What's the one Shopify pain that makes you want to scream?

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1

I’m a Shopify dev looking to build a small tool that actually solves a real problem (not another generic app).

Before I build anything, I want to hear from you:

  1. What’s something in your Shopify workflow that eats way too much time every week?
  2. What’s a problem you’ve tried to solve with existing apps but they all fall short?
  3. If you could wave a magic wand and fix ONE thing about running your store, what would it be?

Bonus points if you share how much time/money it currently costs you.

I’ll read every reply. Thanks! :folded_hands:

2

Hey @khoinguyen1220

I think your question is a bit too general to get truly actionable answers.

You’ll get better results if you narrow it down to a specific category or niche first, then ask about problems within that context. That makes it much easier for people to relate and actually respond with something concrete.

But hey, good luck either way :+1:

3

Shopify rolled out a change that removes saved order views from the main screen and hides it behind an extra click. Now, instead of accessing directly, you have to click the arrow on the left of the search bar and then select the saved view.

ignores how people actually use the system. If you’re working through a list of 20 orders or more a day, every time you open one and then go back, the saved view isn’t there anymore. You have to repeat the same two clicks to get back to where you were. Multiply that across dozens of orders and it adds a lot of unnecessary friction. i.e. 20 orders mean 20 more clicks for the person picking. Then if another person is packing, that’s another 20 clicks. 40 clicks,

design decision made in isolation— without properly considering day-to-day workflows- did you hire a grad? how much white space do you need for a search bar???

4

Agree with @Nemanja_Janjic that the question is broad. Two specific merchant pains I keep running into that nobody has nailed generically:

Shipping rate debugging at checkout. When dimensions round oddly, a discount stacks with a shipping threshold, or a carrier updates their API, merchants get tickets like “your checkout says $0 shipping” or “yours shows $87 but Amazon shows $12”. There’s no clean way to replay one exact cart state against carrier rates. Support eats hours per week trying to reproduce.

Partial returns on multi-item orders with a discount code applied at checkout. Refund math goes sideways when a customer returns 2 of 5 items and the order had a 10%-off or BOGO. Merchants end up over or under-refunding and it shows up in chargebacks a month later.

Both live in categories that already have apps (shipping, returns) but the apps work one layer up. The last-mile edge cases are what leak. Not magic-wand level, more the quiet weekly grind.

What vertical are you thinking? Changes the answer a lot.

5

Good question @khoinguyen1220 and agree with lumine that niche matters a lot for the answer. Here’s one that I’ve seen consistently across merchant conversations and it sits right at the intersection of “no good app exists” and “costs real money every week”:

AI visibility and product data quality - merchants can’t see how their store looks to AI shopping engines

With Shopify Agentic Storefronts now live, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity can recommend and sell products from any Shopify store. Merchants are paying for Google Ads, running TikTok campaigns, building email lists - but their biggest emerging traffic source (AI recommendations) is completely invisible to them.

The specific pain: there’s no native tool that tells a merchant:

  • Which of my products is ChatGPT actually aware of and recommending?
    • What information gaps make AI skip my products (missing ingredients, no size chart, thin descriptions)?
      • Is my schema structured correctly for AI to parse?
        • How do I compare to competitors in AI recommendations?
      • Merchants who ask about this in communities don’t even have language for it yet. They say “why doesn’t my store show up when I ask ChatGPT for recommendations?” The Shopify admin has zero information about this.
    • The apps that exist either focus on traditional SEO (different problem) or make vague “AI optimization” promises without showing merchants what’s actually happening. What merchants actually want is a clear readiness score: here are the 5 gaps in your product data that make AI skip you, here’s how to fix them.
  • Time cost: merchants who care about this are spending 3-5 hours a week manually testing their products in different AI tools and guessing at what to fix. Cost of getting it wrong: invisible to a channel that will only grow.
6

When a simple change across a lot of products turns into a whole project. Updating prices, tags, variants, collections, whatever it is, should be quick, but it’s easy to lose way more time than expected just making routine fixes. That backend busywork adds up fast.