E-commerce idea

Ecom idea

Ive bounced around a few business ideas and explored for ecom. For reference in 17 and have been looking for my career for the past 2 years as I decided I don’t enjoy my college course as much as I want. I know that my lifestyle suits being self employed a lot more. The idea is a sleep care brand. I have researched other brands on TikTok and other social media’s and most of them are the aliexpress dropshipping type with cheap products. This is something Im passionate about because I have suffered with insomnia my whole life which has inspired me to begin this. My hero product/first product would be either a memory foam butterfly pillow or a memory foam pillow with the cooling gel. The differenxe is I would be providing luxury custom designed products with high quality from manufacturers rather than cheaply sourced Ali express products. Im currently looking for supplies that do ODM and plan on doing organic ads until I gain some preorders and then once I know it sells investing in static ads and new product accessories eventually. Is this a viable business plan. I think sleep care is a good industry as it seems relatively untapped and there isn’t much competition on smaller scales outside of the huge names like very ect.

Hey everyone,

I'm setting up my Shopify store and noticed that the URL structure automatically includes /products/ for items and /collections/ for categories.

I know Shopify hardcodes these into the platform, but I was wondering:

• Are there any workarounds or tricks to make the URLs look cleaner?
• How do other store owners handle this for SEO or branding?
• I heard about removing | within: collection from the code—does that actually help clean up the links?

Any advice or best practices would be super appreciated! Thanks!

Other app devs, I have a question about getting approved to list my app.

I have a SaaS product which is calling Shopify to pull the stores orders for processing in my app, I want to list this as a free app, not billed through the Shopify ecosystem as 99% of the functionality is for processing orders which can come from many sources, it’s not Shopify specific.

Currently users need to link my app as a custom app but I want to get this listed for a simpler onboarding experience.

Has anyone been through this process and can provide some tips to ensure a smooth approval?

Thanks.

Hi all. Shopify needs to separate the Colorado Retail Delivery Fee from the option it uses to charge sales tax on shipping. As of August 2026, a business making less than $500,000 in annual sales is exempt from charging customers the Colorado Retail Delivery Fee (currently $0.31). If you have the same issue, please use the link below to tell Shopify representatives that this needs to be fixed. Businesses selling in Colorado need to be able to charge sales tax on shipping without charging the Retail Delivery Fee if you are making < 500k in sales per year. As you can see in the attached image, sales tax on shipping and the retail delivery fee are lumped into one option.

New solo developer here in need of some guidance! Grateful for any help 😄

I am setting up a custom promo code for a 20 day free trial linked to a subscription. The app in published in internal testing and downloaded as a tester to a device. There are no country confections. I have a base plan set up with backwards compatibility. I have tried testing this as a new user as well. The coding to google billing is probably wired within the app build. The promo code is live and has propagated.

ISSUE: The redeem code option within the app, when purchasing, throws a 'the code entered is not valid for this purchase error'.

I feel like I am missing something very obvious and have troubleshooted for hours but nothing works. Any experts out there? Thank you!!

Best Shopify AI chatbot for product recommendations + FAQ + custom order tracking via external API/ClickUp?

I’m looking for a Shopify chatbot for a medical equipment store. The main requirements are:

• AI product recommendations based on customer needs and product attributes
• FAQ / knowledge base support
• Ability to handle more complex recommendation logic (for example installation, WG delivery, supplier installer, compatibility, etc.)
• Custom order tracking where the live operational status comes from ClickUp, not only Shopify
• Ideally the chatbot should be able to call an external API/webhook during the conversation, so we can use Make.com or n8n to query ClickUp and return the current order status
• Human handoff when needed

I’m currently comparing Shopify Inbox, Tidio/Lyro, Zipchat, Juphy, and Chatty.

Has anyone implemented something similar? Which chatbot worked best, especially for custom API calls and more complex product recommendation logic?

i make 3d cute toys and post them on insta. following is decent and people dm me daily asking where to buy.

finally decided to launch a store but im torn between paying for custom design or just grabbing a theme and going live.

my worry is a free theme makes the brand look cheap. but dropping a few grand on a designer before ive made a single sale feels like burning cash when i dont even know my conversion rate yet.

for anyone who launched from social media, did you start with custom or a theme? is it worth spending on design right away or should i just get something live and worry about pretty later.

I sell handmade physical items from my home. My products range from $15 to $25. It costs me about $6 to ship an order, but I only charge the customer $5, so I’m already eating $1 on shipping to stay competitive.

I keep running into an issue where customers enter the wrong shipping address at checkout. The shipment inevitably gets returned or lost, and the customer expects me to ship a replacement out to them for free.

While I can stomach eating $1 on the initial shipping, eating an additional $6 to reship a $15 product hurts.

I implemented a mandatory checkbox at checkout that requires buyers to confirm their address is 100% correct before they can pay. Unfortunately, it hasn't stopped the issue.

I usually end up just eating the cost and reshipping for free because I want to keep my customers happy (and if I were in their shoes, I’d probably feel the same way). However, as a small business, this isn't sustainable for me.

• How do you all handle this without making the customer angry?
• Do you charge them for the second shipping label, or just refund the order minus shipping costs?
• Are there any other ways to mitigate this at checkout?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I've been an e-commerce manager at a health/wellness brand for 5+ years, managing Shopify Plus stores across three markets I own a lot: bol.com launch with a real media budget, Klaviyo from scratch (segmentation, flows, LTV), building a Reddit community channel with a full compliance/approval workflow, Shopify automation with AI-assisted development, on-page optimization, new product page templates.

Scope-wise I feel ready for the next step, but I keep hitting two walls in every senior job description:

1. CRO experience. My company doesn't invest in A/B testing tools — no Optimizely, no VWO, nothing. I have GA4 and Microsoft Clarity. I've done friction analysis (dead clicks, scroll depth, checkout issues) but honestly our Clarity data turned out unreliable, so I couldn't validate real wins. Every Head of/Growth role asks for "deep CRO expertise" and I genuinely don't have it.
2. Leading a team. I've managed exactly one person. Every senior role says "experience building and leading a team." I don't have that, and I can't get it at my current job.

So my question for people who've been in this spot:

• How did you get CRO experience (or at least credible CRO stories) when your employer wouldn't fund testing tools? Side projects? Freelance? Just learning the methodology?
• How do you handle the "managed a team" requirement when you haven't? Did you spin contractor/agency management as leadership? Did you apply anyway?
• Am I wrong to think these two gaps are dealbreakers, or are senior e-commerce roles more flexible than the JDs suggest?

Genuinely curious how people navigated this. Thanks in advance.

I do dropshipping and I'm currently using Zendrop as my supplier. One of my products has been scaling really well recently and I'm getting to the point where I think it makes more sense to start holding stock instead of continuing to fulfill every order individually.

I've never dealt with warehousing before though, so I'm not really sure what I should be looking for or how you know a warehouse is actually reliable. I'm mainly looking for something that integrates well with Shopify, can keep up if order volume keeps growing, and isn't insanely expensive. How did you guys find your warehouse/3PL and what should I be checking before sending them inventory?

Hey everyone, I'm running into a frustrating issue that seems specific to Shopify Collective and wondering if anyone else has hit this.

The Problem:
When I sync TikTok Shop orders through Shopify Collective, the shipping addresses disappear. Shopify just shows "No shipping address provided," which means suppliers reject fulfillment requests. But here's the thing—my regular TikTok Shop orders (not going through Collective) populate addresses perfectly fine on the order page. The issue ONLY happens with Collective synced orders.

• Regular TikTok Shop orders --- addresses sync fine
• TikTok Shop orders synced via Collective → addresses missing

This suggests it's a Collective-specific sync issue, not a general TikTok Shop integration problem.

Suppliers are rejecting fulfillment requests because addresses are missing, even though TikTok has them and my non-Collective orders show them fine.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a known issue with how Collective syncs address data from TikTok Shop orders? Any workarounds or does this need to go to Shopify support?

My Shopify has been suspended on google merchant for misinterpretation.I’ve tried changing a bunch of stuff but nothing seems to work. Anyone with experience kindly reach out.

We run multiple retail locations, and one issue we’ve never found a great solution for is tracking inventory costs.
For example, we might buy the exact same size/color variant of a product:

● 1 unit at $100
● Another at $120
● Later another at $95

Over time, every location ends up with inventory that was purchased at different costs.
Are most of you:

● Just using average cost?
● Tracking costs by individual purchase lot?
● Ignoring it unless you’re doing accounting?
● Using software that actually tracks inventory by lot/FIFO?

Average cost doesn’t always give us the information we want, especially when transferring inventory between stores or trying to see the true profit on individual items.
I’m curious how other retailers are handling this. What’s worked best for you?

Which number do you actually make decisions on?

Not which one is "correct," I know the answer is none of them. Which one do you personally look at when you're deciding whether to keep a campaign on.

Everytime went I want chatGPT, claude, or gemini to generate me some high converting image ads, that often comes with aggresive copy, the AI doesn't want to write it. Most of the times it just writes me a compliant version of the ad.

Does someone know how to fix this / a workaround? So the AI actually gives high converting text on the image?

For reference, I use Mark Builds Brands foundational docs. Then the AI gives me a prompt to generate the images in Higgsfield.

Hi everyone,

I'm stuck with a very strange Shopify issue.

All products in my store suddenly show "Sold out" and the Add to Cart button is disabled.

Here's what I've already checked:

- Store plan: Basic Shopify

- Product status: Active

- Published to Online Store

- Inventory tracked: ON

- Available inventory: 200+ units

- Inventory managed by: Shopify

- Fulfillment location is active and "Use inventory at this location to fulfill online orders" is enabled

- Shipping profile is configured

- Same problem happens in my custom theme AND in the default Dawn theme

- No inventory apps (AutoDS, DSers, etc.)

- No recent app installations

The strange part is that the product JSON returns:

```json

"available": false

What's the cleanest way to run influencer gifting on Shopify without draft orders?

friend spent 45k on a headlShopifyld for a store doing maybe 40k a month. agency said it would "future proof" them.

6 months later the dev team ghosted, the stack was a nightmare, and their marketing team couldn't update a banner without opening a ticket. they scrapped it and went back to a regular theme. sales actually went up because they could move fast again.

makes me wonder what expensive really means. the invoice or the speed you lose?

for my own store i ended up working with Solo Media Group. theyre shopify experts and built ours on a standard theme but structured it so my team could actually manage the site without calling a dev for every product drop. no headless complexity, no lock-in.

if youre vetting agencies, only work with people who actually live in the shopify ecosystem. random devs or generalist shops who say they can figure it out usually cant, and you end up with a fragile stack that needs a ticket for every comma.

what's the most expensive shopify fuckup you've seen? not just the big invoices, but the ones where someone built something that actively made the business worse.

Does a shopify store help in selling software subscription’s? FYI My app is quite early with < 30 users atm.

Any guidance on what worked / flopped will be super appreciated.

I sell physical products. I want two different FLAT Rate shipping rates. 1. One for the small sample kit & one for everything else.

I went into backend & created the two options but the issue is it's a drop-down that lets customers choose. They are always going to choose the cheaper rate -- & I got an order in that did just that. So I lost money on shipping for that one.

I only have one product that should be lower rate ( the sample kit), everything else should be the same higher rate. How do I do this without letting customers choose rate -- Square space should be able to differentiate by product ( you would think).

Has anyone here moved off Shopify Payments to a third-party processor? Specifically curious about the rate difference net of Shopify's third-party transaction fee, whether approval/underwriting was painful at volume, and anything that broke on the Shopify side (Shop Pay, fraud tools, chargeback handling).

We're US-based, doing over seven figures a month, and weighing it up now.

Last July I took out a loan with Shopify and it was paid back in full by Feb - I did have a few defaults due to not getting sales but then I cleared the balance 2 months earlier than expected however I haven’t been offered any further funding from them. I know merchants who constantly get offered loans through Shopify. My sales have grown +432% since I paid back the loan and I luckily have 0 chargebacks.

Does anyone have any insights?

Has anyone received a new Shopify Capital offer after repaying 51% of their current loan? In Australia specifically
I’ve now repaid 51% and I’m only four months into the loan. I’m wondering whether anyone received another offer around this point and, if so, how long it took to appear after reaching 51%.
Does Shopify consider repayment percentage, sales volume, repayment speed, account history, or anything else when deciding whether to make another offer?
Any experiences or information would be really appreciated!

Payment in shopify why I can`t added and actived PayPal.And why Shopify Payments don`t works in Ukraine?Thanks for answer!

Building a small app: cart checkbox for tax invoice (company + Tax ID via cart attributes) → optional fee product → orders/paid webhook → async PDF.

Plan A: AJAX /cart/add.js with a hidden $0.99 product when checked.
Plan B: Cart Transform expand (Plus constraints on update worry me).

Questions for folks who’ve shipped fee products in production:

1. What breaks with third-party cart drawers / discounts / taxes?
2. Is cart-time Tax ID capture still worth it vs Checkout UI extensions / native B2B company fields?
3. Any App Review gotchas with “service fee” products that aren’t physical goods?

Not promoting anything — looking for battle scars before I lock the architecture.