ELK Digital

ELK Digital Shopify, WordPress and WooCommerce developer based in Hampshire. 28 years of experience across the jewellery and watch trade and general web. One developer.

No account managers. Built properly, delivered on time.

23/07/2026

When I woke this morning my back office processes had already done a day's work.

If a job is decided by a choice, it can be automated... nobody has to think about it again; just see the results.

That covers more than you expect.

- A follow-up that goes out three days after someone hasn't replied, plus the one after that
- Splitting your lists so someone who's bought five times isn't getting the same email as somebody who's bought once
- Chasing the order that hasn't shipped
- Stock & prices going from your till to your website so nobody's typing them in twice
- The monthly report that gets done by hand, or more honestly doesn't get done at all
- Catching the feed rejections before Google quietly stops showing your products

None of this is new. Agencies have been doing it for years & there's nothing clever in any of it. The difference is it runs without anyone having to remember to do it.

What stays human is the deciding. Once a month it writes the client update email, what has been done, what's outstanding, etc - it drops it in my drafts. It doesn't send it. IT NEVER SENDS IT! As much as I trust it, I'm not trusting it to email a client without me reading first.

What you're good at is running your business & talking to your customers; you don't need to be spending hours following up.

That's the job... Claude does the volume, I do the decisions.

From £950 a month.

https://elkdigital.co.uk/services/ai-operations/

21/07/2026

Your shop is slow, so you buy the all-in-one speed plugin. A subscription, a screen full of switches, everything promised faster in one click. I've measured what those switches do on real shops: most change nothing your customers would feel, and I've watched one take a working shop offline. What a slow site needs first is a boring audit that measures what matters.

What moved a busy WooCommerce shop: page caching set up properly (first byte 2.9s to 0.22s) and images served correctly (largest paint 3.9s to 1.35s). Fully loaded went 8.8s to 1.8s. No rebuild.

The whole method, with the measurements: https://elkdigital.co.uk/wordpress-speed-optimisation/

12/07/2026

If your WordPress site is slow, this might save you some money.

Most speed advice comes from someone selling the fix, so I've written up what I've actually measured on real sites: what makes a difference, what barely does anything, and a fifteen-minute check to work out which problem yours is before you spend a penny on any of it.

It's free, no sign-up, no catch. Hope it's useful to someone.

https://elkdigital.co.uk/wordpress-speed-optimisation/
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My site was built by me and Claude, working together. Not generated. Built.I'm saying so because plenty of people in my ...
17/06/2026

My site was built by me and Claude, working together. Not generated. Built.

I'm saying so because plenty of people in my trade are using these tools and hoping nobody asks. I'd rather show the work.

One example from this week. The homepage wouldn't hit a green performance score, and it has no images on it. The score kept bouncing between runs too. We ruled out the obvious suspect by measuring instead of guessing, and found the real cause: the main heading repainted the moment its font loaded, and that second paint wrecked the number. The fix was niche. 10 minutes, start to finish.

Claude didn't know the answer. It offered wrong ones too. We got there by knowing how to measure, and how to tell a real fix from a plausible-sounding one. That judgement is still mine. The legwork ran at a speed I can't match alone. That's Claude.

If you build for the web and you're not learning to work this way, you'll get left behind, or replaced. Not by AI on its own, by the people who use it well.

Full story on the site. Link in the comments.

I don't post about work much — but this one's worth it.I've just finished the new site for 33 Games, and what they do is...
20/05/2026

I don't post about work much — but this one's worth it.

I've just finished the new site for 33 Games, and what they do is genuinely brilliant.

They're a boutique publisher who take great games and give them a proper physical release — premium collector's editions, gatefold vinyl soundtracks, packaging built to keep. In a world where everything's a download you forget you own, they're turning games back into things.

It was one of those projects you don't really want to hand back. Good people, a brand with real character, and a genuine love for what they make — which makes the whole thing a pleasure to build.

Thanks to the 33 Games team for trusting me with it. Properly chuffed with how it turned out.

Have a look at what they're doing: https://33-games.com

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St Hilda Avenue
Waterlooville
PO80JF

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