace taking 10% to 15%, see the pricing here, or read how selling direct compares with using a broker. To talk through your own position first, get in touch.