Actuate started in 2011 with a simple idea: that eCommerce works better when it’s built around how people actually think and behave. Mat founded the agency after training as an actor, and that instinct for understanding what drives people to act is baked into everything we do.
We’re a small, specialist team based in Manchester working with ambitious retailers across Shopify, Magento, and Adobe Commerce. We’re not trying to be the biggest agency in the room. We’re trying to be the most useful one. The team that tells you what’s actually wrong, fixes it properly, and sticks around to make sure it stays fixed.
actuate [ak-tew-ate] – verb: to cause to act, influence, incite to action, motivate.
We’re not here to patch things up and move on. We’re here to help you move forward. That means tackling the problems that are slowing you down now and setting you up for the better ones that come next.
The kinds of problems we love?
This is where we work best turning blockers into breakthroughs and laying the groundwork for whatever’s coming next.
Because the only problems worth having? Are the next nice problems.
Mat trained as an actor before pivoting into eCommerce, founding Actuate in 2011. Turns out understanding why people make decisions is just as useful in a CRO audit as it is on stage.
He’s spent 15 years working with ambitious retailers across Shopify, Magento, and Adobe Commerce and has an annoying habit of spotting what’s wrong with your site before you’ve finished explaining the problem.
Steven is a self-taught UX/UI designer who joined Actuate two days after it launched, which tells you something about his judgment.
He’s spent 15 years figuring out what makes people click, scroll, and buy, and brings the same obsessive attention to detail to a product page as he does to the gym or a morning run.
At Actuate he’s the one making sure every design decision earns its place.
Jessica came to marketing via Ballroom & Latin dancing and law, which tells you everything you need to know about her.
She’s precise when she needs to be, creative when it counts, and genuinely invested in the people she works with.
At Actuate she runs both the marketing and the project side of the business, keeping clients happy, the team organised, and everything moving in the right direction.
Vishal has been with Actuate for four years and is the person you want in your corner when a Magento build gets complicated.
Adobe certified and with a particular love for Hyvä, he knows both platforms inside out and has the credentials to prove it.
He’s methodical, dependable, and quietly one of the most important people in the building. Outside work, family comes first.
Rico is Steve’s German Shepherd and unofficial morale officer. Occasionally attends meetings. Always welcome.
Lenny is Mat and Jess’s Mastiff and the agency’s self-appointed Wellness Officer. Takes his role very seriously, mostly from the sofa.
Call it what it is: a practical, hands-on audit of your eCommerce site. Like the traditional kind, it shows you what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s getting in the way.
But unlike most audits, this one won’t gather dust in your inbox.
It’s fast, focused, and delivered as a short, punchy video walkthrough (not a 40-page doc) – a clearly prioritised list of quick wins and longer-term actions, and a roadmap that moves you from current pain to your next nice problem to have. It’ll show you exactly where you’re leaking revenue and where the quick wins are hiding, whether that’s clunky UX, code issues, or conversion blockers. The sooner you know what’s going wrong, the sooner you can start fixing it.
So you can focus on your #nextniceproblem.
Magento 2 is a solid choice for growing online businesses that need more control than the average platform offers. It’s flexible, customisable, and built to scale – without locking you into someone else’s rules.
Your customers aren’t all the same, so why should their experience be? Magento gives you the freedom to shape how your site works – from performance to checkout flow – so it actually fits your products, your customers, and your plans.
As a trusted Magento agency in the UK, we help brands unlock that control and shape a storefront that fits their business. Our team delivers tailored builds, provides ongoing Magento support services, and drives long-term value with deep platform expertise.
Need something heavier-duty? Adobe Commerce is the enterprise version of Magento. It’s built for businesses dealing with complexity – whether that’s multiple storefronts, international pricing, or B2B setups with custom logic. It just handles it.
And once the platform stops getting in your way? That’s when the next nice problems start to show up. Like where to invest the time you’re not wasting on workarounds, or how to reinvest the budget you’re not sinking into plugins and patches. Perhaps what to test next now that you’ve actually got the freedom to.
Growth doesn’t get easier, but it does get better, and this is the kind of platform that keeps up when you do.
Hyvä is a modern front-end for Magento and Adobe Commerce that delivers what most themes can’t: speed, simplicity, and stability. It strips out the bloat, improves performance across the board, and makes your site faster to use and easier to manage.
For brands already on Magento or Adobe, it solves the usual friction points – slow load times, clunky code, and dev work that takes longer (and costs more) than it should. Hyvä replaces the outdated frontend stack with something leaner, cleaner, and easier to build on. That means quicker releases, faster pages, and a better customer experience – without rebuilding your entire site from scratch.
The results are measurable: better conversion rates, higher average order values, stronger SEO, and improved Core Web Vitals. It also gives your team the freedom to move faster, testing, iterating, and launching without being slowed down by legacy complexity.
Once those gains start to stack up, the next nice problems appear. How do you reinvest the dev time you’ve freed up? Where should you focus now that you’re not fighting performance? What becomes possible when your platform finally keeps up?
Hyvä clears the path – so you can focus on what’s next.
Shopify is built for brands that need to move quickly – whether that’s getting a first store live or scaling an existing one without rebuilding from scratch. It’s a strong fit for start-ups launching fast, and just as effective for established retailers that want to adapt, test, and grow without unnecessary complexity.
Shopify Plus adds more flexibility where it matters – from managing multiple storefronts to customising the checkout experience and automating key operational tasks, so your team can focus on driving growth.
We’ve seen it in action – brands like Robinson’s growing from zero to a million, reacting to market changes in real time, even rolling out tariff-based pricing updates in minutes when needed. Shopify gives you the space to respond, refine, and keep moving.
Once things are running smoothly, the next nice problems start to appear. Do you introduce personalisation? Launch a loyalty programme? Expand into new markets? With the platform doing its job, the focus shifts from fixing issues to making smart decisions about what’s next.
Most brands aren’t short on traffic – they’re short on what that traffic does once it hits the site. That’s where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes in.
This isn’t about guesswork or swapping button colours. We run proper A/B tests, multivariate experiments, dig into UX and UI, fix friction in the checkout, and map out the user journey end-to-end. Every blocker we remove means more people buying, and buying more often, without driving up your media spend.
We’re not here to optimise for the sake of it. We’re here to make sure your site’s actually pulling its weight. That the clicks you’re already paying for – through PPC, influencers, paid social, SEO – convert better. That the customer experience feels solid enough to trust, fast enough to stick with, and smooth enough that no one’s rage-quitting at checkout.
Once that starts working? You’re not asking “why aren’t we converting?” anymore. You’re deciding where to put the extra margin. Scale spend? Try a new channel? Build out loyalty? That’s the shift – from fixing problems to chasing better ones.
Just because your site’s live doesn’t mean you’re on your own.
Whether you’ve got a lean team or no team at all, we’re here to keep things moving – from routine updates to performance fixes to the bigger, strategic stuff. We’ll handle the day-to-day, so your team can stay focused on everything else.
But this isn’t just about maintenance. We work as a consultancy too – helping you make smart decisions about what comes next. Want to test something new? Build on a feature? Rethink a journey? We’re not waiting around for tickets. We’re in it with you, start to finish.
Some brands need us to take the wheel. Others just need a reliable sounding board. Either way, we’re the ongoing pulse behind your site, making sure it stays fast, secure, and always moving forward.
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