Home & Garden Ecommerce Agency | Magento & Shopify

Built for big baskets, complex products, and customers who take their time.

We’re Actuate, an ecommerce agency in Manchester, and a lot of our work is for home and garden brands: furniture, homeware, garden kit and the trade suppliers behind them. If you’d rather meet in person, we’re right next to Piccadilly station.

Your customers browse, compare and take their time. The baskets are big, the product pages are heavy, and a slow page on a phone can lose an order you’d been waiting weeks for.

So we make the product page fast and the choice easy.

Most projects start with an NNP Workshop.

Book my NNP Workshop

Development That Fits Your Catalogue

For a big catalogue with trade pricing and delivery rules by weight, we’d usually put you on Magento or Adobe Commerce with a Hyvä frontend. If your range is simpler and your team wants to run campaigns without a developer, Shopify does the job, and we’ll say so.

Magento Open Source gives your team full control over product data, shipping rules and merchandising, without a licence fee.

Adobe Commerce adds B2B tools, customer segmentation and international pricing, for brands running more than one storefront or selling to trade.

Shopify and Shopify Plus suit simpler ranges, and teams that want to launch campaigns and sub-brands without waiting on a developer.

Help me choose a platform

UX & UI That Helps Customers Choose

Home and garden products aren’t impulse buys. Your customers want to compare, picture it in the room and feel sure before they check out. We design journeys that help them find the right product quickly, understand the options clearly and get through checkout without distractions.

The same work gives your team better places for bundles and upsells, so the bigger basket comes from being useful rather than pushy.

Show me how you design

Ongoing Support That Keeps Your Products Moving

Your range changes every season, and so does what your customers expect. We stay on after launch, whether the next job is a spring sale or a whole new category.

On a retainer you get a call every fortnight, a full CRO audit every three months and a plan for the quarter, with the site kept fast and secure in between.

Keep my site growing

Willow & Hall

Willow & Hall is a luxury furniture brand with a wide range, high average order values and customers who like to browse and compare before they buy. Their Magento 1 site was slow, hard to manage and didn’t reflect the quality of the brand.

We moved them to Magento 2, rebuilt the backend for product and order management, and launched a new Hyvä frontend. Pages got more than 80% faster, conversion reached 3.6%, and online sales went up 15% on the back of it.

View Case Study

Client Willow & Hall

Sector Luxury Furniture

Platform Hyvä, Magento 2

Project Time Migration, then ongoing support

Conversion Rate Reached

A quicker checkout and faster pages took the conversion rate to 3.6%.

3.6%

Increase in Sales

Better UX and faster pages drove a 15% rise in sales.

15%

Faster than their old website

Moving to Magento 2 with a Hyvä frontend sped up every page.

80%

What our clients say

"What impressed us most was how quickly Actuate identified the root cause. Within the first call they'd spotted the metadata issue that had been tanking our traffic. Everything that followed has been just as sharp."

Mitch Tamcken AutoID

I like working with Actuate because they care about what they do, they clarify the detail to get the job done right. They have worked incredibly hard with our complex needs and have been on hand for help and advice every step along the way...

Catherine Lund-Barker Elcometer

Without Actuate's help and support, our original website wouldn’t have succeeded. Time was of the essence, and Actuate stepped in to deliver a swift turnaround. The new site has performed exceptionally well ever since. We continue to grow thanks to Actuate. ❤️ Thanks guys!”

Chantelle Telford Robinsons of Bawtry

Their team leverages their expertise to provide sound opinions and advice to guide the project in the right direction.

Daniel Wright Reliant

I worked with Actuate on the redevelopment of the Pickett London website. Their team is an excellent asset for any company or team, it was a pleasure to work with them - easy to communicate with, easy to reach and always willing to help.

Oliver Moser Pickett

Working with Actuate is a pleasure — they are really trying to help, they listen and offer solutions to solve the problems. Thanks for all your help so far.

Rafael Bielinski Buller Ltd

We've worked with Actuate for several years and the results have been consistent. Conversion rate up 113%, AOV up, bounce rate down. They know our business inside out, and it shows.

Rob Dyer Be My Bear

Frequently Asked Questions.

Get in Touch

Big ranges, variants and heavy or bulky items are our norm. We structure catalogues and filtering so customers find the right product fast, however many sizes and finishes there are.

Yes. We build stores that serve DIY consumers and trade buyers from one place, with the right pricing, bulk ordering and account setup for each.

We set up shipping rules around weight, dimensions and delivery zones, so quotes are accurate and customers are not surprised at checkout.

Usually Magento or Adobe Commerce for large catalogues and trade complexity, or Shopify for simpler ranges. We recommend around your range and how you sell, not the other way round.