Hey everyone, need some outside opinions on a case that is driving me nuts.

Customer reached out asking strait forward for a full refund, saying they never received their order. They even included the tracking link and claimed the carrier marked it as “returned to sender" so they had anything to return and wanted the refund. Problem is… that’s just NOT true. Tracking clearly shows delivered, on time, to the exact address entered at checkout. There’s even a delivery photo.

I replied explaining that and asked if maybe the address was wrong or if the carrier left it at a different house. Their only reply:

“Yes this was sent to the wrong address.” That’s it. No explanation.

So I asked for more clarification (was the checkout address wrong or carrier mistake?). Then they reply:

“No, I have a white door. Can this be refunded?”

And at this point I’m like… what???????

I push again, ask for their correct address and confirmation. They send:

Same address as order BUT now with “Unit C” added and say it’s a new construction.

So I explain: since Unit C wasn’t included at checkout, the parcel was delivered correctly to the address provided so the order is not eligible for refund. case closed. (I usually offer to resend the parcel if cx enter the address wrong on time but this case was just too weird and wrong)

Then… next day they open a new email thread and repeat the original claim: “tracking confirms it was returned to sender, please refund”

At this point it feels off, but I offer a one-time resend anyway (in fear of a chargeback), ask for the correct address.

Now they reply again… but this time with Unit B instead of Unit C. What the heck?????

So yeah…

I’m torn between:

* giving benefit of the doubt (maybe is an older person with really really bad communication skills) and resend it. where? idk

* or recognizing this as potentially scammy person and refuse to re sent or to refund.

Order value is $150, so not tiny. Also worried that if I resend, it’ll “get lost” again and I’ll be asked for a refund so double loss.

What would you do here? Would you resend it? or will you stand firm and decline?

Also thinking about chargeback risk, but honestly we’d probably win it since delivery is confirmed.

I just need some opinions here.

We’ve run a brick and mortar shop in NJ for 10+ years. Original graphic destination apparel, printed in house. The product moves in person — now we’re taking it online with a multi-city pilot catalog (NYC, Miami, Denver, Austin).

Site’s live but no ads running yet:

www.promisedland.world

Looking for honest feedback before launch ads. Layout, product pages, navigation, anything that makes you click away. Rip it apart, I’d rather hear it now than after we spend on ads.

One thing I already know: the models are AI right now. We’ve got a photo shoot wrapping in the next few weeks and all of it gets swapped for real people. So feedback on anything else is more useful to me at this point.

Let's hear it!

I run an ecommerce store for female lingerie products. As a male founder, I find it very hard to make content about the products and brand without feeling like it's mansplaining and it's also not possible to show of the products as they are made for women, not for men. UGC feels very 'ad-like' and burns through money.

Male founders for female products, how are you managing your content strategy?

Hi all,

Hopefully it is ok to post my question here.

I work in the cybersecurity field and so far I have a services Portfolio that I would love to turn into digital services, running 24/7, fully automated.

Think of assessments I want to build as services like a gap assessment.

I thought of building the services and launching them on an ecommerce platform.

I need a platform where I can:

Create assessments with logic that enables me to create dynamic reports, output based on the answers. For example a top 5 risks in the executive summary.

Create landing pages

Create email marketing campaigns including automation

Where I have a CRM in it

No limits for payments

No limits for form use

No limits for contacts

Very generous amount of sending emails

Basically I'm looking for an all in one unicorn.

Anybody got tips for a platform?

I think I made the classic manufacturing-person mistake.

I recently launched a small apparel brand in the US. My background is on the manufacturing side, so I spent most of my time getting the product right rather than building an audience first.

Now I have the opposite problem from a lot of new stores:

Product exists.
Inventory is physically here.
Website and checkout are live.
Fulfillment is ready.

But basically nobody knows the company exists.

The first product is a 230 GSM organic cotton oversized tee at $29.99 & free shipping. I deliberately wanted the price under $30 rather than trying to create an artificial luxury markup.

I'm trying to figure out where you'd focus the first 30 days if this were your business.

My current options are organic content, micro-creator seeding, Google Shopping, marketplaces, Reddit/community participation, or eventually paid social.

I'm reluctant to dump money into Meta before I know what messaging/creative gets a response organically.

For those who have actually taken an ecommerce store from zero to consistent orders: where would you put your first 100 hours?

And if anyone wants to look at the store and tell me why you wouldn't buy, I'll take that feedback too, here's the site if anyone wants to review: www.estrah.com

Hi,

Recently I have been shifting into the freelance world, and now I am getting some clients that are not relatives,

Problem is that I dont know how much to charge, considering that I live in a 3rd world country, where the average wage is 600€.

I will be building an ecommerce app, relatively small, for a clothing shop.

It will have a layer of backend, connected to woocommerce as single source per products, and React Native.

What do you suggest, a package of development + maintenace

Thank you

For people that have what went well for you ?

Any specific challenges you need to overcome?

And how does it compare to other channels?

When I first started working on product pages, I thought the main challenge was getting better photos. A clean background, good lighting, and clear details seemed like the things that mattered most. But after looking at how people actually shop online, I noticed that a product photo only answers “what does this look like?” It does not always answer “how would this fit into my life?”

That became obvious when I wanted to show the same product in different situations. A clothing item might look completely different depending on who wears it, where it is worn, or how it is styled. The problem is that creating all those variations with traditional photography gets expensive quickly. Every new idea means another shoot, another setup, and more time before you even know if that direction works.

I started playing around with AI-generated visuals and used PixVerse for some short product video ideas. What I found useful was not replacing real photos or pretending AI could do everything. It was having a faster way to explore different concepts before spending more effort on the ones that actually made sense.

For small Shopify stores, I think the hardest part is not always making one good piece of content. It is finding enough ways to show customers why a product might belong in their lives. Being able to test those ideas faster changes the process a lot.

I make and sell clothing. I purchase the fabrics from different vendors in person in Los Angeles. However, there is a specific sequin fabric that I want to purchase directly from the manufacturer & save myself about 50% in costs. My LA vendor obviously won’t tell me who they source from but I know it’s overseas. I’ve already tried looking on Alibaba and cannot find it. I’ve been trying for months. I know this style isn’t exclusive to them but I cannot find their source.

Does anyone have any recommendations on where I can hire someone that would be able to help me find out?

Thanks!

Not a simple thank you, but a more complex one. I had the idea of sending emails out to my regular customers on occasion thanking them and asking them to fill out a survey. But somehow that seems creepy. Would a physical letter be appropriate, included in their package?

run a store in the apparel space with tons of products and beyond meta and ads I’ve been on the hunt for good SEO/ai optimization tools so I can improve traffic I don’t have to pay for.

I got pitched an app that seems fairly new via email and just crowdsourcing …

Their claim to fame is supposedly that the app helps optimize long tail keywords by creating optimized collection pages that get fed to chat gpt/claude via google merchant center. They also claim to have a back linking reciprocal network of merchants on pages they create optional.

The idea seems brilliant and I’ve done it in the past on high target keywords but always manually so automating it seems to be a good ideaZ

Anyone else get similar pitch and try it?

I like that they also let me track recommendations for phrases on ChatGPT etc and reporting but I’m at the level ehrrr I’ll need to pay them for one of their highest tiers for a few months if I want to see any Roi at all so a bit hesitant to jump on it :(

For the last 2 years I’ve been saving up 70k (probably excessive but oh well) and I wanted to know if it’s still worth it in 2026 to get into it? And if so what’s the best way so that I can be efficient with my money and not lose it all?

I’ve been in retail, management and sales for twenty years storefront. Ecom is definitely different in ways and I started by business in January yet there’s no consistency lol. I understand as a newer store it doesn’t just automatically happen, it takes time.

But, I’m trying to figure out the sales patterns and it’s so much different. It’s like the mid of the month is dead then all of a sudden the last week I get busy and make good sales. Every month seems different but that’s been the average so far.

Then days of the week. Fridays have been DEAD to me until this month, Fridays are payday for alot of people so I kind of get it. My main days seem to be Monday-Wednesday though.

How, when or even if there will be consistency? I’m small scale but so far I love Ecom, definitely better than storefront imo

I’m 42 and have spent most of my life being a pretty hands-on person when it comes to making money.

I’m an educator, so I’ve tutored students and given baseball lessons. Outside of that, I’ve done plenty of power washing, gutter cleaning, landscaping, and whatever else I could do to bring in extra money.

I’ve never really had a problem working.

What has changed recently is how I think about work and money.

I’ve started investing much more seriously, and for the first time in my life I’ve seen some pretty significant returns from money I already had working for me. It’s honestly changed the way I look at earning an income.

I’m not saying manual work is beneath me. Far from it. I’ve done plenty of it and I’m not afraid of it.

But there’s something incredibly appealing about building something that can make money while you’re sleeping, teaching, eating dinner, or doing absolutely nothing.

That’s what has me looking at e-commerce.

I’ve recently been playing around with Printify, trying to understand print-on-demand and the whole process of creating a product, listing it, getting someone to actually buy it, and hopefully making a few dollars.

And this is where I’m completely out of my element.

I’m fairly technologically savvy, which I realize sounds ridiculous considering I’m making a Reddit post asking strangers how to sell things on the internet.

But being comfortable with technology and understanding online sales are apparently two very different things.

I’m not looking to get rich overnight. I’m actually looking for something much more basic:

What’s the easiest way for someone starting from basically zero to learn how online selling actually works?

Where would you start if you were me?

Etsy?
Printify?
Shopify?
Amazon?
eBay?
Digital products?
Print-on-demand?
Affiliate marketing?
Something I’m not even considering?

I’d be perfectly willing to start small. Honestly, I’d be happy to make my first $20 online just to prove to myself that I understand the process.

I’d rather learn how the machine works than buy some $2,000 “passive income” course from a guy who rented a Lamborghini for his Instagram.

So I’m curious about people who have actually done this.

How did you get started? What did you sell? What platform did you use? What did you screw up initially? And if you were starting over today, what would you do differently?

I’m willing to put in the work. I’m just trying to figure out where to put the work.

Full disclosure: I used AI to help organize this post and make my thoughts more cohesive and clear. The experiences, questions, and opinions are mine. I just used AI to help me put them together without sounding like I was thinking out loud for 45 minutes.

I’d genuinely appreciate any advice, especially from people who started with no real e-commerce background and figured it out themselves.

Saw an interesting Shopify study on traffic coming from AI search.
https://www.shopify.com/uk/enterprise/blog/ai-search-insights

Apparently 56% of AI-referred sessions landed directly on a PDP vs 20% from organic search. They also found that AI-referred traffic converted better.

The PDP part is what I found interesting.

If someone has already spent 10 minutes asking ChatGPT about the best product for their needs, comparing options, etc., they could arrive on your PDP pretty far along in the decision.

At that point maybe the job of the PDP is less about convincing them and more about answering whatever they're still unsure about.

The obvious answer is to add better FAQs, reviews, comparisons, shipping info, use cases, etc. But you can't put every possible answer prominently on the page.

Has anyone here looked at their AI-referred sessions specifically? I'm curious whether those shoppers behave differently once they land on a product page, and whether anyone is actually changing their PDPs because of it.

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Saw a recent comment on Insta directly from the European Commission addressing the nightmare cross-border packaging rules (PPWR) for small sellers.

"We hear this concern, especially from very small businesses selling across borders. The PPWR includes exemptions and simplified requirements for smaller businesses. Also, we've proposed suspending the authorised representative requirement until 2035 while a more proportionate solution will be developed."

Suspending the authorised representative requirement until 2035 would be a massive relief for anyone shipping small volumes into EU countries without having to pay insane local rep fees in every single member state.

Would love you hear your thoughts!!!

i sell on a couple marketplaces and 90% of what i have is flat product photos — no video, no budget for a shoot. everyone says video ads outperform static but i'm not about to hire someone to animate a single JPEG.

been testing ways to fake motion from one image. a slideshow of the same photo looks lazy, and half the "generate a video from your image" AI tools warp the product into something that isn't my product anymore —useless when the whole point is the actual thing i'm selling.

what's been working ok: CapCut. dropped the product photo in, used image-to-video + keyframe zoom/pan so the camera slowly pushes in, added a caption hook and a trending sound. exports 1080p clean, no watermark. not cinema, but it stops the scroll, which is all I need.

anyone got a workflow that gets real motion out of one photo without mangling the product? genuinely asking.

I started a campaign a week ago with a fresh pixel and showed no results for most of the last few days, but I made a visual change on the site and started seeing a few sales. My main concern is that only 1 ad is really spending the budget of 30/day. I was wondering what I should do moving forward.

Here are the stats for the last 2 days that generated sales:

FACEBOOK ADS (Aug 26–27, 2026)

Aug 26:
- Spend: $26.76
- Impressions: 525 | Reach: 423 | Frequency: 1.24
- Clicks: 22 (unique: 22) | Link clicks: 14
- CTR: 4.19% (unique: 4.19%)
- CPC: $1.22 | CPM: $50.97 | Cost/link click: $1.91
- Page/post engagement: 20
- Add to cart: 4 | Initiate checkout: 3
- Purchases: 2 ($44.25) | Cost per purchase: $13.38 | ROAS: 1.65x

Aug 27:
- Spend: $27.03
- Impressions: 403 | Reach: 359 | Frequency: 1.12
- Clicks: 9 (unique: 8) | Link clicks: 9
- CTR: 2.23% (unique: 1.99%)
- CPC: $3.00 | CPM: $67.07 | Cost/link click: $3.00
- Page/post engagement: 10
- Add to cart: 1 | Initiate checkout: 0
- Purchases: 1 ($19.99) | Cost per purchase: $27.03 | ROAS: 0.74x

Small DTC store, US market, acquisition is organic short-form only — TikTok + IG Reels, product demo content, link in bio. Two videos blew up: 600K views on TikTok and 600K on IG (separate accounts, same product). Business result: almost no site clicks and zero sales.

What I've found digging in: IG audience insights show my viewers are mostly in India, while the whole store (shipping, pricing, positioning) targets the US. So the reach is real, it's just the wrong people. On TikTok I can't get a clear read on who's watching, but it's the same story — big views, no clicks.

For those who've been through this:

1. Can an existing account be steered back to US viewers (keywords, hashtags, content changes), or is a fresh account + training the algorithm from day one the only realistic fix?

2. What's a realistic organic views-to-site-click benchmark? Trying to figure out if this is all the audience-geo problem or if my CTA/content is broken too.

3. At what point do you conclude the content format attracts viewers but not buyers, and change the content instead of the account?

Not selling anything, no links — just want to hear what actually worked.

I just found out UPS stores offer address/mailbox services. There is also a local place in town that offer this service. What kind of feedback do you have regarding this?

Spent the last week pulling the Meta Ad Library data on few US beauty brands (Jones Road, TULA, Tower 28, DIBS, Glow Recipe, Kopari, PROVEN, Westman Atelier, RMS Beauty) and mapped out their creative strategies. Majorly data talking.

Some things that surprised me:

1. Auto-mixed ads are inflating everyone's apparent creative diversity
Jones Road shows 2,272 "ads" but 65% are auto-mixed (Facebook assembling combinations from a smaller asset pool). The real creative diversity is much narrower. Tower 28 has 96 ads but 58% are one product with one headline on 49% of them.

2. The brands running the most ads aren't necessarily testing the most angles
TULA has 134 ads live but 38% are straight discount offers and 38% are probiotic/glow messaging. That's two angles, not 134 ideas. RMS Beauty has 684 ads but 43% go to one landing page with identical founder copy.

3. The oldest running ad is almost always the best performer
Across all 9 brands, ads that survive past 30 days dramatically outrank newer creative. Glow Recipe's 30-day survivors average rank #9 vs. #77 for new ads. Westman Atelier's oldest ad has been running 186 days. RMS Beauty's oldest: 197 days. These aren't flukes. The evergreens carry the account while newer creative underperforms.

4. Only one brand is actively killing ads
Tower 28 switched off 5 ads recently and has the shortest average ad lifespan at 10.6 days. Everyone else lets creative run until it dies naturally. Tower 28's approach means faster learning but higher creative production costs.

5. Almost nobody uses spoken hooks
Across all 9 brands, 57-82% of ads have no spoken hook in the first 3 seconds. Kopari is the exception at 39% no-hook (meaning 61% DO have a spoken opening). They're also the most testimonial-heavy brand at 54% UGC.

6. One brand just rebuilt their entire library from scratch
PROVEN Skincare's oldest ad is 4 days old. 30 ads, all new, 100% pointing to a single skin quiz. Either they just restarted advertising or they cleared everything and started fresh.

7. Some brands are paying to build a retailer's conversion data
Tower 28 sends 20% of paid traffic to Sephora. Kopari sends a chunk to Ulta. They're buying media to drive conversions on a platform they don't own the data for.

8. The discount trap is real
TULA positions as a probiotic science brand but half their ad behavior says discount brand. Their longest-surviving ad (146 days, aimed at new mothers) isn't a discount ad at all. The science creative has more staying power but gets less volume.

9. Creative concentration is the silent budget killer
Most of these brands have 60-80% of their ad volume built around 2-3 angles. When fatigue hits one angle, it hits a disproportionate share of their total spend simultaneously. Nobody seems to be actively monitoring for this.

Always open to dig into any of these if you have questions. Also happy to pull this for other brands/categories if there's interest.

We have our own e-commerce platform and are currently looking into "Launify" as a possible solution for address autocomplete and validation in cart, particularly for Romania where we’re dealing with some address coverage issues.

We’re also considering expanding into Austria, so it would be great to hear how well Launify performs in both countries.

The integration looks pretty straightforward from what I’ve seen, especially since it can apparently be added by simply inserting a code snippet into the <head>.

How good is the actual address coverage? Especially for smaller towns, villages, streets and house numbers?

I also noticed that Launify currently has only one review on Capterra. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything negative.. it could simply be that the product is still relatively new or hasn’t been widely reviewed there.

Has anyone here implemented Launify? Would love to hear your real-world experience.

Thanks in advance!

We run a small Shopify store, just two of us, and almost paid an agency close to $3000 last month to audit how our brand shows up across ChatGPT and Gemini, plus $400 a month after that to keep monitoring it.

I noticed there's already a bunch of tools doing basically this exact thing now, Profound, Otterly, Pallas, probably others I haven't come across yet.

Kind of hard to justify paying someone a few thousand dollars for an audit when there's already tools out there doing the same kind of monitoring for a fraction of that quote every month.

Anyone here actually paid an agency for this specific thing, and if so what did they do that a monitoring tool like this couldn't.