r/ecommerce

Using a wix site for our launch, and hopefully sale of our first 1000 units. Is shopify absolutely necessary or a wix site suffice? It is a very visual product/blanket

Ugh, okay, venting a little here. I run a small skincare brand, about 14 months in, and earlier this year I hired a UGC freelancer through a Facebook group recommendation. Seemed solid on paper, decent portfolio, reasonable rate. Three months later I have about six videos I can barely use, zero communication after the first week, and a workflow that basically fell apart every time I needed a revision.

The content that did turn out okay performed well enough that I know UGC is worth pursuing, so I'm not giving up on it. But I clearly cant manage this piecemeal freelancer thing anymore. I've started looking at ugc agencies that handle sourcing, briefs, production, and even distribution rather than me trying to stitch it all together myself.

Honestly I don't know what separates a good agency from a bad one in this space. Like what questions do I even ask in a discovery call? And are there agencies that also connect this stuff to email or SMS so the content actually gets used somewhere, or is it always a separate thing you have to figure out on your own?

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Curious what everyone is using these days.

I'm looking to optimize a Shopify store and would love to hear what automations have actually made a difference for you. Could be anything - order processing, inventory, email flows, customer support, fulfillment, reporting, AI tools, etc.

What app or workflow do you swear by, and what manual task did it replace?

Always interested in real-world recommendations rather than just app store reviews.

Anyone here import from Asia (particularly China or Vietnam)? Does the factory handle all your shipping logistics to get product to your door? Or do you use a freight forwarder?
My factory doesn’t handle transport. Just freight to their local port. I have to handle all the freight, customs, bond, etc.
I used to work with a small freight forwarder years ago that was great but they are no longer in business.

Any recommendations on how to handle importing inventory. About 3 pallets LTL to my home. Or possibly a 3rd party warehouse if I can get that set up.

Heyy gladjanusen (Dutch)!

So recently I have developed some low key fashion product, I ran a social media campaign. An as a start also had some buyers through Etsy. I have noticed that there is clearly a demand for the product we made and therefore want to make a landing page where officers easy integration and management

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a Shopify Dev & CRO agency.

I would like to work with someone who has worked with brands that have a turnover of minimum $100,000 per month - thank you

Yo!

Keep seeing stores have quizzes like "Take the test to see what product.. / your skin type.. / what type of.." but at maximum use the quiz insight to put them on a slightly personalised newsletter campaign.

Often times just end the quiz by recommending a couple products, and thats it.

Worked across multiple stores at this point and have seen first hand how powerful they can be in converting, especially in wellness/beauty/weight loss/hair loss - generally verticals where people hesitate because they ask "is this actually going to work FOR ME?".

You can literally design the quiz to give you all the information you need to close the sale via email.

Curious, how are you guys using quizzes, the info you get on your customers and what kinds of successes are you seeing?

Hi! I'm planning to sell online educational worksheets. I'm on Etsy right now, but would like to one day do it on my own. The thing is, I'm not sure what platform is best for me. I've heard a lot about Payhip and have looked into, but I'm not sure if it does what I'm looking for.

Features I Currently Want:

• Ability to sell digital products

• Ability for customers to request/book services (I want to add services that pertain to my products)

Future Features I Want:

I'd really like to have a full service website where I can sell digital/physical products and services.

My Questions:

1. What platform do you recommend and why?
2. What softwares could help me create the website I'm looking for?

Thanks in advance!

I have been trying to spend less time on admin work and more time growing the business

Some things have been easy to automate but payroll and a few other back office tasks seem to need more attention than I expected

For those who have been through this stage what was the first operational process you changed that made a noticeable difference?

I do freelance dev work and recently built a Chrome extension for a car parts retailer. This client genuinely beats their bigger competitors on price, especially for bulk B2B buyers (workshops, resellers). But those buyers were already comfortable ordering on a competitor's site out of habit. The price advantage existed. It just wasn't visible at the moment they were actually buying. So they kept overpaying elsewhere without knowing it.

The brief was simple: show our customers, while they're shopping on a competitor's site, that the same parts cost less with us.

The client's first instinct was to inject their prices right onto the competitor's product pages so it looked native. I pushed back hard, and this turned out to be the most important call of the project. Anything you put on a page someone else controls, they can detect, break, and remove. It's their turf.

So instead I put the comparison in a browser sidebar. The browser renders it, the website can't reach into it, and the competitor's code can't read it, touch it, or even tell it's there.

The payoff wasn't a few extra orders, it was permanently teaching a whole base of buyers that this store is the cheaper default.

Two takeaways I'd generalize: (1) if you're cheaper and nobody's buying, it's often a visibility problem, not a pricing one, and (2) keep your footprint off any surface you don't control. The elegant-looking approach was the fragile one.

Most brands optimizing for ChatGPT Shopping are optimizing for the wrong queries.

The instinct is to make sure your brand name pulls product cards. Nike running shoes. Dell XPS 15. Makes sense on the surface. But we tracked ~2 million prompts through Profound and the data inverts that logic completely.

Open ended prompts like 'best running for flat feet' or 'lightweight business laptops with strong battery life' trigger ChatGPT Shopping at 12.1%.

Brand direct prompts trigger at 3.1%.

Which means the AEO content strategy for ecommerce should be weighted heavily toward unbranded problem framed queries.

Is your AEO content mix actually balanced toward unbranded problem queries or still leaning brand first?

TLDR: $100k budget. Basically, first time doing this. Need advice and not sure where to start.

I'm launching a DTC beauty brand (hero product at $15.99 with bundle tiers to lift AOV, Shopify store already built). I have some experience building Shopify stores and achieved a pretty good conversion rate even with AI-generated photos (I previously set up the whole store as a learning experience in preparation for this). I have a bit over $100k to deploy over the next 6-12 months. Important context: we're starting from literally zero 0 followers, no email list, no social proof yet. Trying to figure out allocation across three channels:

Meta ads, TikTok Shop affiliate, and Organic.

I won't lie, I'm very nervous. This is my first time starting an actual business and committing to one. I've sourced about 6000 units from China with custom packaging, and they are currently being manufactured.

Meta ads: Plan is ABO creative testing (never done before), then scaling winners into Advantage+. I know beauty CPMs are rough, and I'll need a lot of UGC creative volume to make this work. I'm thinking of moving good-performing UGC videos onto Meta ads to run.

TikTok Shop affiliate: Seeding product to small/mid creators, open affiliate program, commission-based.

Organic: Will be posting in-house-made content along with influencer content daily on TikTok and Instagram. We have a small network of about 20-30 micro to mid-sized influencers. Oh, we also have sorority girls who have also agreed to create some content for us.

Questions for people who've actually done this:

1. Meta structure and budget: How would you structure the account from the start? How many ad sets/creatives per ad set in the ABO testing phase, and what daily budget would you start at, $50/day? $100? $200? And what's a realistic timeline and trigger for scaling (increase by 20% every X days after Y purchases, or wait until you exit the learning phase)? I don't want to throw money away by scaling too fast, but I also don't want to sit at $50/day for months with $100k available.
2. Reliability of each channel: In your experience, how consistent/predictable is each of these? My impression is that Meta is the most predictable once you find a winning creative, but I've also been seeing a lot of complaints on Reddit about inconsistency. TikTok affiliate is high-variance (one viral creator video can make your month, or you send 200 samples and get nothing), and organic is a total lottery. Is that accurate, or am I wrong about any of these?
3. Starting with 0 followers: Does having zero social presence kill conversion on paid traffic (people click the ad, check the IG, see 12 followers, bounce)? Should some of the early budget go toward just building baseline social proof before scaling spend?
4. With a $15.99 hero product, is Meta even viable early on, or should the first $20-30k go almost entirely into TikTok affiliate seeding until I have proven creative and social proof?
5. For those who've run TikTok Shop affiliate programs, what did your cost per sample sent vs. converted creator actually look like? Trying to budget realistically for gifting waste.
6. How much should I hold in reserve for inventory vs. ad spend? I keep hearing stories of brands that finally cracked ads and then immediately sold out.
7. Any ratio you'd recommend (50/30/20), or is that the wrong way to think about it entirely?
8. Finally, I think this is the most important one: What questions should I even be asking?

Not looking for agencies, genuinely want to hear from those who have done this type of thing before. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Good morning, afternoon or goodnight,
I’ve been working with my business partner for the past couple of months on starting an e-commerce gym accessories business, not sure if I need to get into the details as I don’t really need “Best 2026 marketing tips” hormozi still lingers in my dreams.

I’m finding it very difficult to find or build a structure for our marketing, either plan or strategy I feel helpless here. I’ve consumed so much marketing information in the past month but I feel like it’s all a big mixed bag of marbles, gummy bears, whatever.

Is this just something that everyone deals with or is there a general plan/template I can follow to at least keep my thoughts in line and to help organize when we do eventually launch.

Please don’t dismiss me and tell me to google it, I already did so many different things and it only makes me more anxious.. or it’s saas lol.

I’m not asking for much just general direction from my fellow marketing geniuses.

I run a clothing boutique using my own website plus Instagram. Every time I do a drop, the DMs flood in and it's the same questions over and over. Is this in stock? What sizes are left? How much? Do you ship here? When's the next restock? I spend most of my day answering the same stuff

I've seen a few other stores running an AI chatbot that handles all of that for them, and it seems really useful. Want to do the same so I'm not stuck replying manually all day

Is anyone here using one? Which would you recommend?

Thanks!

Main expertise is the creative side of marketing, but I know quite a bit about all other operations.

Edit: I own my business, I am not selling marketing services. I wish I had the opportunity to ask someone in my shoes now when I started out (been doing e-commerce since 15).

I used to think abandoned checkout means customer changed mind.

But support messages say otherwise.

People ask:

“payment ho gaya but order nahi dikha”

“COD hai kya?”

“delivery kab tak?”

“UPI fail ho gaya”

“return milega?”

“can I pay after delivery?”

That is not normal abandonment.

That is trust/payment/delivery confusion.

And most stores still send:

“Complete your order, use 10% off.”

Maybe discount was not the problem.

Maybe payment failed.

Maybe delivery date was unclear.

Maybe COD was hidden.

Maybe return policy looked shady.

If you already have Shopify, Freshdesk/Zoho, WhatsApp Business, Judge.me reviews and something like FlexyPe for checkout, the next step is honestly just tagging reasons properly.

Anyone tagging checkout/support issues properly?

I've officially been running my e-com business for a year and it's honestly going much better than expected, but I am absolutely terrible at staying on top of QuickBooks and would like to hire someone to help with reconciliation, quarterly payments, potential s-corp filing, and the likes. I'm netting a steady $8k-$11k per month, so I'm still somewhat budget conscious and not quite at the point where I want to hire a full time CPA, but I recognize that I need the help and am willing to pay for it. Can anyone recommend a service or freelancer who might be able and willing to help me? Thanks in advance!

Question for people running ecom stores here. Are you actually building organic distribution or is it basically just ads for you right now?

Feels like most brands are all in on paid, but the ones I've seen build some kind of organic base (content, UGC, whatever) seem to hold up way better when ad costs spike. Ads-only seems fragile to me.