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?

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...

I currently operate a specialized e-commerce business selling equipment within a relatively small industry.
I’m considering leasing approximately 2,400 sq. ft. of office/warehouse space and potentially launching a second, unrelated online retail business to help offset the overhead.

I already have experience with inventory management, online sales, shipping, customer service, and product sourcing.

I’d prefer physical products I can stock, photograph, and ship myself.

Ideally, I’m looking for a niche with:
*Reasonable margins
*Consistent year-round demand
*Manageable shipping costs
*Opportunities to source wholesale or used inventory
*Less direct competition from Amazon and big-box retailers

For those running successful niche e-commerce businesses, what categories would you investigate today? Are there any underserved markets or product types worth researching?

Not asking anyone to reveal their secret product — just looking for ideas and perspectives from people already doing this.

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?

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.

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

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%

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?

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?