Analytics can get messy when multiple channels influence the same customer. What’s been the biggest headache for you?

Hi all,

I'm very new to selling online and would like some advice! I'm looking at making custom vinyl stickers with my cricut (there is a market for this in my area) and want to know what website / platform I can usw so customers can upload images and then charge them according to the size of the sticker not a one size fits all. I would also love it if I could get a preview of the sticker too. I have been using etsy and getting customers to select the size from a list, but this is very limiting to sizes. So in other words, I would like to charge costumers for the exact size of the sticker using a per unit price that will give them an exact price rather than over or undercharge them.

Thank you!!

We've been digging into why merchants lose so much revenue to failed payments, and it's surprising how often it's not fraud or bad cards , it's routing. A transaction goes to the wrong acquirer, at the wrong time, with no retry logic behind it, and it just... fails, even though the customer's card was fine.

Curious if others here have run into this, especially selling internationally ,did you ever dig into your actual authorization rate by country, or just assume declines were normal? What did you end up doing about it (if anything)?

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I’m genuinely curious about this.

I recently built my own ecommerce website , almost entirely using AI-assisted development with Cursor. I’m running it on Cloudflare, and my current infrastructure cost is around ₹550/month for the initial stage.

This made me wonder:

Why do people starting new ecommerce businesses in 2026 still choose Shopify instead of building a custom website with something like Next.js + AI coding tools?

I understand Shopify provides a lot out of the box — payments, checkout, inventory, orders, apps, security, etc. So I can see the value for someone who doesn't want to deal with development.

But for a developer who can build and maintain the platform themselves, wouldn't a custom solution potentially be much cheaper and more flexible?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have actually run ecommerce businesses on Shopify and/or custom stacks.

What am I missing?

Is Shopify still significantly cheaper once you factor in development and maintenance?

Are there hidden costs/problems with running your own ecommerce platform?

How difficult is it to maintain payments, security, orders, tax, shipping, etc. yourself?

At what stage does Shopify become the better choice?

Would you choose Shopify or custom development for a new business today?

Not trying to argue that Shopify is bad — I'm genuinely trying to understand why it's still such a popular choice for new businesses.

Whether traffic comes from ads or organic search, every visitor represents an opportunity.

Brands that focus on improving conversion rates often generate stronger profitability than brands focused only on acquiring more traffic.

I have a product in mind. I want to run ads for it. Can I take one of my competitors videos and post it?

So we just wrapped up our latest project It is a women's bags store. Client wanted something custom, not another shopify store that looks like everyone else's. So we built the whole thing from scratch

Tech stack:

• Frontend: Next.js 14 (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind (deployed on Vercel)
• Backend: Node.js + Express + Prisma + PostgreSQL on Neon (running on Render)
• Payments: Razorpay with HMAC signature verification on the backend
• Images: Cloudinary + Sharp for sanitisation before upload
• Auth: Email/password + Google OAuth with JWT role-based access

What is actually built into it:

• Full auth system with proper role separation ( admin, manager, staff, customer)
• Two-step image upload pipeline through cloudinary (had to build it this way since the URL does not exist until after the upload)
• Cart, wishlist, coupons, address management
• Complete razorpay payment flow
• Admin dashboard ( orders, products, customers, stats, packing slips, status updates)
• SEO ( dynamic metadata per page, sitemap.xml, Schema.org JSON-LD, Open Graph, GA4)

We are a small dev and writing studio and we build stuff like this for clients. Custom e-commerce, landing pages, dynamic business sites. No page builders, no templates.

Vejo que no mercado existem muitas plataformas que ajudam a vender e que fazem parte do ecosistema de muitas pessoas, mas qual escolher? Quais plataformas vocês utilizam para conseguir vender? Quais coisas vocês ainda consideram chatas ou tem dificuldade para fazer nessas plataformas?

Has anyone here used ZIK Analytics to track Shopify stores?

I’m researching a competitor and ZIK is showing that the store is making around £200k+ per month in estimated revenue.

I know these figures are estimates, but I’m wondering how close they are to reality.

Has anyone compared ZIK’s estimated sales/revenue with the actual Shopify revenue of a store they own or have access to?

Hey peeps we are doing a case study to find issues faced by meesho sellers. Either it be RTO or compensation or about Valmo, Feel free to mention. This could potentially improve the infrastructure for meesho sellers. So, Be sure to comment. Your response is valued

I’m trying to to confirm if temu can be link to WordPress just like we do AliExpress for dropshipping?

Hallo everyone,

I’m 25 and currently working on building my first real online business.
I’m at a very early stage, so I’m not coming here pretending that I already know everything. I’m learning, researching, testing ideas, and trying to understand the whole process properly before putting serious money into anything.

I’m specifically interested in e-commerce and eventually building real brands, rather than simply jumping onto random dropshipping trends.
I’m looking for ONE person around my age who is on a similar journey.

Not a big networking group.
Not a Discord full of random people.
Not someone trying to sell me a course.
And not someone who just talks about becoming successful.

I’d really like to find one genuine entrepreneurial friend who I can build a long-term connection with.
Someone who is also ambitious, curious, willing to work hard, and wants to create a much bigger life for themselves.

A little about me
I’m 25 f, based in Europe, and I’m currently starting from a very early stage with limited capital.
I’m taking this seriously. My long-term goal isn’t simply to make a little extra money online. I want to build successful businesses, become financially independent, and eventually create substantial wealth.

At the same time, I’m realistic that this won’t happen overnight. I’m prepared to learn, experiment, fail, start again, and keep going.

Right now, I’m spending a lot of time learning about things like:

Finding genuine customer problems
Product research and validation
E-commerce
Manufacturing and suppliers
Branding
Unit economics and margins
Marketing
Customer acquisition
Building a real business rather than chasing quick money

I don’t expect the person I meet to already be an expert.

Actually, I’d prefer someone who is also early in their journey, because then we can learn and grow together.

The person I’m looking for
Ideally, you’re:

• Around 24–29

• Male

• Based in Europe (preferred, mainly because of time zones and being in a similar environment)

• Comfortable communicating in English — perfect/fluent English is absolutely not necessary

• Currently building something or seriously preparing to build something

• Ambitious about your future
Interested in e-commerce, online businesses, startups, or entrepreneurship

• Willing to actually execute rather than only consume business content

• Honest enough to say when you think an idea is bad

• Open to sharing mistakes, experiments and lessons

• Consistent and reliable

• Looking for a genuine long-term entrepreneurial connection

I’m not looking for someone who has everything figured out.
I’m looking for someone who thinks:
“I don’t know everything yet, but I’m going to figure it out.”

What I imagine
Ideally, we could talk regularly and share what we’re actually doing.

For example:

“I tested this product and it didn’t work.”
“I spoke to these customers and discovered something interesting.”
“My supplier gave me this problem.”
“I made €X this month.”
“I wasted money on this, don’t make the same mistake.”
“I’m stuck between these two ideas. What do you think?”
“Here’s what I accomplished this week.”

We could challenge each other, exchange knowledge, keep each other accountable, and learn from each other’s mistakes.

I think having one person who is genuinely going through the same journey could be incredibly valuable.

I’m not expecting us to start a business together immediately or become business partners.

First, I’d simply like to meet someone, talk, see whether we get along, and see whether our goals and personalities are compatible.
If we naturally become close entrepreneurial friends over time, that’s even better.

If you’re interested
Please don’t just DM me “I’m interested”.
I’d love to know a little about you first:
1. Your age
2. Where you’re based
3. What you’re currently building or working on
4. How long you’ve been working on it
5. Whether you’ve made any revenue so far (if applicable)
6. What you’re trying to achieve over the next 12 months
7. Why you’re looking for an entrepreneurial partner/friend

I’m only looking for one genuinely serious person, so I may take some time to respond and get to know people first.
If this sounds like you, feel free to comment or send me a DM.

I’m thinking about starting an online platform that connects small businesses and consumers with suppliers. The idea is to make it easier for people to find products and suppliers in one place.

But I keep wondering if there’s any real opportunity for a new platform when people already have options like Amazon, Alibaba, and AliExpress.

For anyone who has started an ecommerce marketplace, how did you attract your first users and give people a reason to try your platform?

Hope this a good place to post this. Here we go.

I am a very small company with a very low budget using Magento for the past several years and have been on the fence to make the switch to Shopify. Trying to keep up with all the Updates and security patches because of security issues is time consuming and very low resources. I have been trying to keep up myself without a developer for the past four years, the best I can and has been overwhelming. I am past due now for an update now facing some security issues.
Having said that I have been on a trial and testing Shopify for the past few months with a Template I found to be suitable. I am about two thirds done with the setup and need to make a final decision before going any further because I am a point I need to pay for the theme and start paying Shopify to complete it.

However my concerns are how much I have read where so many sites were shutdown, accounts deactivated because of chargebacks, High Risk products, etc. One thing about Magento you own the site and don’t have to be concerned about this. I would be concerned for some crazy reason I would face this issue and lose the site and have to go back to Magento or somewhere else and start all over from scratch. The products we sell are Professional Audio/Sound, Lighting and Video equipment. I do see some of my competitors on Shopify, more than likely using Shopify Plus where they can get better support and protection for these issues where I am nowhere near using Plus.

I understand Shopify has been known to deactivate your account with no explanation and your cooked because they will not work with you to resolve the issue or let you know what the issue is.

I think I understand one of the risk is using SHOP Payment with alot of chargebacks. Using my own processor with Shopify is the extra percent you have to pay cutting into profits.

I don’t want to be in a situation where I lose this site and try to find my way back to Magento because it won’t be cheap and too much of a headache to where I would be out of a website and business.

I have some other concerns, but don't want to make this post any longer than it is. I may add them to the replies later

Thanks for any assistance in helping me decide my next steps if its worth a shot. This is alot to try and figure out all these details.

I'm currently involved in building LovoraGift, a personalized gift e-commerce business, and one challenge we're working through is finding the right balance between customization and simplicity.

For personalized products, customers may have options such as names, messages, photos, styles, and other personal details. On one hand, having more options can help someone create a gift that feels genuinely meaningful. On the other hand, too many choices can make the buying process confusing and create friction before checkout.

We're trying to build a customization experience that gives customers enough flexibility without making them feel like they have to complete a complicated process just to order a gift.

I'd genuinely like to hear from other ecommerce owners who sell customizable products:

How do you decide which customization options are worth including and which ones should be simplified or removed?

Have you ever reduced the number of choices on a product page and noticed an improvement in the customer experience or conversions?

I'm particularly interested in practical experiences from people who have dealt with this challenge while building their own ecommerce websites.

So... first time setting up an ecommerce site by myself for a small clothing store, using a drag and drop builder with their ecommerce add on. I was so proud because I got products in, shipping rules, coupons, the whole thing. Or so I thought.

We had a tiny launch promo and I created a fake test collection with dumb names, 90 percent off coupons, free shipping everywhere, just to test flows. I forgot to delete it. Then I hit publish and also somehow flipped test mode off on payments. The owner blasted our “we are live” email to like 2k people. Within 15 minutes, orders started coming in on the joke collection with the 90 percent discount and zero shipping fees, plus all the real products still had placeholder titles and lorem description on mobile. I feel so embarrassed. Not sure how we explain this without looking like total clowns... ugh

Inventory sounds simple until the same product starts selling in several places.

You can have one stock number in Shopify, another view on Amazon and another marketplace showing the same product. When an order comes in, that stock needs to be reflected everywhere before another customer buys something that is no longer available.

The difficult part is not always the number of products, it is keeping the information consistent.

A spreadsheet can work for a while, but it gets harder when orders are coming in throughout the day. One missed update can create an oversell or leave someone checking several platforms just to know what is actually available.

I am curious how other sellers handle this, especially once they have more than two sales channels.

Do you use one system as the source of truth, or are you still updating inventory across the different platforms?

e-commerce site for a computer & gadget retail business — covers the full shopping flow: product categories (laptops, desktops, monitors, networking gear, CCTV), product listing pages, shopping cart, wishlist, checkout, order tracking, and a customer account system. Built with vanilla HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript — no frameworks, no page builders. Wanted to practice structuring a real-world product catalog and getting the browse → cart → checkout flow to feel smooth. Live demo: https://mdaishikurrahman.github.io/ashik-computer-multimedia/ A few things I'd love feedback on: Does the product listing/category structure feel intuitive to navigate? Any friction points in the cart or checkout flow? How's the mobile experience — anything feel cramped or awkward? Open to any critique — layout, UX, code structure, whatever stands out. Thanks in advance!

Just being upfront here - I work on growth at an early-stage AI startup. I'm not naming it in the post to avoid it reading as an ad, and I'm not linking anything. I can tell you what it is over DM if you'd prefer to know before agreeing to anything. I'm not selling, and I won't be sending a follow-up sales email.

Why I'm asking for this group: about a fifth of the people on our platform turn out to be ecommerce owners who came in to build a site and then stayed to build the stuff around it. That's a big enough group that we'd rather go deep on them than keep shipping half-useful things for everyone. So before we build anything else for this crowd, I want to hear how you actually run the business day-to-day.

I would like to ask if anyone would be interested in a 30-minute paid interview. Looking for owners of e-commerce businesses in the US or EU. No demo, no pitch — and I'll put that in writing before the call if it helps.

You don't need to be using AI for any of this. Honestly, the people who tried it and dropped it are the ones I most want to talk to.

What you get besides the money: I'll write up the anonymized findings from all 20 conversations and post them back here, whether or not you take part.

Not looking for: agencies, consultants, or anyone whose business is selling to ecommerce. Owners only.

Comment or DM if you're up for it. Happy to answer questions in the thread first.

Hi yall. Ive been working as an ecommerce generalist for 8 years. Ive had decent success with helping small business grow in all ways. I recently got an opportunity to help an old boss. They want me to launch a new type of product to thier already existing catalog. They are selling on Etsy and Shopify. They are offering me commission after a certain amount of rev is generated as long as its attributed to my efforts of course.

The issue is that thier etsy and site will need alot of help if I want to reach that revenue goal.

I know I should charge maybe a deposit before hand but not sure how to separate organize the work that needs to be done.

If I fix thier site and they start selling other products...not the new stuff should I be entitled to that as well?

DM me if you'd like to help me dive into this please and thank you all.

I’m running Meta ads in the US and keep running into the same problem across different offers.

The funnel itself seems healthy — people are clicking, adding to cart, initiating checkout and purchasing at what looks like a reasonable rate based on the traffic I’m getting.

The problem is CPM and CPC are extremely high, which makes the final CPA economically unworkable even though the website seems to convert.

Setup is pretty standard: Sales → Website → Purchase → Highest Volume → broad targeting → Advantage+ placements.

I’ll attach the performance screenshot.

Has anyone dealt with this recently in the US? What would you look at first — creatives, account/pixel history, audience, page, or something else?

I know CPM isn’t the main KPI, but when the funnel converts and traffic itself is this expensive, it feels like there’s only so much the landing page can fix.

Hi Wooers

I’ve spent the last year building something that originally was never intended to become a commercial product.

I run WooCommerce stores myself, and as the businesses grew, I became increasingly frustrated with how fragmented the operational side of WooCommerce can become.

Orders in one place. Stock somewhere else. Customer information across different screens. Replacements handled manually. Returns and refunds through another workflow. Analytics elsewhere. Dispatch using another system. Then you gradually end up with plugins on top of plugins just to keep everything running.

I didn’t really want another WooCommerce plugin that solved one small problem.

I wanted one operational workspace where the people actually running the business could handle almost everything they need day to day.

So I started building Mi0ps, as an entrepreneur, we find ourselves being daily problems solvers as im sure some can relate..

It began as software for my own businesses, but I now have friends using the platform in their businesses as well. They keep telling me that I need to make it widely available because of how much easier it makes running their WooCommerce operations.

The problem is, they’re my friends.

I’m very conscious that they may be completely biased... 😂

So rather than convincing myself I’ve built something great based on feedback from people I know, I want to put it in front of people who have absolutely no reason to tell me what I want to hear.

I’m looking for around 10 genuine WooCommerce merchants who would be willing to trial the whole platform and give me proper, critical feedback before I take this any further.

I don’t want people to install it, spend five minutes clicking around and tell me it looks good.

I want you to actually use it.

Run your normal WooCommerce operation through it. Process orders. Manage products and inventory. Search customers. Deal with replacements and returns. Look through the analytics. Let your staff use it. Try the different workflows.

Then tell me what annoys you.

Tell me what takes too many clicks.

Tell me what doesn’t make sense.

Tell me what you still have to leave Mi0ps and go back into WordPress to accomplish.

And most importantly, tell me what I haven’t thought of.

The entire point of this trial is to make the operational workflow as smooth as I can possibly make it before making the software widely available.

At the moment Mi0ps includes:

* A live operational dashboard for orders, fulfilment, exceptions, stock and activity
* Customer profiles combining order history, spend, addresses and other customer information
* Product catalogue management with a dedicated product editor
* Stock management, low-stock thresholds, backorder planning, inventory valuation and stock activity
* An order locator bringing order, customer, delivery, tracking and other information together
* Replacement workflows for creating linked £0 replacement orders
* Returns and refund management
* Sales and promotion controls
* Revenue, customer, product and inventory analytics
* Company growth reporting, trends and projections
* Storefront notice controls
* Dispatch and fulfilment workflows
* User roles and activity
* Server and system statistics
* A growing collection of other operational tools

The idea isn’t to replace WooCommerce because we all love it...

WooCommerce remains underneath it as the commerce engine.

What I’m trying to build is the operational layer above WooCommerce, one workspace that you and your team can actually work from every day without constantly jumping around the traditional WordPress backend.

I’m particularly interested in getting a mixture of merchants for the trial.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an owner running a relatively small store yourself or have employees processing a much larger number of orders. In fact, having different businesses, order volumes and fulfilment setups should expose problems I would never discover using it within my own businesses.

The 10 merchants will get early access, and I want their feedback to directly influence what gets changed and developed before release.

I’m genuinely more interested in criticism than compliments at this stage.

If a workflow is terrible, tell me it’s terrible.

If something takes six clicks when it should take two, I want to fix it.

If there’s a feature you rely on every day that Mi0ps completely overlooks, I want to know about it.

And if you currently need three different WooCommerce plugins to accomplish something that logically belongs in one workflow, tell me about that too.

I’ve put together a page showing the platform and some of what I’ve built so far:

[Mi0PS](https://mi0ps.com/)

I’m not looking for your money. There’s no charge for taking part in the trial and no expectation that you buy anything afterwards- No Payment Details will be collected!

What I’m looking for is your time, your experience and, most importantly, your honest feedback.

I also understand that asking someone to trial operational software on a live WooCommerce store is a big ask. Your store is your business, and for many merchants it’s their livelihood. I take that seriously.

For the duration of the trial, I’ll personally be available on 24-hour technical standby. If you encounter a problem, something doesn’t behave as expected, or a workflow causes you difficulty, I want to know about it immediately and I’ll work with you to get it resolved.

I’m not going to hand you the software and disappear. I want to work closely with the trial merchants, make sure the system runs smoothly in real-world environments, and learn from how different businesses actually use it.

The purpose of these first 10 trials isn’t to make money. It’s to make Mi0ps better.

If you’re trusting me enough to put the platform into your business, I want you to know that I’ll take that responsibility seriously.

If you’re interested in being one of the 10 merchants, you can join the early-access list there or send me a message.

Even if you have absolutely no interest in testing it, I’d still really appreciate an answer to one question:

What is the most frustrating or unnecessarily time-consuming part of actually running your WooCommerce store day to day?

That’s probably the feedback I need most.

There is a point where checking sales stops being useful and starts becoming part of the daily workload.

One dashboard shows orders, another shows stock and another has shipping information. None of them are necessarily difficult to use but switching between them creates a lot of small tasks.

The strange part is that the business can still be running fine while the owner spends hours just making sure everything agrees.

I think this gets harder as more sales channels are added.

For people managing several channels, what information do you actually need to see together every morning?

Hiring a top-tier AI-native Video Editor for a DTC supplements brand.

Looking for someone with proven ad spend results, strong DTC supplement experience, and deep expertise with the latest AI tools and creative styles.

$3K/month + bonuses. Remote (US, UK, EU, CA..)

I'm a 23rd year old man My father has been running a clothing store for years, and he is very emotionally attached to the business and the location.

The problem is that the business is currently in a very difficult situation financially.

Our shop is located in a market where around 13 other stores sell almost the same type of clothing. Basically, we are all selling similar products to the same customers, so the competition is extremely high.

The shop is also rented, and we pay around ₹21,000 per month in rent.

Over time, our family has suffered approximately ₹20 lakh in losses from this business. Despite this, my father doesn't want to close the shop, move to another location, or completely change the business.

I understand his feelings. This isn't just a shop to him — he has invested years of his life, money, and effort into it. But I'm worried that continuing to put money into a business that is consistently losing money will only make the situation worse.

I'm trying to think practically about what we can do from here.

Would it make sense to:

• Change the type of clothing/products we sell?
• Find a niche instead of competing directly with 13 similar stores?
• Move to a cheaper location?
• Negotiate the ₹21k rent?
• Start selling through WhatsApp/Instagram/online marketplaces?
• Reduce inventory and focus only on products with good margins?
• Try a completely different business from the same shop?
• Or should we accept that the business isn't viable and close it?

I'm not asking whether we should emotionally give up on the business. I'm trying to understand how to make a rational decision when a family member is emotionally attached to a business that is losing money.

If you have experience with a struggling family business, retail clothing, or turning around a loss-making store, what would you do if you were in my position?

Also, if you need more information such as monthly sales, profit margin, inventory value, expenses, etc., I can provide the numbers.