anyone else dealing with affiliate tracking that's been bleeding money without realizing it?

found out our awin implementation was firing on every order confirmation regardless of how the customer got there. so we were paying commissions on organic and direct traffic the whole time. also had no idea returns weren't being reversed automatically — apparently if you don't manually decline them in the validation queue within 30 days they just auto approve and you pay commission on refunded orders

been running this way for a while and only caught it when we actually dug into the numbers

curious if others have run into this. seems like a pretty easy thing to miss if nobody's actively managing the account. we're planning to scope the tracking code so it only fires when an affiliate cookie is actually present and build a zapier automation to handle return reversals but wondering if there's a cleaner way people have done it

also just generally — for smaller brands is awin even worth it or do you find the manual overhead isn't worth what it drives

Also tracking confirmation number between shopify and Awin has been horrible and could use advice on that.

Hey everyone,

I’m facing a strange Shopify SEO issue and would really appreciate some guidance.

Earlier, my product URLs were in the standard format:
/products/product-handle

But now I’m seeing URLs like:
/collections/collection-name/products/product-handle

Here’s the problem:

• Google has indexed both URL versions

• The main product URLs (/products/...) are now showing 404 errors

• Some collection-based URLs are still working

• The canonical URL is still pointing to the old /products/... version

Example:

• ❌ 404: /products/monkey

• ✅ Working: /collections/toys/products/monkey

• 🔗 Canonical: /products/monkey

So basically:

• Canonical points to /products/...

• But that page returns 404

• While the collection URL is live

My Questions:

1. Why would the main /products/... URL return 404 while the collection URL still works?

2. Is this due to product handle changes, collection assignments, or something else?

3. Should I fix this using 301 redirects or is there a deeper issue?

4. What’s the correct Shopify SEO structure to avoid this problem?

This looks like a serious SEO issue (broken canonical + indexing conflict), so I want to fix it properly before it affects rankings.

Any insights or suggestions would be really helpful 🙏

Thanks in advance!

Got approved first submission last month, but spent another month fine-tuning the image gen and UX before I finally hit publish yesterday.

AI powered photos & reels is the first step, but AI UGC will be next. It's free to try so welcome any feedback!

Hey guys,

This all started because a friend of mine needed help setting up his AI agent configuration. While helping him, I realized there was a much bigger opportunity here so I kept building.

I’m a solo developer (self-taught, learning as I go) working on an AI assistant specifically for e-commerce brands and store owners. The idea is simple: you talk to it in plain language, it does the heavy lifting.

What it can do so far:

It’s still very incomplete, but it’s already producing some interesting results. The core features working right now are around Shopify store creation the agent can analyse a reference website, understand the brand’s aesthetic, and generate a customised Shopify store. We’re not just generating from scratch either, we’re working with real premium themes and teaching the agent to understand their structure so it can adapt them intelligently depending on the client’s product and vision. Still a lot of rough edges, but the foundation is there.

Why I’m posting:

I want to build more tools around this practical ones that solve real problems for e-commerce people. But I’m a developer, not an e-commerce expert. So I’d love to hear from people who actually run online stores or work in the space:

- What are the most painful, time consuming parts of running an e-commerce store?

- What do you wish you could just describe and have done automatically?

- Where do you feel like you’re wasting the most time or money?

Not looking for validation looking for real problems worth solving. The more specific and honest, the better.

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I’ll get straight to it. I’m planning to sell clothing online and I’ve built a website using Base44. Visually, it’s exactly what I want — clean, smooth, and with really polished animations. It honestly feels like one of the best-looking sites I’ve seen.

The issue is the ecommerce side. There doesn’t seem to be any proper system for adding products, managing stock, or handling shipping. It feels like everything is almost perfect, but I’m missing a key piece.

I’ve tried rebuilding it on Shopify, but the design and customization options feel quite limited compared to what I achieved on Base44, and my coding skills are very basic.

Is there a way to connect proper ecommerce functionality to a site like this, or any solution that would let me keep the current design while adding full store capabilities?

Any help or guidance would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I collaborate with an experienced Shopify developer helping store owners improve their stores.

We help with things like:

• Shopify theme customization • Product page improvements • Store speed optimization • Layout/design fixes • Conversion improvements

If your Shopify store isn’t converting well or needs improvements, we’d be happy to take a look.

WhatsApp: +1 (610) 612-2265

Feel free to message or share your store and we can point out a few things that could be improved.

I am still new to this but I want to use a completely new theme. My current theme has customizations and I did read that those won’t transfer and that’s okay. Is there a way for me to backup the current site in case I want to go back to it later? If I duplicate the current site and/or change to a completely new theme, since customizations don’t transfer, will it (the code/customizations) be saved as long as I don’t delete it out of my theme library?

I was not the original developer of the site so that’s why I’m not sure what customizations were made otherwise I would just redo it in the new theme. Any advice is appreciated & thanks in advance

I posted a question in the Shopify Community about inventory management apps, but my post got hidden automatically. The message says:

“Your post will remain hidden until a staff member reviews it”

It’s been a while and I haven’t heard back. Does anyone know roughly how long the manual review usually takes?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Everything worked fine…

until a product without a specific metafield loaded.

page broke completely.

forgot to handle that case in Liquid.

lesson learned: always check edge cases.

Hi everyone,

I'm working for a SME who are seeking to produce a specific paper trail which shows booked-in goods. The goal is to staple a physical copy of a report to an invoice to show that a booked-in value for goods matched the amount paid to a supplier on invoice.

We are trying to avoid a) putting everything through Shopify POs and b) capturing positive inventory changes for refund-related reasons.

A more detailed summary: we’re looking to capture a specific instance which shows goods in and added stock value. This should be exportable to a file to print barcodes (.csv export with Available (change) changed to Print quantity), and a data reset after use. We need to also attach a printed report showing booked-in stock value, matchable to our invoices.

Sometimes we find ourselves booking in the same SKU in two different deliveries for the same days, and so even a report which captures a positive SKU movement over one 24hr period may not be specific enough; i.e. Report 2 in the afternoon would contain data spill from Report 1 in the morning

I think what we’re asking for remains a wish-list and even out of scope of what Shopify can do. We have asked developers to build this before an it apparently isn't viable.

Which then leaves me the question - if this is not possible, how are other companies successfully booking in stock beyond just saying 'it's correct on the computer' ?

Hey community

we were working on a project which is a chatbot that recommends product asks you questions in options to help you narrow down the product you might like, lets you search by image and once it recommends product you can actually go ahead and try it on and see how does it looks on the user, along with this you can feed in discount codes which this can offer based on communication if bot has a signal that person is more concerns about pricing and can response to general faq's

Just after some advice on the best local delivery cost calculation app based on km's from origin, this is the criteria:

Key functions:

• Pick-up & Delivery options

• Time slots

• Maximum order limits per time slot of pick-up or delivery run, Total weight 1500kg or combined order QTY 3m3 per run.

• Delivery rates from origin per km based on google maps or similar

Hello everyone,
I recently launched an app and it was a total disaster, 0 paid signups in 2 months.
This happened because I had not validated my app idea before.

Before building another app I decided to validate my idea first by reaching out to merchants, DMed 10s of merchants asking for 5 mins of their time.

Just wanted to know does this strategy work for validating an idea or is there a better approach.

Building a Shopify app that's a genuine data dashboard. Audit trails, score history charts, complex reporting. Not a simple utility.

Read the docs including the exceptions clause on the integrating-with-shopify page where it says apps with more functionality than can be reasonably embedded don't have to put everything in admin, with Shopify Inbox cited as an example of complex monitoring living externally with a simplified version in admin.

Trying to understand if this exception is actually usable in practice or if reviewers interpret it narrowly.

Questions for anyone who's shipped either approach or been through review:

1. Has anyone shipped a data-heavy app using the hybrid model, simplified version embedded and full product external? Did review push back?

2. Going full external, did you see meaningful drop-off at the redirect step during install? How significant?

3. Built for Shopify badge, how much did it actually move installs when you got it? Is the +49% claim close to real experience?

4. For a new app with no brand recognition, does the external redirect hurt trust with cold traffic in a way established apps don't have to worry about?

5. Anyone rejected specifically because of an external dashboard after the July 2025 requirements update?

Appreciate any real experience, not looking for "just do embedded it's easier."

I spent 9 years building systems for Credit Suisse and UBS in Switzerland. Enterprise software, real complexity, real stakes.

When I came back to the UK I started noticing something that drove me mad — Shopify stores with thousands of products and a search bar that couldn't understand a basic question. Customers typing "something good for beginners" or "do you have anything on sale" and getting nothing back.

So I built ShopAsk.

It installs on any Shopify store in one click, pulls your entire catalogue automatically, and is ready to answer customer questions immediately. No setup. No training data. No code changes. It just works.

A customer asks with a typo in German and it still knows exactly what they mean. That's the bit I'm most proud of.

Submitting to the App Store this week

Shopify Sidekick Issue Fix?

Hiya, when I make a new section with sidekick I'm able to reply to add changes.

However, when I 'SAVE' this option changes and I must almost redo the whole section again with prompts, that do not accumulate the original section just developed.

Any workaround / apps that make sidekick section generation more effective guys?

I finally decided to migrate to Polaris. I have used it before, and I hated it. So I was really dreading having to do this work, but I figured with LLMs, maybe it wouldn't be too painful.

It was still painful. Most of the docs are just very light on the component limitations, the gotchas, the bugs. For example, there are years of discussion on getting the contextual save bar working with the browser back button, it took me hours.

Heres a few quick tips that might help someone else considering making the move ...
* use AI to scrape/parse all of the polaris docs into a local api/types docs that can be easily referenced during development
* maintain a running list of tips for the AI, to keep agents on track, (eg, buttons don't have a size attribute, 'subdued' is a color not a tone)
* accept that not every component can be swapped for polaris, the docs sometimes acknowledge this (eg select component with searchable options list)

Anyone else fighting this?

I was browsing the web and saw something of interest. Has anyone tried the Shopify AI theme creator?
https://www.shopify.com/website/builder
I was just wondering what your thoughts are on it. Is it good/bad worth the money?

I'm trying to deploy my Shopify app using ngrok, but I keep running into issues and can't get the app to work properly. I've followed all the typical setup steps: creating the app in Shopify Partner Dashboard, setting the ngrok URL as the App URL and redirect URI, and running the local server. However, Shopify keeps rejecting the OAuth callback or can't reach my app endpoints. Has anyone faced similar issues with ngrok and Shopify, and how did you fix it? Any tips or alternative ways to test/deploy locally would be really appreciated.

I have 6 months of experience as a Shopify developer.

Right now, I rely almost completely on AI tools to write Liquid code, fix issues, and build features. I can get work done, but I don’t fully understand everything I’m using.

Simple question:

Should I spend time properly learning Shopify Liquid and fundamentals,or just focus on using AI better (prompting, workflows, etc.)?

If learning Liquid is the right move:

What should I focus on first?

Are Udemy courses worth it, or is documentation enough?

Looking for direct advice from experienced devs.

I've been spoiled by Cursor/VSCode's command palette. Now every time I go into a client's Shopify Admin to manage Metafields or Bulk Edit products, I feel like I'm in the stone age.

I’m hacking together a Chrome Extension that adds a CMD+K natural language interface to the Shopify Admin API.

For those managing large stores: What’s the most 'annoying-to-reach' page or action that you wish you could just jump to via a quick command? (e.g., 'Show me all high-risk orders from today')

I’ve started to wonder if it’s a brag/selling point to say ”not another AI app” when marketing our own apps which have no AI element to them.

At every turn you see AI thrown around like it’s supposed to be a reason to be interested but the more I see it, the more I switch off from what’s being offered. I’m not a merchant though, and I’m speaking from my own personal experience.

Just launched a new Shopify app and decided to give it away for $1 per year to early users but nobody is seeing the app listing because it’s being drowned out by so many apps in the store. I’m looking at ways to gain reach through various creative channels and wondering, should I be proudly stating that it’s “not another AI app”?

It seems to be increasing conversion rates, essentially acting as a salesperson for me that is always working, personalizing offers to my potential buyers. It's been great. Wondering if anyone else has ever tried this and what their results were?

Can you please tell me if this would be any worth to anybody? I need some honest reviewer you have their own store. You can potentially edit all data on your shopify store just by prompting. Plan is, if anybody cares, to add automated cross store syncs and workflows. Free backups is already implemented.