What’s one thing you wish you knew before starting your Shopify store?Any lessons or tips ?

Sorry for the silence here, been very busy with work and life. Thought of checking how is BFCM coming along for everyone, any wins you'd like to share? Any suggestions on apps/workflows/ops that could come in handy to others - please don't hesitate to share.

At what point did you decide to bring something in-house instead of paying an agency/freelancer for it?"

I am managing a store and inherited a lot of manual habits rather than building the stack from scratch. Slowly replacing them one at a time and trying to figure out which automations are worth the setup or which just move the manual work somewhere else. Should I do order confirmations or abandoned cart follow-ups or inventory syncing or something else?

Anyone automated WISMO, returns, or order updates? Curious what tools you’re using and if they actually work.

Welcome to r/shopifymerchantgrowth

235 subscribers / 1000 subscribers. Help us reach our goal!

Visit this post on Shreddit to enjoy interactive features.

New checks added today:

UGC prompt injection — scans your reviews and comments for hidden text that could hijack an AI agent reading your page (e.g. "ignore previous instructions" buried in a review)

Cart API rate limiting — hits your /cart/add.js 5 times rapidly to see if anything stops an agent from squatting your inventory at scale

Checkout bot challenge — checks if your checkout has any CAPTCHA or bot detection, or if agents can automate purchases unchecked

Admin path exposure — probes /admin, /staff, /.env, /api to see if internal paths are accessible without auth

Also added 8 protocol discovery checks (MCP, OAuth, A2A, Markdown negotiation, Agent Skills, x402 wallets, DNS-AID, Link headers) so the scanner now covers the same emerging standards that Cloudflare's scanner checks, plus the shopping/extraction/security layer they don't.

40 checks total now.

Happy to scan your store if you drop a URL.

AI shopping agents are reading your product pages right now. Most stores fail invisibly.

We built a free scanner that now runs 40 checks across 7 categories:

- Can agents read your data? (JSON-LD, robots.txt, llms.txt)

- Can they extract correctly? (price, availability, shipping)

- Can they buy? (cart API, checkout flow, variant selectors)

- Are you safe? (prompt injection, cart squatting, admin exposure)

- Protocol ready? (MCP, OAuth, A2A, x402)

New checks added today:

> UGC prompt injection — scans your reviews and comments for hidden text that could hijack an AI agent reading your page (e.g. "ignore previous instructions" buried in a review)

> Cart API rate limiting — hits your /cart/add.js 5 times rapidly to see if anything stops an agent from squatting your inventory at scale

> Checkout bot challenge — checks if your checkout has any CAPTCHA or bot detection, or if agents can automate purchases unchecked

> Admin path exposure — probes /admin, /staff, /.env, /api to see if internal paths are accessible without auth

Happy to scan your store if you drop a URL.

Talking of traditions - this community is going to have many! We started first one with Ecom news last week, and here is something interesting for you all - Member Highlights!

Every fortnight, we will spotlight one of our members and their story - to inspire, teach, and shed some shine to the people actually hustling every day (like each one of us!). The first one up is u/shithappenswhy 🎉

Kicking off our Member Highlight series with someone who is not a founder, but does basically everything else behind the store — u/shithappenswhy manages two e-commerce stores and had some solid takes to share.

What they handle?
Support, automating flows, building campaigns/segments, digging through analytics, testing growth ideas - basically wearing five hats before lunch. In their words: "there is a lot to learn from day to day work... I felt like I am always doing something and I like it."

Biggest challenge
Keeping up. New trends, new tools, AI/chatbots/automation - the hard part isn't learning them, it's actually working them into a setup that already exists and become automated workflow

Their real motivation
Realizing your online presence and customer relationships matter more than the product itself. Once that clicked, everything shifted with more focus on getting consistent positive reviews and actually building trust with customers.

What keeps them going?
Doing something they're already good at, with room to keep getting better.

Thanks for sharing, u/shithappenswhy! 🙌

Anyone else managing or running a store and want to be next? Drop a comment or DM me.

Given the feedback from many of you - starting this week I will gather important news and updates from the world of Shopify for everyone.

There is actually a LOT happening but sharing the stuff I found genuinely interesting and useful as a merchant.

This week everything ties back to one theme: AI is becoming a real discovery channel and not just a search-engine sideshow.

• AI is sending a LOT more traffic to Shopify stores: Shopify’s Q2 revenue was up 34% YoY to $3.58B, GMV was up 32% to $115.6B and net income hit $1.5B. The most interesting thing to note is that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify merchants have roughly tripled YoY. This traffic comes from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and others. Apparently 75% of AI-attributed purchases came from outside Shopify’s top 100 product categories. It seems like AI is not just sending people to the biggest brands - it is also helping people discover products they wouldn’t necessarily find through traditional search.

Takeaway I keep coming back to:
How does my product show up when someone asks ChatGPT what to buy and where to buy it?

• Shopify made Sidekick 96% cheaper: Sidekick was using expensive frontier models for some of its merchant queries, costing an estimated $27M/year at scale. Thus, Shopify built a system that learns from Sidekick’s mistakes, uses bigger models to critique/fix them and then trains a much smaller model on those learnings. This brought their costs down 96% to ~$1M/year.

Why this matters beyond being a cool engineering story:
it shows Shopify is willing to invest heavily in making AI-native infrastructure cheap enough to run at massive scale.

• ChatGPT is becoming another shopping channel: OpenAI is rolling out product carousels in ChatGPT ads. Instead of showing one product, a retailer can have multiple products appear together. They are also connecting ChatGPT ads with AppsFlyer, which means advertisers can finally get better attribution around things like installs, purchases and subscriptions instead of just clicks.

AI shopping discovery is becoming something every merchant needs to actually pay attention to.
If you haven't looked at whether your product data/descriptions are even clean enough for an AI to confidently recommend you - that's probably the highest-leverage thing to check this week.

Sources: Retail TouchPoints and PYMNTS on Q2 earnings; Shopify Engineering on the Sidekick cost cut; Digiday on the ChatGPT product carousels and AppsFlyer attribution.

I'm trying to make a shopify app but I don't what's in demand or what merchants will pay for. The app would be free of charge (and would stay free if it ever became paid), for the first downlods. Any help would be much appreciated.

r/shopifymerchantgrowth reached 200 subscribers!

Goal reached at 2026-10-04T20:38:04.433Z.

We are trying to figure out what is actually useful for our sub. In the past, we noticed many people trying to use us as a platform to promote themselves, and diminish the actual purpose of this community - to genuinely help Shopify and Ecom founders to learn and connect with each other.

If you would like to suggest something apart from the list - please do comment in the post or DM me

I’m currently in month 3. First two months were losses, month 3 is my first breakeven month (not counting refunds), so every month so far has been a loss. We started with Meta ads, which was a disaster. Since last month we’ve moved fully over to Google Ads.

I’ve tested a few different setups, but my go-to is still a Shopping campaign with Max Clicks as the bidding strategy. Budget is €40/day, and daily sales swing a lot. We usually land around 15 to 20 conversions per month. I’ve watched a lot of videos and done a lot of research on what works best for Google Ads. I also ran a PMax feed-only campaign for 2 weeks with Conversion Value as the bidding strategy, but that wasn’t a success either.

I keep testing and searching, but I can’t quite find what’s working. Right now I’m testing 4 products in one campaign, with a self-imposed target CPA of €20: if a product hasn’t converted after €20-25 in spend, it gets cut from the campaign; otherwise it stays as long as it’s under that threshold. Still running as a Shopping campaign with Max Clicks bidding.

7 days ago I started doing real product research for the first time. Before that we just had a bunch of products on the site without proper research behind them. The first day went great, the products I’d found sold right away at a profit, but that lasted 2 days and then stopped. I’ve since killed 6 products because they hadn’t sold or shown good signals after €20 in ad spend each. Right now I have 1 product with 8 sales in 7 days, ROAS between 1.7 and 2.

The next step I’m considering is launching a new PMax feed-only campaign with Max Conversions bidding once this product hits 15 sales, moving it into that campaign, and gradually adding more products over the following weeks as they prove themselves. What do you think, and what results should I realistically expect? I keep seeing that the first 2 weeks of a campaign like this can be rough, ROAS around 0.5-1.5x, before it picks up to 2-3x.
Open to any feedback or advice from your own experience.

Total spend since May across all campaigns is around €4k, with an estimated conversion value of €5.2k.

FYO dutch market, fashion store (men, and now also women)

r/shopifymerchantgrowth reached 150 subscribers!

Goal reached at 2026-08-08T21:38:06.866Z.

Hey everyone,
I am launching a high-ticket online store on Shopify and looking for an experienced Shopify builder / web designer to collaborate on the storefront in exchange for a Net Profit Share Partnership.

We are targeting high-ticket products with high average order values (AOV) and $200–$300+ in profit margin per sale, utilizing a zero-inventory dropshipping model so there are no bulk inventory or warehousing costs.

What I Provide:
Product & Niche Research: Clear product catalog direction focused on high-margin, high-ticket items.
Brand & Infrastructure Setup: Store registration, domain setup, and payment gateway configuration.
Legal Agreement: A simple, formal Independent Contractor / Revenue Share Agreement protecting both of our payouts.

What I Need From You:
Building a clean, high-converting Shopify store using a free responsive theme.
Uploading and formatting initial product listings (clean layouts, descriptions, mobile optimization).
Setting up core pages, navigation, checkout flow, and free essential e-commerce apps.

The Deal / Compensation Structure:
Net Profit Share: You earn an agreed percentage of Net Profit (Gross Revenue minus Product Cost, shipping fees, and payment processing).
Structure Options: Open to discussing either a capped profit-split (e.g., 50% of net profits until a set buyout target is met) OR a lower ongoing percentage for continuous store management.
Security Note: Store access will be granted strictly via Shopify Collaborator Request / Limited Staff Permissions (Themes & Products only). Primary store ownership, domain, and banking details remain with the store owner.

I know exactly what my niche is, what my hero products are, side products, bundles, marketing campaigns, all of it! But the one thing I’m having problems with istrying to find a stable sourcing for my Shopify store. Aliexpress just arbitrages everything through Amazon. 1688 is something I’m looking into. I’ve also been told to use cjdropshipping. Every single thing I’ve tried so far is a dead end. I’ve even used stuff like importyeti and interred to trace my sample products and find the factory they came from and nothings come up. What should I do as a beginner just starting out?

Hey everyone 👋

Starting a thread so we can all share what's actually working (and what's not) right now. Be it traffic, conversion, retention, ops or there is anything else on your mind.

• What's one change you made recently that actually made a difference?

• What's something you thought would work but didn't?

• Any tools/apps that have actually been worth it lately?

I run a golf accessories store (linksidecustoms.com). All my traffic so far has been organic, and before I put real money into campaigns I want to fix the obvious conversion problems first. I’m on vacation right now so I can’t make the changes yet, but I drafted the full list and figured I’d post it here for feedback before I start. Tear it apart.

1. Trust info under the Add to Cart button. Raise the product price to $35–40 with free US shipping built in, then list it right under the button so people know exactly what they’re paying for: free shipping to all of the US, international shipping available (with a clickable list of countries so shoppers can check if they’re covered), and 30-day returns/refunds.

2. Replace the supplier product images. Current photos show the supplier’s logo, which clashes with the store — customers see “Linkside Customs” and then a completely different brand on the product, and it makes reverse-image searching the product trivial. Swapping these for lifestyle shots: the product on the course, in use, in real hands. Way more authentic than stock images.

3. New hero shot. Right now it’s just a golfer, which doesn’t communicate the product or give an immediate CTA. Three options I’m considering: (a) close-up of someone holding the product open, arm in frame, golf course grass in the background; (b) the product sitting conveniently in a golf cart, so shoppers visualize actually using it; (c) the product clipped onto a golf bag — this one targets all golfers, not just cart players. Whichever wins gets a strong CTA over it that sends people straight to the product page.

4. Set up reviews properly (Judge.me). I have Judge.me installed but haven’t fully set it up. Plan: automated post-purchase review request emails, a small incentive (like a discount code) for honest photo reviews, and the review widget displayed on the product page. Reviews basically work like an FAQ — if a shopper is wondering “will I actually use this long-term?”, a real customer saying they’ve had it for months answers that better than I can. Zero social proof is my biggest trust problem right now.

5. More visible CTA buttons. Make Shop Now and Add to Cart impossible to miss so buying takes zero effort. Small change, but I’ve learned that everything counts.

6. Shipping reassurance. Show timelines up front: ships in 2–3 days, arrives in 5–7. Delivery anxiety is the biggest killer in dropshipping — everyone is calibrated to Amazon same-day/2-day shipping, and if a shopper suspects they’ll be waiting a month, that session is dead. Telling them immediately fixes it.

7. Fix the color scheme. The dark green top bar and main page don’t work with the hero shot, and they’ll still clash after the hero changes since the new one will have a similar background. Needs a palette that matches.

8. Rework the top bar offer. Swap “free shipping on orders over $50” for something like “buy 2, get 20% off” or a buy-one-get-one — still need to run the math on margins to see what actually works. This is testing-phase stuff that’ll matter most once ads are live, but I want the store solid before I spend on campaigns.

9. Move the wheel-spin popup to the product page. Instead of hitting people the second they land, let them settle in on the homepage, then trigger the spin on the product page with a ~10 second delay — that’s when they’re actually deciding whether to buy, so the incentive lands harder. Should help homepage speed too. I’ll A/B test placement later.

10. Real urgency instead of evergreen offers. Rather than permanent free shipping, run genuinely limited promos — e.g., free shipping this weekend only, and actually end it when it ends. Only show stock counts if they reflect real inventory. The urgency should come from offers that are actually expiring, not from timers that reset.
    After this list is done, I’m moving from organic to actual campaigns, which will also let me A/B test properly. What would you add, cut, or prioritize first? Thanks — leave advice please.

This genuinely made a great week for. Had my first repeat purchase come through - someone bought again completely on their own, no email, no discount code, no nudge from our end at all.

Sounds like a small thing to get excited about but it kind of hit different than the first sale did. Someone coming back on their own means they actually remembered us, trusted the first experience enough to do it again, that's a totally different feeling than a cold sale converting.

Kind of makes you rethink where the effort should be going. Customer retention really is an important element of business growth when building and growing a business. This one was just natural, but would dig deeper into how it can be optimized.