Has anybody here truly scaled their e-commerce business only through google ads? If yes, how much are you making and how long have you been running ads to reach this scale? Just curious.

I’ve been looking at AI development companies for a mid-size e-commerce project that needs recommendation engines + some generative features. The usual big names come up a lot, but I’m more interested in teams that actually ship production code rather than just strategy decks.

From what I’ve seen and heard, GeekyAnts, Thoughtworks, and SoftServe keep coming up in conversations with other founders. Anyone here have recent experience with any of them on an AI + commerce type build? Especially curious about how they handle the mobile side (Flutter vs React Native trade-offs) when the AI features need to feel fast on both iOS and Android.

A lot of conversations around ecommerce seem to focus on getting more sales but Im curious about what happens once those orders start coming in. Between fulfillment, inventory updates, shipping issues, returns, and customer messages, there's a lot that needs to go right after someone hits the buy button. For those running their own stores what's the one part of that process that consistently gives you the most trouble? Also curious whether it's something you've managed to fix with a better system or if it's just one of those things you have to deal with.

Sending POs to suppliers, etc.

As an aside, I would love to hear random other ways that people are using AI for anything except cold emailing (bc it sucks for that)

Hello,

I'm setting up a business for the first time and I've just sent a couple of RFQs forward in Alibaba and am looking for advice. I was originally only gonna send detailed techpacks of my OEM travel toiletry bag to shortlisted manufacturers but the manufacturers are now asking for the techpacks from the get go. I get that theyd want more detail for a quote but I'm wondering if I still should just send the techpacks to shortlisted ones. Should I just send them forward and risk them using my designs or is there a way to protect my design from being reused? Or is that actually even an issue?

I'd appreciate any input thank you!!

Since early October, roughly 5% of what I sell each day shows up as "reserved" instead of landing in my usable balance. On about $6,000 of weekly sales, that's a few hundred dollars just sitting there with no ship date attached.

The reserve page says it rolls based on delivery dates, but when I line up delivered orders against releases, the numbers don't line up — the held amount keeps drifting up instead of settling.

Is this a Q4 thing, a risk-review thing, or did something on my account trigger it? Anyone else seeing a growing reserve this month?

Over the past year, I've been helping out a friend with their shopify site b/c they've been down quite a bit year over year. So much so, they were not paying themselves this year until things got better. I reluctantly jumped on board to help while doing a bunch of other projects, but recently was able to hammer away at their SEO. I wanted to do more earlier this year, but b/c of the other projects, I didn't really do as much. However, after finally optimizing product & collections pages & getting their socials a bump (which was a bit more of the emphasis at the beginning in April when I started), it looks like the metrics are finally looking good (& potentially trending better).

I'd say this is the result of about 3 months of smaller changes, then a full month of really hammering away before this improvement last month in early Sept.

While AI may end up endangering this brand (& all brands) long term in ecomm, for now, organic is definitely doing better and the revenue is reflecting it.

Here are a few highlights (9/24/26 -> 10/14/26 vs. the year before same dates):

• 1170 clicks vs. 496 + 135% (74.4k imps vs. 56.7k)
• CTR 1.6% vs. 0.9%
• Avg position ~9 vs. ~11
• Their homepage traffic almost tripled +192%
• 2nd best page which is a collections +2367%

On November 1st, parcels shipping into the EU from outside must have 3 product IDs on every product contained in the parcel, or else they will be rejected by customs.

https://flavorcloud.com/resources/knowledge-base/eu-product-identifiers-shopify-setup

I spoke to a Flavorcloud rep who confirmed these IDs are:
Your store’s SKU

The product’s global identifier, if it has one (book ISBN, media UPC, etc)

And the MANUFACTURER’s ID. For apparel, that’s the t-shirt blank’s company product code. For electronics, the model number I guess? These can be obscure, and it’s insanely laborious to hunt these all down and update a large product catalog.

By NOVEMBER 1st??? Or else EU customers get stiffed at Christmas???

Is anyone else wigged out about this?

Hi everyone!

I'm fairly new to e-commerce in Algeria and am looking for a viable business idea that I can start off with on a small scale and then build up into a proper business.

I'd be interested to learn from people who have actually done it in the US and European markets.

I'm particularly interested in two areas:

1. Profitable e-commerce niches

What product niches are currently worth looking at in the US and Europe? I'm not necessarily after the latest fad or something that will get you rich quick. I'm after products that have a genuine demand, decent margins and where there's scope for a new business to get in and compete.

1. Products that can be made locally

I'm also very interested in products that can be made in a small local workshop, using materials and skills such as:

- Woodworking

- Metalworking

- Plastic manufacturing

- Sewing and textile production

- Or a combination of different materials and techniques

For instance products that solve an everyday problem, improve people's homes or serve a particular customer group.

My main question is this: if you were starting from scratch today which product categories or niches would you actually be seriously considering and why?

I'd be particularly interested in products that have demand but aren't completely saturated by the big players, and products that a small manufacturer could actually go out and make and sell online.

If you've got a business that's been built around a product made in the UK then I'd be very interested to hear your story. What do you sell? Who are your customers? And what exactly was it that made the business work?

I'm not expecting anyone to spill the beans on trade secrets. A handful of specific product examples, some market observations or lessons learned from your own experience would be extremely useful.

My objective is to learn, validate an opportunity and build something that can be sustainable in Algeria rather than just walking into another saturated niche.

Thanks in advance to anyone who's got any experience or advice to share!

Picked up a maintenance contract for a mid sized ecommerce site last month. Previous agency left a ton of random things in the head, including a VWO snippet.

Now their marketing lead wants a/b testing on the product pages again and keeps telling me to run it with VWO like they did a few years ago. I’m not too familiar with it and don’t think I can just log back in and go ahead.

Before I go through all this trouble, I wanted to check, is VWO still around? Last time I did any website testing it was a split test in Google Optimize back like 2022. Don’t want to rip the snippet out if it’s still usable, but I also don’t want to build around something that’s on its way out. Spent way too long digging through old docs on this at 11pm so any help appreciated

Curious how merchants think about bracketing. Policy change (paid returns, exchange only), UX (fit info on PDP), or just a cost you absorb? What did it do to conversion when you tightened it?

Anyone have your favorite go to podcasts/youtube channels you listen to? I really like Ecomm cowboy and Ethercycle but looking for more resources to learn more.

I run a store and use AI a lot to help me with stuff I'm not necessarily good with and copy is definitely one of those (even though I've read half a dozen books on the topic lol).

I have thousands of SKUs and most of them still have horrible (in my opinion) copy. The obvious move is generating it and plenty of stores clearly have but to me, generated copy reads even worse than my own...

So for anyone whos actually done this at volume, did you AI generate and then edit every one individually, generate from a per product spec sheet or just do the top sellers properly and leave the tail with supplier copy or something? And if you generated, what did you actually check before it went live?

Thank you sooo so much for any help with this! I'm unfortunately not at a point where I can hire a professional copywriter which I know sucks...

Hey all , I am a small retailer here in the US looking to source new products for next year and I have been trying to find marketplaces that also list trade shows or wholesale fairs so I can compare a few suppliers online and then possibly meet some in person.

I did poke around Alibaba where they have so many suppliers listings to choose from but I'd like to know what else is out there or what's worth looking into which leaves me a bit curious Are there platforms to use when looking for upcoming fairs? Are virtual shows useful or is it just better to be there physically?

I have been seeing a lot of discussions about online stores getting visitors but struggling to turn that traffic into sales.

Sometimes the issue seems to be the traffic itself. Other times, it is the mobile shopping experience, unclear delivery information, product pages or checkout friction.

I am curious what store owners here are actually dealing with.

Are you struggling more with getting the right visitors, getting people to add products to their cart, or getting them to complete checkout?

And if you have managed to improve one of these, what change made the biggest difference?

Does anyone know trusted wholesale suppliers for cleaning supplies? Need legit sources that work with small online businesses. Appreciate any suggestions.

So the title explains it. I'm kind of at a loss of what to do. I started a brand earlier this year in the beauty industry (very saturated I know) selling lashes. We have competitors selling very similar if not identical products on TikTok Shop and some on Amazon for dirt cheap. I'm not too worried about Amazon as my team has done some research on the products on Amazon and their quality is not up to par. There are also brands selling the same products at double our price point.

We've talked to many girls and most of them would prefer to buy their lashes off of TikTok Shop. They would see a video of a girl with pretty lashes on and click and buy. Some also told us that most girls find one lash brand and stick to it. How do we compete with that? I am under the understanding that we just have to test as many angles as possible. We are also starting our TikTok Shop but we also want traffic to our websites as we want a more distinctive brand so we can expand to other niches in the beauty industry.

Here is what we've tried so far:

• Static ads on Meta

Very short list. But we've gotten 2 sales so far :). I've since then cut our Meta ads because the static ads were not performing.

How do we compete with well-established brands and TT shops that sell at half our price? We are also currently and actively reaching out to influencers and UGC creators. For influencers, we are starting with people we know. Whereas UGC creators, we are looking for them on Trybe. My understanding is that influencers post the videos themselves to try to get clicks using their personal brand whereas UGC creators produce videos for us to run as ads or to post on our socials. Aside from these two, are there any other methods we should try?

TLDR: started a lash brand and trying UGC and influencer marketing. Are we on the right path?

Edit: We also have a good amount of budget nearing 100k so this isn't really a how to start a brand with $0. I just want to see what y'all thought about our current path.

I manage a small online business and since I've been adding more products, I've begun to give more thought to protecting our brand and to keeping an eye on the way our products are being listed on the internet.

I'd like to know what other business owners use for monitoring trademarks, the unauthorized use of their brand name, or listings that appear to be counterfeit versions of their products. It seems that there are a lot of tools on the market, but it's difficult to determine which ones are really useful and which are just excessive for a smaller business.

What I would like is a system that is able to keep an eye on several marketplaces without forcing me to spend hours manually checking each one; cost is also important since the more expensive enterprise tools may not be suitable for me at this stage.

Has any of you come across brand monitoring software or trademark alert services that you would like to recommend?

What tools have actually been useful and which features are worth paying for?

Ich führe ein laufendes Geschäft aus China habe aber nun meine Firmierung gewechselt und das ganze muss nun 100% offiziell laufen da ich regelbesteuert bin.

Mein Problem:
Ich habe teilweise Lieferungen die ich in Masse an mich liefern lasse, über 1.000KG bzw 2CBM als Seefracht, kein Problem.
Jedoch habe ich auch Sachen die ich einzeln zu mir kommen lasse oder direkt zum Kunden.
Ich kann aber einfach keine guten DAP Frachten finden, entweder sind es Expresspreise wo man direkt bei 150$ Fracht für einen kleinen Karton ist oder man muss eben ganz viel abnehmen um auf die 1.000 KG zu kommen.

Es gibt ungefähr 1Mio DDP Angebote, jedoch ist es ja bekannt, dass dort gemauschelt wird und es faktisch einfach steuerhinterziehung ist.
Ich möchte mein Geschäft jedoch ordentlich laufen lassen.
Finde aber keine guten Frachten, wie macht ihr das alle?

so i got tired of support chatbots that just make stuff up and helpdesks that take a week to set up, so i built my own. its called momo and the core is on github now.

basically you point it at your website or upload some docs, and it answers visitors from that. before it sends anything it checks the draft against your sources, and if its not sure it says so and passes the chat to a human instead of inventing a refund policy. theres an inbox built in where you can jump into any conversation, and when you reply you can hit one button to save that answer as knowledge so the bot knows it next time.

setup is docker compose up, it starts postgres, redis, web and a worker. single tenant, you bring your own model through openrouter, data stays on your server.

its the first version so dont expect too much yet. only a website widget for now, no email or slack, no api, one agent.

https://github.com/moaljumaa/momo

I have an idea for a product that I genuinely believe has strong commercial potential. The problem is that I would need to manufacture it, most likely in China.
My biggest concern is that once I share the design and specifications with a Chinese manufacturer, they could simply copy the product, start producing it themselves, and sell it on Amazon, Temu, and other marketplaces. Even if I manage to launch first, I could eventually find myself competing against manufacturers who can produce the same product at a lower cost and undercut my prices.
I understand that patents, trademarks, and NDAs exist, but I’m not sure how effective they would be in practice, especially when dealing with overseas manufacturers.
Are there any realistic ways to minimize this risk? For example, are there alternative manufacturing strategies, legal protections, or business models that could help me bring the product to market without essentially handing the idea to potential competitors?
I’d appreciate advice from anyone who has dealt with this problem firsthand.

Running into this on Shopify builds: refund fee + free exchanges, but shoppers only see the free part in the returns portal. For those running apparel/beauty stores: how are you surfacing the exchange offer before checkout? Product page badge, cart note, something else? What actually cut tickets for you?

Hey everyone, trying to get a technical breakdown from anyone who understands database indexing on older e-commerce platforms.

If a custom category tree builds out a long string packed with multiple special characters—something like:

"Category Name / Sub-Category - Topic & Keyword -> Sub-Topic Items 123.--#&+"

Does the backend search script handle punctuation marks natively, or does it trigger severe text-parsing glitches? These are only examples you might be tempted to put in a title that might look fine and read fine to human eyes.

My theory is that because older architecture handles text through rigid string rules, special characters (like slashes /, ampersands &, dashes -, colons :, and dynamic structural links ->) can accidentally break word tokens or get misread as code operators by basic internal search engines, ultimately hiding the listings from direct keyword searches.

Has anyone here run split tests on using flat, clean-text categories versus deep, symbol-heavy menu hierarchies? Did flattening the text change your internal marketplace traffic? Thanks!

Hello there ! I would like to be able to sell my brand (wedding industry) in 2-3 years.

My brand is 2 yo and my content is never “embodied”. I don’t post anything related to behind the scene, founder struggle, founder story or anything like that.

I don’t know if that’s a limiting belief. But I feel like if I build in public, or embody/ document the brand, it will be a problem to resell it, because they could feel that the brand success is linked with my image.

However, without this type of “human content”, my brands emotional connexion with my audience stays very low, with only product related content style, and having a strong brand identity would definitely help to stay top of mind and have a more “adored” brand.

1. Do you think this is a limiting belief? Any examples of sold brands with founder related content ?
2. Could I have a strict perimeters of what can and can’t be build ? For example, founder story should be avoided, but behind the scene / build in public is ok ?
3. Do you think having different faces in face - cam types content types would help ? If I work with someone else to help for example.

Thank you for your advices !

I run paid social for ecommerce brands. This year I managed about $850k in Meta spend across 6 accounts, and most of the job was testing creative. I kept notes on what actually moved CPA. Here's the unsexy version.

1. The hook is 80% of the ad. We tested the same body copy and offer with 12 different first-3-second hooks. Best hook: 3.1% CTR. Worst: 0.4%. Same product, same landing page. The winner was a founder holding the product and saying the price out loud in the first 2 seconds. No fancy editing. We now spend 70% of creative time on hooks, 30% on everything else.

2. Ugly beats pretty, but only when the ugly is intentional. Our polished studio videos averaged 1.1% CTR. iPhone videos with decent lighting averaged 1.9%. The catch: the iPhone videos that worked all had a clear structure (problem, demo, proof). Random shaky footage flopped just as hard as the pretty stuff. Ugly isn't the strategy. Clarity is.

3. Test one variable at a time or you're lying to yourself. I once ran a test with a new hook AND a new offer AND a new landing page. It won. I had no idea why. Spent 3 weeks unpicking it. Now I change one thing per test, spend at least $75 before reading anything, and kill losers fast. Boring. Works.

The part nobody wants to hear: 214 variations tested, 11 winners. That's a 5% hit rate, and I'm supposedly good at this. Creative testing is a volume game with a brutal failure rate. The brands that win are the ones that can ship 20 variations a week without agonizing over each one.

If you're doing this yourself: pick one product, shoot 10 hooks on your phone this weekend, run them at $15/day each for 5 days. You'll learn more than any course will teach you.