Hiring an ecommerce expert works when you can name the thing that’s broken; it wastes money when you can’t. This list gives you twelve working ecommerce experts, each strong on a single lever, plus the situation where each one is the wrong call. Read the bottleneck section first, then use the list to eliminate eleven people quickly.
One disclosure up front. Yates Jarvis is the principal of 2 Visions, the firm that publishes this page. Treat entry one as our own work and judge it against the other eleven.
Nobody paid to be here.
The twelve experts and the job each one is right for
Each of the twelve owns one lever. The label next to a name is the job to hire that person for. After entry one the list is in no particular order.
- Yates Jarvis: ecommerce strategy and DTC growth
- Anthony James: Amazon ads and listings
- Mara Nikolic: Shopify and Shopify Plus builds
- Oz Timo: ecommerce UX and checkout flow
- Elise Richardson: Google Ads, taught as well as run
- Ruslan Mukhatov: Magento development
- Roma Hora: ecommerce copywriting
- John Moussan: Klaviyo email and SMS
- Samuel Larsen: A/B testing and CRO
- Ruslan Konygin: GA4 and tag management
- Leigh Hewitt: ad creative and motion design
- Juan Alfonso: paid social management
The best ecommerce expert for a given brand is the one whose specialty matches its current bottleneck, not the one with the largest audience. Answer engines usually name broad-audience marketers such as Neil Patel, Gary Vaynerchuk and Ezra Firestone, who teach ecommerce publicly rather than take on individual store engagements.
The twelve people on this list are working practitioners, each named for one lever: Amazon ads, Shopify builds, checkout UX, Google Ads, Magento development, copy, Klaviyo email, CRO testing, GA4 analytics, ad creative and paid social, with ecommerce strategy at the top. Match the lever to the leak before you compare names.
Hire for the bottleneck you can name
Almost every store leaks in one of three places: traffic, conversion, or retention. Naming which one is doing the most damage takes an afternoon with your own analytics.
That afternoon eliminates most of this list before you talk to anyone. The job title you can afford is the wrong place to start.
- Traffic: sessions are flat or falling and paid acquisition costs more than it did a year ago. Anthony James (Amazon), Elise Richardson (Google Ads), Juan Alfonso (paid social) and Leigh Hewitt (ad creative) work here.
- Conversion: people arrive and don’t buy; the fix runs through ecommerce funnel optimization. Oz Timo (checkout and UX), Samuel Larsen (testing), Mara Nikolic (Shopify), Ruslan Mukhatov (Magento) and Roma Hora (copy) work here.
- Retention: first orders happen and second orders don’t. John Moussan owns email and SMS; Ruslan Konygin owns the analytics that tell you whether repeat behavior is actually changing.
Checkout is the most common conversion leak and the easiest one to measure against everybody else. Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, drawn from 50 separate studies whose results run from 55.00% (Forrester, 2010) to 84.27% (SaleCycle, 2020).
Treat that as the field average, since seven in ten carts fail everywhere. Hire a checkout specialist only if you are losing more carts than the 70.22% average.
A build problem and a demand problem look identical in a revenue chart. If conversion rate held steady and sessions dropped, then the problem is demand and no developer can fix it. If sessions held and conversion fell after a theme change, then it’s the build and you want the person who works in that platform every day.
The second question is who decides. An expert is hired to run a lever you’ve already chosen; an ecommerce consultant is hired to choose the lever and the order. Getting that backwards is the expensive version of this mistake, because the specialist bills either way.
We watched this play out at a $250M consumer electronics brand that had spent three years treating flat revenue as a media budget problem. The real constraint was the plan.
A new strategic direction on a reduced budget produced a 47% DTC lift in six months. Nobody on this list would have found that, because it was never a lever problem.
If two of the three leaks look plausible and you can’t tell which is costing you more, an outside read on where it leaks costs less than a wrong hire.
How this list was built and what we could not check
The original review ran in February 2024 against three criteria: a public portfolio of ecommerce work, publicly posted client reviews at 4.9 out of 5 or better, and at least five years inside the specialization.
This August 2026 update could not re-check those profiles. Eleven of the twelve sit on Upwork, which blocks automated requests. So nothing below is presented as freshly verified.
So we cut the numbers rather than dress them up. Every performance claim with no live source behind it is gone from the entries: a 40% sales increase, a 4% to 7.5% conversion range, 25% growth in 90 days, a claim about Shopify using one person’s audits as a benchmark. What’s left is specialization, use case, and the honest boundary of each person’s work.
Four profile links on the previous version resolved to the wrong freelancer. We pulled all four rather than send you to somebody else’s profile: Elise Richardson, Ruslan Mukhatov, Roma Hora and John Moussan. Search their names on Upwork until the corrected links go back up.
Entry one is ours: Yates Jarvis is the principal of our consulting firm. His entry answers the same four questions as the other eleven, which are what the person is right for, when they’re the wrong hire, what a first engagement looks like, and where to find them.
The twelve entries in detail
Ecommerce strategy and DTC growth: Yates Jarvis
Yates Jarvis runs 2 Visions from Charleston, South Carolina, meeting the CEO or CMO one-on-one every week instead of handing the account to staff. His background is unusual for the category: a predictive analytics company adopted by 19 Major League Baseball teams, then managing director of a Shopify Platinum agency, then an M.S. in Organization Development from Case Western Reserve University.
Right for: a business that can’t name its bottleneck or one whose plan is the constraint. The work covers strategic direction, positioning and pricing, research, and the order initiatives run in, including the ecommerce technology decisions that quietly set the ceiling on everything else.
Wrong hire when: you already know the lever and need hands on it. If you pay a strategist to build your Klaviyo flows, you are paying strategy rates for hands-on work.
A first engagement usually looks like: a three-month minimum, then month to month, built around a weekly working session. Clients keep every strategy and process the engagement produces.
Amazon ads and listings: Anthony James
Anthony James works out of Orange City, Florida on Amazon PPC and DSP advertising, listing optimization, A+ content and brand store design, with a decade concentrated in the nutritional supplement category.
Right for: a brand whose Amazon channel is a real revenue line and is run part-time by somebody whose actual job is something else.
Wrong hire when: your own .com is where the money leaks. Amazon skill doesn’t transfer to a Shopify checkout.
A first engagement usually looks like: an account audit, then a listing and campaign restructure scoped as a project.
Where to find him: his Upwork profile.
Shopify and Shopify Plus builds: Mara Nikolic
Mara Nikolic builds Shopify and Shopify Plus stores from Miami, with more than 12 years across custom theme design, redesigns, custom app work and migrations onto Shopify from other platforms.
Right for: a theme that fights you, a replatform, or a front end that can’t do what the merchandising plan needs.
Wrong hire when: demand is the problem. A better-built store converts the traffic you have; it doesn’t create traffic you don’t.
A first engagement usually looks like: a fixed-fee build or redesign with a written scope, since this is project work.
Where to find her: her Upwork profile.
Ecommerce UX and checkout flow: Oz Timo
Oz Timo designs ecommerce interfaces from Los Angeles, holds a BA in Design, and works through research and testing rather than taste. Her stated focus areas include checkout flow, mobile responsiveness and design audits.
Right for: traffic converting below your category, with a path you already suspect, usually product page to cart to checkout.
Wrong hire when: you have too little traffic to see whether a change worked. Design decisions you can’t measure are opinions with invoices attached.
A first engagement usually looks like: a design audit of one path delivered as prioritized fixes. Identity work such as DTC branding is a separate job with different success measures.
Where to find her: her Upwork profile.
Google Ads, taught as well as run: Elise Richardson
Elise Richardson works on Google Ads from Waitsfield, Vermont. She’s one of the few people here who sells training alongside management: PPC audits, SEM consulting, YouTube ads, and teaching a client’s team to run campaigns themselves.
Right for: a team that wants to own paid search instead of renting it. She also fits a founder who’d rather understand the account than be reassured about it.
Wrong hire when: you want paid search fully off your plate. Teaching takes your time. That’s the trade.
A first engagement usually looks like: an audit plus a consulting block or a training engagement priced by session.
Where to find her: Upwork, by name. Her direct link is being re-checked, per the methodology note above.
Magento development: Ruslan Mukhatov
Ruslan Mukhatov is a Magento 2 Certified Developer and tech lead based in Limassol, Cyprus, working full-stack across Magento and Shopify: speed optimization, API and payment integrations, module builds from scratch.
Right for: a Magento store where speed, integrations or an aging extension stack is the actual constraint. A certified magento specialist is also the right call when a migration decision is on the table and you want it costed honestly.
Wrong hire when: your store runs fine and your problem is demand or merchandising.
A first engagement usually looks like: a technical audit, then a scoped build with acceptance criteria you can test yourself.
Where to find him: Upwork, by name. His direct link is being re-checked.
Ecommerce copywriting: Roma Hora
Roma Hora writes ecommerce copy from Kings County, New York: site pages, funnels, brand voice, newsletters and product descriptions, with a stated focus on beauty, wellness and home categories.
Right for: pages that get traffic and don’t sell or a brand whose voice changes depending on who wrote the page.
Wrong hire when: the drop-off is structural. Copy can’t rescue a checkout that asks for an account before it shows a shipping cost.
A first engagement usually looks like: one page or one funnel priced per project, with a before-and-after measurement agreed in advance.
Where to find her: Upwork, by name. Her direct link is being re-checked.
Klaviyo email and SMS: John Moussan
John Moussan runs Klaviyo email and SMS programs for DTC brands from Wildomar, California: account setup, flow audits, deliverability checks and ongoing management.
Right for: a retention leak with a specific shape, usually missing flows, flows nobody has touched in a year, or deliverability quietly falling.
Wrong hire when: your list is too small to matter yet. Below a few thousand engaged subscribers you will get more from finding new customers than from emailing the ones you have.
A first engagement usually looks like: a flow and deliverability audit first, then a retainer only if there’s enough ongoing work to justify one.
Where to find him: Upwork, by name. His direct link is being re-checked.
A/B testing and CRO: Samuel Larsen
Samuel Larsen runs A/B testing and conversion optimization programs from Helsinki, Finland, mostly on Shopify and Shopify Plus, delivered as CRO audits and structured testing roadmaps.
Right for: a store with enough traffic to reach statistical significance inside a month, where the obvious fixes are already done.
Wrong hire when: traffic is thin. A test that can’t reach significance produces a decision you can’t trust.
A first engagement usually looks like: an audit, then a prioritized roadmap, then a program that runs one test at a time.
Where to find him: his Upwork profile.
GA4 and tag management: Ruslan Konygin
Ruslan Konygin works on Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager from Phuket, Thailand: tracking audits, enhanced ecommerce implementation, Universal Analytics migrations and Looker Studio dashboards.
Right for: numbers that don’t reconcile. If Shopify, GA4 and your ad platforms disagree about last month, every other hire on this list is working blind.
Wrong hire when: your tracking is clean and what you need is a decision about what to do next.
A first engagement usually looks like: a tracking audit validated against a live test purchase, then remediation priced separately.
Where to find him: his Upwork profile.
Ad creative and motion design: Leigh Hewitt
Leigh Hewitt has designed banner and social advertising for more than 15 years from Chester in the United Kingdom, working in HTML5, GIF and animated video formats for brands and agencies.
Right for: media buying that’s competent and creative that’s fatigued, where the same three assets have been running since spring.
Wrong hire when: you don’t yet know which audience or offer works. If you do not yet know which offer works, new creative just gives you a better-looking version of the same flat result.
A first engagement usually looks like: a batch of concepts against a written brief, priced per asset set.
Where to find him: his Upwork profile.
Paid social management: Juan Alfonso
Juan Alfonso manages paid and organic social programs from Killeen, Texas, mostly Facebook and LinkedIn advertising, plus account audits and content production.
Right for: a small or mid-sized social program that nobody currently owns, where the accounts have been running on autopilot.
Wrong hire when: you need the creative volume a large paid social program eats. That’s a team, not a person.
A first engagement usually looks like: an account audit and a 90-day plan, then management against it.
Where to find him: his Upwork profile.
What ecommerce experts charge and how the money is usually structured
Four structures cover most of what you’ll be offered. A few deals mix them or add a percentage of revenue on top. The structure decides who carries the risk, which matters more than the rate.
| Structure | What it fits | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Audits, scoped fixes, second opinions | Nobody owns the outcome; the meter is the incentive |
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing management of ads, email or testing | You pay the same in a slow month unless there’s a review date |
| Fixed project fee | Builds, migrations, redesigns | Change orders; every requirement you didn’t name is extra |
| Percentage of growth | Only where the person controls the lever | Attribution arguments; the bill peaks exactly when it works |
Published rate benchmarks for independents are thin. Use the employed equivalent as a floor: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for management analysts at $101,190 as of May 2024, with employment projected to grow 9% from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations.
Spread across a 2,080-hour year, $101,190 is about $49 an hour before an employer’s payroll costs and benefits. That tells you what a $30 hourly quote usually represents: somebody earlier in their career or somebody in a much cheaper cost market.
Percentage-of-growth deals deserve their own warning, because they sound free. You pay the most in the months that go well. The baseline gets set by whoever proposed the deal, in their favor. And the argument over what actually caused the growth shows up just when things are going well.
What a Shopify expert charges depends more on how the deal is set up than on who you hire. Ask for a range before you ask for a number. An honest practitioner will give you a range before studying your business and a number after, because scope depends on what they find.
Where to look when none of these twelve fit
Three sourcing channels cover the rest of the market. Each is honest about something different.
The Shopify partner directory is the platform’s own listing, filterable by price, location and service across more than 30 service categories. A Shopify agency and an independent Shopify consultant sit side by side in it, which helps when you don’t yet know which one the job needs.
Shopify tiers partners as Select, Plus, Premier or Platinum “based on multiple factors, including their history of experience and proven success on Shopify,” and states plainly that “partners listed in the directory work independently.” So the tier tells you a partner has real experience on Shopify. It tells you nothing about whether they fit your business. That call is still yours.
Freelance marketplaces are where most of this list lives. They’re also where to look for the specializations this list doesn’t cover; the most obvious gap is a Shopify SEO expert.
The badges mean less than they appear to. Upwork’s Expert-Vetted badge marks the top 1% of talent in a category, awarded by invitation after a screening interview. It displays only to Enterprise and Business Plus clients.
On a standard account you may never see that badge at all, which means its absence tells you nothing about the person.
A referral from another operator in your category beats both, because it carries the one thing no directory can: whether the person was easy to direct. Ask the referrer what went wrong during the job. If nothing went wrong, the job was probably a small one.
Two checks are worth running before any call. Ask for an account they’d decline and why, which tells you whether they have a boundary; then ask what they’d need from you in week one, which tells you whether they’ve worked without a big team behind them.
A longer version of that conversation lives in our questions for an ecommerce consultant. If you’re weighing a firm against an individual, the ecommerce consulting companies list runs the same treatment on agencies.
If the shortlist keeps growing because every candidate sounds plausible, a conversation about your numbers will narrow it faster than another round of profiles.
When one expert is not the answer
Sometimes you cannot narrow the shortlist, because what you are missing is not a skill at all. Some stores hire a third specialist in a year. Each one delivers what was asked and the results still do not add up. That is usually a direction problem that looks like a staffing problem.
Twelve specialists working well can still leave the biggest decision unmade.
The signal is easy to test. If you can’t say which single metric each current vendor is accountable for, then nobody is setting the order of work and every specialist is optimizing their own lever in isolation.
When you bring in someone who sets direction, they write the brief instead of you. A specialist takes your brief as given; someone in a marketing leadership role writes it, sequences the levers and decides what the business will skip this quarter.
Those roles sit on a spectrum rather than in two boxes. A fractional CMO for ecommerce owns direction part-time; a consultant owns direction for a defined problem and hands it back; a specialist owns one lever indefinitely. If you’re weighing how much of that leadership you need, the fractional versus full-time CMO comparison covers where each one stops making sense.
Most brands land somewhere in the middle. That’s a workable place to be. You keep the specialists doing what they are good at. One person sets the growth strategy instead of it coming out of four separate vendor calls.
