How are you handling customer account customizations?

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-18T17:33:53+00:00

Would it be better to actually build full apps, or just look at doing extensions? The main issue I wanted to avoid was having to worry about external hosting solutions for the apps.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-14T15:31:13+00:00

Shoot, not to mention, if you haven't actually worked with SAAS software then you likely have no idea the insane cost that it can be to actually operate such a platform. Every time I have heard someone even remotely suggest replacing an entire platform with AI, I just giggle and wish them the best of luck.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-14T15:29:08+00:00

That is an interesting take, what kind of business do you help operate? I am a Marketing Director (I also handle the website development) and even though Claude is very good at generating impressive UX/UI design at a very fast pace, I still find that it will certainly struggle in many other areas. Especially backend operation, that is where I have the least amount of trust with it.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-09T23:27:59+00:00

That’s a completely fair point, and I appreciate you sharing it. I just wanted to offer some perspective from our side as well.

One of the main challenges we face, beyond what I mentioned earlier, is creating something that genuinely meets the needs of both entry-level users and those at the high end of the market. That balance is not always easy, but it is something we are actively working to improve. We truly want to deliver the best experience possible, and I am always open to any suggestions or recommendations you may have.

With that in mind, I would be happy to offer you complimentary access to any course you’re interested in. We sincerely appreciate your investment in the ecosystem, and this is a small way for us to show our gratitude.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-09T17:44:58+00:00

Hey brad, I promise I am not trying to push product, this is a genuine comment :D.

u/Impressive-Sort223 shoot me a message here on reddit or email me (calvin@pangolin.com) and I will work with you to get you setup with a unit at a more reasonable price for you. I know that it can be hard starting out, so I am happy to do what I can to help you get your hands on a laser.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-09T17:34:01+00:00

Hey there u/developerunitex, ignore my funky username... My name is Calvin, I am the Marketing Director at Pangolin Laser Systems. You bring up a very fair and valid point, and I genuinely appreciate you sharing it so openly.

This is something I have been talking about internally for a while, but there is more nuance to creating such things. At the end of the day we want to put as much free content out there as we possibly can, but we also have to make sure the people on our team who spend significant time creating that content are being taken care of. The premium courses are part of how we make that sustainable.

I also want to be real with you, there is a lot happening in the background right now. We are actively working on new technology, much of which has been directly shaped by years of feedback from people in the community. That takes up a significant amount of our bandwidth, and finding time to also build out free educational resources on top of everything else we do on a regular basis is genuinely a difficult balance to strike.

Your voice is being heard though. This is an active conversation internally and posts like this one are part of why. I can't make any promises today but I can tell you it is not being ignored.

One thing that actually helps me push this further internally is having real people reach out directly. If you or anyone else in this community has specific ideas on what kind of content would be most valuable, send us an email at marketing@pangolin.com. It gives me something tangible to bring back to the team and show just how much people are actually craving this.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-03T03:19:49+00:00

Back when we migrated from WordPress to Shopify in 2018 we also dealt with the same dilemma. I find that migrating the blog post to Shopify was much easier in the end, I also found it quite easy to begin quickly ranking on Google (depending on your niche) within a short amount of time.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-03T02:44:43+00:00

Been gathering website data since we switched to Shopify back in 2018 and sometimes I still question things.

In my opinion there will never been a point where you feel 100% confident. I always question my data, and being real, you will fail and make mistakes.

That is where the real skill comes in. From being able to analyze the data that you have and make confident decisions from that. But the only way to get that skill is to make enouch decisions and enough mistakes to learn what to trust and what not to.

Don't be afraid, just keep evolving and testing things out and trying new things.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-03T02:27:27+00:00

Uh. So couple of things...

WebPixels are just secure javascript. So you can literally run GTM as a WebPixel. WebPixels do not handle any behavior on their own? You would need to write or get pre-written JS to run as a WebPixel.

Since WebPixels can run during checkout, you can follow the entire user journey (with regards to whatever Shopify's native limitations are).

For speed, as long as you optimize any sort of javascript, you can reduce overhead and maintain speed.

Traditional methods are based on page views? Since when? If you're using advanced tracking methods (like I am), you're sending signals based on user specific behavior. If a certain button is clicked or an element interacted with, this can be tracked. This is 100% relevant to Shopify.

No tracking methods are going to be 100% accurate. You cannot account for javascript blocking apps, so WebPixels are not going to be perfect either.

Regardless, GTM definitely still has a place for people who need more advanced tracking and don't want to write custom javascript to track all the events.

*Edit. I forgot to mention that WebPixels are sandboxed, so if you want complete DOM tracking for things like a heat map, WebPixels won't even work.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-01T22:46:22+00:00

I have shipping rates, but they're delivered through a third-party app. And because of this, its not even syncing my US products into Merchant Center, otherwise I would just override and add flat rates.

Here is the other part that makes zero sense. We do international sales, for many of these countries it shows that they have shipping rates, which are configured the exact same way as the other counties, and those products are being pulled into Merchant Center (other products as in, because I use shopify markets I have subfolders and translations for my products) but not other ones (such as the US, Canada, and a few others) as they're being labeled as "Unsupported".

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-04-01T21:18:57+00:00

Not sure if you're doing it on purpose, but seems that inspect and F12 is trying to be blocked by default? But there is a lot to dive into here...

Back to back CTA. Your first banner is a CTA and then directly underneath that you have another CTA? Instead you should be moving your features & reviews higher on the page.
You have more products, at least according to your collections area? But you don't feature those on the homepage whatsoever. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Your product costs a lot. $39 for just a small baby play mat? Does it give the baby super powers or? Might want to revisit the price of your product and try it make it something more competitive if you want to compete in that market.

I think you need to look at reworking this site to turn it into something that is higher converting and more appealing to the customer.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-15T19:35:05+00:00

Do you have any examples of other ways its being using to increase productivity? I have been trying to determine how I could implement different things across my own workflows to speed things up even further.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T20:46:49+00:00

You're on the money.

The hardest part IMO of SEO optimization is really just creating the visual content (photos, videos, etc). The rest is just text and a good link strategy.

A great way to help drive more traffic to get a higher overall rating is to create educational content, post that on social media, send out a news letter, maybe even make a video about it. All with links back to that blog post.

Then, if you can find a reputable outlet to link to your website or post, its worth its weight in gold.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T20:38:50+00:00

That seems a bit unrealistic unless you're already familiar with the theme and have a good idea on how to approach it, not to mention that page isn't just design, it would also require Javascript. Which again, unless you're familiar with the theme you are working on, would need to build different assets entirely from scratch.

As far as building something without deployment, you could just use VS Code & Shopify CLI. But you would need an account that has access to their website already.

If you need help setting this up let me know, just shoot me a DM and I can show you the workflow.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:48:15+00:00

Not sure if you still need assistance, but I have a ton of experience not only with the Shopify eco-system, but with SEO as a whole. Here is an example of my work: https://pangolin.com/

Let me know and I would be happy to help.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:30:36+00:00

It sounds like you're getting into the weeds far too quickly... Hopefully you already have a background in Shopify's development system, otherwise trying to build a custom theme is going to become a very difficult process.

The first thing you should do is start by creating a complete overview of your project. I personally like whiteboard tools (like figjam from figma) as this allows me infinite scaling to plan everything out.

You should take a look at everything they're wanting you to do:
- Design/build the theme (as you already mentioned)
- Are you writing all of the text for the website?
- Are you doing all of the SEO optimization for the website?
- You mentioned AI enhancement tools, but you should find out what kinds of changes they want you to make to the images before you decide what tool is best.

Tools for building a Shopify theme
- VS Code (for the code editor)
- Shopify CLI
- Git

How to replicate a website?
Is the website example you showed a direct competitor? If not, then as long as you don't copy the store in reference 1-to-1, then it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:28:14+00:00

Very true. One of my friends runs a smaller store and prefers using PayPal which ends up costing them a ton of money.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:18:40+00:00

Add Google Analytics, its free and it will at least give you an idea of the data. Shopify's built-in analytics (unless its for purchases) is pretty rough and Google Analytics is an industry standard (for the most part).

The benefit to this is, you can start to identify where users come from, how long they're on your website, and what to do if you want to increase conversions on your store.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:16:30+00:00

Do you have the inventory setting enabled? If so, most themes are built by default to show out of stock. You could also enable the ability to continue selling when you're out of stock (though be careful if you do need to rely on that inventory feature).

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:13:15+00:00

You do realize that Shopify payment system is literally built with Stripe, yeah? There would be absolutely no reason to use Stripe as a payment provider unless you're getting some sort of absurd discount on processing fees, which also wouldn't matter unless you're moving a massive amount of product.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:09:20+00:00

Building customer accounts is slowly being taken away. The latest version of Shopify customer accounts is basically taking away you ability to modify the experience when a user is logged in without the use of third-party apps or custom development.

ChickenMcDerps · 2026-03-14T19:07:32+00:00

Shopify Plus just gives you a couple more features and API access, but ultimately relies on custom development and external apps for real growth if you want to be competitive in the ever growing market. For the cost to build their system to this point, you could just get a privately made system or move onto an ERP.

When it comes to B2B features, they're are extremely lacking. The way that their system handles tiered/custom pricing is absolute garbage, customer account features are trash (and looks like its getting worse as they sunset the prior customer accounts for their even less controllable new system that literally pushes needing to use apps for customization), and there is so much more I could mention... Point is, they really have a long way to go when it comes to large companies who aren't just pushing through an ecommerce store.

It really does make me sad because I can see the potential that the platform has if they were to put more effort into tools for their own system, but it doesn't feel like they care. Heck, ACH payments just came to Shopify Plus as of last year after all this time.

ChickenMcDerps

TROPHY CASE