How to get Support from the Community

[Shopify]

The Shopify Community is a great place to find support from a large range of people such as Shopify Advisors, Shopify Partners, Experts, and as well as other merchants. Here are a few tips you should consider when submitting a new topic to this discussion board.

Firstly, please avoid jumping on older threads, you will find support much faster by starting a brand new thread especially since a lot of these older threads are not actively monitored.

If you feel that your issue is the same as the issue described in an older thread, feel free to reference this older thread in your new topic if you feel it will be of use. 

Subject:

Does your topic have a descriptive subject/title? We would advise against the use of generic subjects such as ‘I need help’ opting to provide more detail instead such as “My Online Store Has Become Inaccessible”.

Please be mindful when using ALL CAPS as well, while we understand the urgency you may feel when it comes to your issue, titles in ALL CAPS can be off-putting to Community members. 

Body:

When it comes to asking a question in the community, the more context that you provide, the better. The more context provided in your initial post the more the Community has to work with and the fewer follow-up questions are needed, cutting down on the time between you posting your question and getting your solution.

Always provide a link to your online store and sufficient detail as to what it is you would like help with. For example, if you are having an issue processing the payment for an order, or refunding an order an essential piece of context here would be the payment gateway that you are using. 

When you are experiencing an issue with your Shopify account which you require assistance with please provide the following information in your initial post so that we can get a better picture of what is going in:

1. A link to your Shopify store and when applicable, the affected page, product, collection, etc. 
2. When did the issue first appear?
3. A detailed description of the issue. 
4. Screenshots/screen recordings of the issue. 
5. Have you made any changes to the store recently, i.e. have you added any new apps or changed your theme in any way? 
6. Are you able to replicate the issue on another browser and/or device? 

Different topics will require different pieces of context. For example, if you are having issues with a theme on your store it would be strongly advised that you provide us with the name of the theme, the version of that theme that is installed, and a link to the affected page to begin with. My colleague, Ty, goes through the specifics of this in a brilliant design based Help Us Help You post.

As for requesting feedback on your store, you should include who your target audience is, what you believe your niche is, and a very brief synopsis of your business’ history so far. We would also recommend taking a look at this post which goes through everything you should consider prior to making your store live and spending money on advertising before looking for feedback from the Community. 

Follow Up:

After submitting a new topic follow-up with anyone who responds - if multiple people are replying to your topic consider using the Quote feature so your topic is easier to follow.

To do this, click Reply on the post you'd like to respond to by clicking Quote which will insert their reply into your response which makes it easier to follow a lengthy or complex topic.

Should you resolve the issue make sure you accepted the reply that helped as a Solution by clicking Accept as Solution.

If you were able to resolve the issue on your own consider replying with what steps you took to resolve the issue followed by marking your reply as the Solution.

Marking your reply as a solution to let the community know your topic was resolved and allows others who may encounter the same or similar issue to review your topic and see what resolved the issue.

Note:  For time-sensitive and/or account issues please contact support directly for assistance as forum threads can go unchecked and account details cannot be discussed in a public format such as the Community. To do so, go to this page and click Contact Support.

You will then be prompted to either login or continue without a store. Once you have selected an option you will be asked to ask about a topic. Search for your query and relevant help docs will populate as well as the option to proceed to live chat or email. You can also reach our Support team @ShopifySupport on Twitter or through Messenger on Facebook here. 

[PaulNewton]

Remember many problems have previous answers findable by sometimes literally just  using the title of your post, or the description in the search box. Or at last similar problems you can link to to give the community more context for your problem.

The forums can be an incredibly valuable tool in solving valuable problems.

Getting the most out of it and getting responses can be drastically improved by doing the following:

• Think about how you word the problem to other people as if they do not know what you know. Don't make others dig.

• Try to state your goal as soon as possible to avoid the XY-problem https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem/66378#66378 

• Makes sure they can see what you see. If the problem is complex provide reproduction steps.
• With themes always include the theme name, and storefront password, optionally link to the developers theme documentation or demo website.
• Link to specific things, if your having a product issue in a theme link to that product not just the homepage.

• If there is lots of code formatting using the 'Insert/Edit code sample' can significantly increase the chances someone will spend time on it.

• If you find similar problems but whose solutions don't quite fit link to them, people give more help to help those that show their work.

• For technical issues try to link to the relevant shopify help or development docs.
• If you have error codes provide them in text/formatted-code-blocks

Things to avoid:

• Avoid using ONLY screenshots, if there is text in the screenshot copy the words out to real text.
• Avoid attaching zip files or proprietary file formats; such as adding a zip, PDF or a powerpoint of a series of images. Don't make others dig
• Long unformatted walls of text or code, having to scanning hundreds of lines of random code makes a post get ignored.
• Asking legal advice.

Advanced If you find yourself stuck or not able to get responses consider reading advanced methods on solving problems to improve your problem statements and overall process for getting solutions.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html 

[PaulNewton]

@smithli With questions try and find the relevant forum so those with that specific knowledge are more likely to see the question.

The payment methods a merchant can accept may depend on the country where the business is registered. https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments 

For more see, search and post to the payments forum https://community.shopify.com/c/payments-shipping-and/bd-p/payments-shipping-fulfilment