Optimising International Ecommerce Foundations for Growth

Abacus & Hunt is a large online retailer specialising in luxury furniture and homewares across Australia and USA. Sonar partnered with Abacus & Hunt to diagnose the root causes behind digital visibility and performance instability, stabilise key ecommerce foundations, and deliver a clear roadmap to unlock scalable growth across both regions.

The Challenge

Abacus & Hunt engaged Sonar to diagnose and resolve foundational ecommerce visibility and performance challenges across their AU and USA Shopify stores. Sonar delivered a structured audit, clear stakeholder insights, and a stabilisation plan to reduce risk across both platforms. The engagement concluded with a practical roadmap to help Abacus & Hunt scale discoverability, strengthen foundations and unlock sustainable growth across both regions.

As Abacus & Hunt expanded across multiple regions, their ecommerce complexity increased. The team began seeing inconsistencies in how their storefronts performed across markets which was impacting discoverability, customer experience, and their confidence in how to prioritise improvements at scale.

What this meant for the business

  • Search visibility and market alignment became inconsistent across regions
  • Platform and measurement foundations created uncertainty around what was driving issues at the root cause level
  • The team needed clarity on what was broken, what mattered most, and how to prevent the same issues recurring as they scaled
The Challenge Abacus & Hunt

Our Approach

Audit → Diagnosis → Alignment

Rather than addressing symptoms in isolation, Sonar conducted a structured audit to identify root causes across Abacus & Hunt’s ecommerce ecosystem, spanning technical platform foundations, search discoverability and measurement readiness.

How we worked

Sonar combined deep technical diagnostics with strategic alignment, ensuring the Abacus & Hunt team could:

  • Understand what was happening across both storefronts (AU and USA)
  • See why the issues were occurring and what they impacted
  • Prioritise the actions that would stabilise foundations first — before scaling growth work

The Process

Educating through Insights

A key part of the engagement was helping Abacus & Hunt move from uncertainty to clarity. Sonar translated technical diagnostics into clear, decision-ready insight so stakeholders could align on what mattered most.

Key themes

  • Issues were structural and cross-market, meaning foundational improvements were required before optimisation
  • Stronger market signalling was needed so search platforms could serve the right experience to the right audience
  • Sustainable growth depended on consistent foundations: discoverability, platform integrity, and reliable measurement

Stabalisation & Resolution

Sonar delivered a stabilisation and remediation plan designed to restore control and reduce risk across Abacus & Hunt’s AU and USA ecommerce Shopify & paid search environments.

What we enabled

  • Reduced risk and inconsistency across regional storefronts
  • Improved clarity and reliability of how search engines interpret and surface regional experiences
  • Strengthened the foundations required for ongoing optimisation and scalable growth across both markets

The Roadmap

To ensure the issues didn’t reoccur and growth could be scaled confidently, Sonar delivered a phased roadmap giving Abacus & Hunt a clear, prioritised plan to mitigate future risk and improve discoverability across both AU and USA storefronts and digital advertising channels.

Roadmap structure

  • Now: stabilise and resolve the most critical blockers
  • Next: strengthen discoverability and build scalable patterns across both markets
  • Future: improve long-term visibility through structured content, AI discovery readiness, and ongoing optimisation

Key Outcomes

Abacus & Hunt moved from reactive troubleshooting toward a structured plan for scalable growth. With clear root-cause insight, stabilised foundations and a practical roadmap, the team gained confidence in how to improve performance across both markets and how to mitigate similar issues as the business grows internationally.

  • Root-cause clarity and prioritised direction
  • Stabilised foundations for international ecommerce visibility
  • Reduced risk and increased confidence in scaling across two markets
  • Roadmap created to support ongoing optimisation and future mitigation


What Sonar Delivered

  • Cross-market ecommerce diagnosis (AU + USA)
  • Discoverability and platform audit
  • Stakeholder education through evidence-based insights
  • Stabilisation plan and prioritised remediation actions
  • Roadmap for scalable growth and long-term mitigation across regions
The Solution Abacus & Hunt