Community

Pinned

Rainers Leitarts Verified 4 days ago General
Pinned

Welcome to the eComCademy community: start here

This is the place to ask, share and swap notes with other people who run online stores, or help them run.

A few things that make it work:
- Pick the category that fits: a question, a win, a request for feedback, a resource. If none does, General is fine. Add a tag or two for what it is about, so the next person can fi…

Read more
- #welcome
2 points 3 comments Share

Latest

Einars Melderis 14 hours ago General

Share the prompt you reuse most

The one you keep in a note and paste in every week: for product descriptions, emails to suppliers, ad copy, summing up reviews, anything.

Paste it below with a line on what it is for. Take out anything private first.
2 points 2 comments Share
Einars Melderis 15 hours ago Questions

Has anyone put an AI chatbot on their store's support?

Following on from my support question: has anyone here let an AI answer customers directly, on chat or by email?

What does it handle on its own, when does it hand over to a person, and did customers notice or mind? I would also like to hear from anyone who tried it and switched it off again.
2 points 2 comments Share
Einars Melderis 16 hours ago Resources

Set up Google Merchant Center even if you never run Shopping ads

Products in Merchant Center can show in the Shopping tab and other Google surfaces for free, without spending anything on ads. Shopify and WooCommerce both have an official Google app or extension that sends the product feed for you.

Worth half an hour, and it shows you which products have problems with their data (mi…

Read more
2 points 1 comment Share
Rainers Leitarts Verified 16 hours ago General

AI crawlers, your hosting bill and AI search: new webinar on 15 October

Automated requests are now more than half of all web traffic, and online shops are among the most heavily crawled sites there are. The bots costing you bandwidth are also the ones deciding whether an AI answer mentions you. Blocking all of them cuts the hosting bill and takes you out of AI search in the same move.

Our…

Read more
1 point 2 comments Share
Einars Melderis 18 hours ago General

Which ecommerce newsletters or podcasts do you actually read?

Not the ones you subscribed to and archive every week. The ones you open the moment they arrive.

Trying to cut my list down to a few good ones.
2 points 1 comment Share
Einars Melderis 20 hours ago Questions

How do you handle customer support as a small team?

Email, chat, Instagram messages, the occasional phone call. When there are two or three of you, who answers what, and how fast do you promise to reply?

Do you use a helpdesk tool, or is a shared inbox enough at the start?
- #customer support
- #tools
2 points 3 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 21 hours ago Wins

Show us an AI workflow that stuck

Not one you tried once. One you are still using a month later, because it works.

What does it do, which tools does it use, and roughly how much time or money does it save? The plain ones are the most useful to read: a sheet that fills itself in, a draft reply waiting in the inbox every morning, a weekly summary of wha…

Read more
1 point 1 comment Share
Einars Melderis 23 hours ago Introductions

Hi, I am Einars

Joined today. Mostly here to learn how other people run their stores day to day, and to ask a lot of questions.

If you have a question about something I have touched, I will answer what I can.
- #hello
2 points 1 comment Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 1 day ago Resources

Before you publish AI-written product descriptions, check these

A first draft from AI takes seconds. These are the checks that take a few minutes and keep it from costing you later:

- Every fact. Materials, dimensions, compatibility, care instructions. Where the input has a gap, a model fills it with something plausible, and a wrong size comes back as a return.
- Claims you may no…

Read more
1 point 2 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 1 day ago Feedback wanted

Post your store, get honest feedback

Reply with a link to your store or a product page, and the one thing you want people to look at: photos, pricing, the product text, shipping, checkout.

Everyone who posts a link, give feedback on at least one other store in the thread. Be kind, and be specific: "the delivery price only appears at checkout" helps; "loo…

Read more
- #store review
- #feedback
2 points 1 comment Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 1 day ago Questions

Shopify, WooCommerce or something else: what does your store run on?

And knowing what you know now, would you choose it again?

Asking because so many questions come down to the platform in the end: what an app costs, what you can change in checkout, how hard a migration would be. It helps to know who is on what.
2 points 3 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 1 day ago General

What do you not let AI do in your business?

Everyone draws the line somewhere. For some it is anything a customer reads before a person has checked it. For others it is prices, refunds, or anything that makes a claim about the product: what it is made of, what size it is, what it is safe for.

Where is your line, and did something happen that made you draw it th…

Read more
1 point 3 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 1 day ago Resources

Free recording: From Chat to Agents, on AI and agentic workflows

Most teams still use AI as a chat window: ask, copy, paste, fix. In this 33-minute session Mārcis shows what it takes to go further. You give the AI the context, constraints and tools it needs, then run it as a set of agents that plan, implement, test and review each other's work.

It covers project context, keeping se…

Read more
1 point 1 comment Share
Rainers Leitarts Verified 2 days ago Resources

Connecting your store to everything else: Zapier, Make and n8n

Most AI workflows in a store are automation workflows with one AI step in the middle. A new order, review or support email comes in, a model drafts a reply or sorts it, and the result lands in a sheet, a helpdesk or a chat channel.

Three tools do most of that plumbing, and all three connect to Shopify and WooCommerce:…

Read more
1 point 2 comments Share
Rainers Leitarts Verified 2 days ago Questions

Where has AI actually saved you time in your store?

Not in the demo, in the daily work. Product descriptions, replies to customers, sorting reviews, ad variations, cleaning up a product feed, translating the store into a second language.

Which tasks have you handed over to AI for good, and which did you try and take back? A rough idea of the time it saves helps, and so…

Read more
1 point 2 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 2 days ago Resources

Checkout research worth reading before you redesign

Baymard Institute keeps a running average of documented cart abandonment rates, around 70%, together with the reasons shoppers give for leaving. Extra costs shown too late and being forced to create an account are near the top every year: baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

Worth reading before you change anything…

Read more
2 points 2 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 2 days ago General

Q4 is close: what are you doing differently this year?

Black Friday is eight weeks away. Every year there is something we wish we had started in September instead of November: stock, ad creative, email list, a checkout fix that did not make it in time.

What is on your list this year, and what did last year teach you?
1 point 3 comments Share
Valdis Strautins Verified 3 days ago Wins

Share a small win from this week

Not every win is a record month. A product page that finally converts, a supplier who agreed to better terms, a customer email that turned a complaint into a review.

Reply with one thing that went right for you this week, however small.
- #weekly thread
2 points 0 comments Share
Rainers Leitarts Verified 3 days ago Resources

Free tools worth bookmarking for speed and SEO

Three free tools from Google that answer most "why is my store not showing up / so slow" questions:

PageSpeed Insights shows how fast your pages load for real visitors, phone and desktop separately: pagespeed.web.dev

Search Console shows which searches you appear for, which pages Google has indexed, and what is broke…

Read more
1 point 2 comments Share
Rainers Leitarts Verified 3 days ago Questions

How do you pick your free shipping threshold?

The rule of thumb is to set it somewhere above your average order value, so people add one more item to reach it. But shipping costs have gone up for most of us, and the right number for a store selling €15 items is not the same as for one selling €150 ones.

How did you set yours? Have you ever moved it, and what happ…

Read more
1 point 4 comments Share

Show older posts

We value your privacy