Your store doesn’t need another supplier. It needs someone who can actually finish the list.

Dear eCommerce manager, brand owner, or whoever inherited “the website stuff”,

You probably have a list.

It may live in a spreadsheet, a project board, somebody’s inbox, or entirely inside the head of the one person everyone asks when the store behaves strangely.

There is a mobile layout that has never felt quite right. A product template that needs one more useful block. A collection filter customers do not understand. An app loading where it should not. A campaign page someone promised would be reusable next time.

None of it is dramatic enough to trigger a grand project.

But none of it is harmless either.

One awkward step costs a few customers. One slow template makes every paid click work harder. One manual admin task steals the same hour every week. One “temporary” workaround becomes part of the operating model.

Six months later, the list is longer, the team is used to the inconvenience, and somebody starts wondering aloud whether the whole store needs rebuilding.

Usually, it does not.

The awkward jobs fall between the usual options.

A large agency is set up for projects, retainers and account management. Your in-house team is already busy keeping trade moving. A general freelancer may be able to write the code, but still needs you to define the right answer before they begin.

That leaves a very ordinary gap: experienced help that can understand the commercial problem, make a sensible technical decision and then ship the work.

That gap is where I work.

I’m Luke Michael, a UK eCommerce Consultant & Developer. I have spent over twenty years working in-house, agency-side and freelance. Shopify and Shopify Plus are home turf, with BigCommerce and WooCommerce close behind.

I can look at the thing your team is trying to achieve, challenge it when necessary, work out the smallest sensible solution and build it in a way you can keep.

This is development support with the thinking left in.

Sometimes the work is visible: a better product page, a clearer collection, a landing page, a reusable theme section or a mobile experience that finally behaves itself.

Sometimes it is underneath: tidying an integration, removing needless app weight, fixing conflicting scripts, improving performance or replacing a manual process with something more dependable.

And sometimes the most useful contribution is saying, “You do not need to build that.”

Code is only valuable when it solves the right problem. The most expensive development work is often perfectly competent work that should never have been commissioned.

So I do not need every engagement to become a redesign. I do not need to sell you a preferred platform. I do not collect apps for the sake of adding logos to a deck.

I would rather make the current store measurably less annoying—for your customers and your team—then move to the next useful thing.

Start with one job, not a leap of faith.

The best first piece of work is usually finite and real.

Not a six-month roadmap assembled before I know your business. Not a vague promise to “optimise conversion”. One problem with enough edges that we can agree what done looks like.

That first job lets me understand your store by doing something useful inside it. You see how I think, communicate and deliver. We both learn whether working together feels straightforward before anybody makes a bigger commitment.

If there is more worth doing, we can prioritise it. If there is not, you leave with the first problem solved and no obligation to manufacture another.

You do not have to replace the people you already trust.

I can work alongside an existing agency, internal team or specialist supplier. Sometimes I take ownership of a clearly bounded piece of delivery. Sometimes I provide the technical second opinion that helps everybody make a better decision.

The point is not to tread on anyone’s toes. It is to stop useful work becoming stuck between responsibilities.

Nor do you need to translate everything into developer language before getting in touch. Tell me what customers are finding difficult, what the team keeps doing manually, what feels slow, or which job has survived three planning meetings without moving.

I can take it from there.

What happens if you get in touch?

You send a short outline of the store and the problem. We arrange a free, no-pressure call. I ask the questions needed to understand whether the job is really the job.

Then I give you a straight answer.

That may be a focused piece of development, a review before development begins, a phased set of improvements, or a recommendation to leave something alone. If I am not the right person, I will say so.

You will not be dropped into a sales sequence or passed to an account manager. You will hear from the person who would actually do the work.

So, if your store is trading and the development list keeps getting longer, let’s start with the item that has been there longest.