The Friction Report: e-commerce

Problems in e-Commerce Ripe for SaaS Builders

Hello founders,

Welcome to the first edition of our monthly market research report for micro-SaaS builders. The idea behind this series is to find friction. Little, persistent problems that make peoples lives a little bit harder. The kind of problem where many users would not think twice about paying a small sum for a neat product that eradicates the hassle for good.

To start the series off, we'll be sharing our findings from analysing thousands of reddit posts about e-commerce platforms from the last three months.

A hard sell

Running an online store may appear straightforward. The seller lists some products, a customer clicks buy, and a few days later, a much anticipated parcel arrives at their doorstep. Behind this sequence lies a heavy, hard-working infrastructure of payment processing, inventory tracking, tax calculation, and more. What appears to the buyer as a simple click is, in practice, a coordinated exchange of distributed systems, financial networks, regulatory compliance, and logistical partners.

Modern stores rely on platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce to handle these mechanics, massively lowering the barrier to entry for new entrepreneurs looking to jump on the e-Commerce bandwagon. Yet these platforms often falter when real-world variables enter the equation.

Supporting Data

"[Amazon] numbers are moving very slow on our side and some campaigns are not updating at all."
"Seems shopify stopped tracking live sessions but Microsoft clarity shows live users and orders are coming in... shopify is down for all my websites."
"Is your Shopify acting odd??? ... Sessions not loading, the data can be off, email confirmations taking longer ect."
"When I enter in wp-login, first time spent 8s, then I move to order page, spend like 4-5 seconds... query speed is 0.3 seconds [but] the slowest part is the request."
"Seller Central is working incredibly slowly and buggily for me for the last 2 days... The page keeps dying and every action needs a few minutes to work."
"It’s stuck in a loop where it claims to activate but actually doesn’t... WooCommerce menu doesn’t appear in the sidebar."
"My whole site went down last week when Woo updated (even though auto-updates are off)... I find it rare to see WooCommerce websites with fully functional, aesthetically pleasing interfaces that include a complete, integrated system."
"A lot of growing WooCommerce stores reach a point where things start feeling… fragile. Too many plugins, slow performance, updates breaking stuff."

1. Lost in Translation

A major source of headache in recent months has arisen from the digital storefront and the search engine 'speaking different languages'. One is trying to sell a product; the other is trying to index a database. When these systems stop communicating, the merchant pays the price in wasted ad spend and lower quality insights.

If one size is in stock, the software tells Google the entire product line is available. Google shows ads for every version. Customers click a specific size, find it out of stock, and bounce.

The merchant pays for the click, but loses the sale.

Supporting Data

"I noticed some stores appear in AI shopping results, but my WooCommerce products don't show up... I tweak the product description... break it down using headers... This is easier for LLMs to parse."
"Changing WooCommerce images to larger sizes can crop them in Google Ads if aspect ratios aren’t consistent."
"Variable products don't have corresponsing 'schema' ... Google crawls the page and sees WooCommerce’s schema saying 'InStock', and overrides the feed resulting in out-of-stock variations getting shown as 'in stock' ... basically driving paid traffic to out-of-stock products."
"ASINs do not behave like normal keywords. Adding an ASIN as a negative keyword will not reliably stop your ad from showing on that product."
"Out of hundreds of SKUs, only a small percentage actually show up in Shopping results. The rest are approved but basically invisible."
"Shopify products are showing up on Google search and images, but not on the Google Shopping tab? I don't see any problems with my products within Google Merchant Center."
"I'd be worried that you don't have good structured data in your theme... specifically there for the search engines and other tools. GMC checks it vs what it got from the feed."
"Way coupons are displayed in search results is changing... pale pink with a checkbox to 'clip' ... They seem less visible. We used to favor coupons over sale pricing but may rethink that."
"Most [feed] plugins tend to fall short. Most aren’t built to: Optimise titles... enrich product data... manage category logic... people end up with a working feed, but still spend hours tweaking product data manually."

Market Gap 1

Native WooCommerce and most plugins do not reliably output per-variant schema that stops Google from displaying ads for unavailable variants while the main variant is still in stock, resulting in wasted ad spend on clicks leading to dead ends.

Market Gap 2

Similarly, ad platforms struggle to respect out-of-stock items generally. No simple, dedicated, clean solution exists that pauses ad spend for a product when stock reaches a lower limit.

Market Gap 3

No plug-and-play solution exists that automatically ensures Google Merchant Center respects individual variation availability without manual coding or feed tweaks, leaving merchants to handle persistent mismatches.

2. 404, Customer Not Found

Shopify has a problem where valid addresses for apartments or specific streets are overridden, assuming its own database is more accurate than the customer. This confident incorrectness results in packages being returned to the sender and unnecessary fees. While large-scale shipping managers exist for larger operations, the native tools remain a source of friction and expensive mishaps for small businesses.

Supporting Data

"I am looking for good shipping aggregators... my website has almost triple the cost of our competitors."
"Embarrassing checkout bugs... promo codes not working right, shipping calculator breaking like always found out from customer complaints... payment button wasn't working on safari mobile."
"Unfortunately one or more items in your cart can't be shipped to your location. Please choose a different delivery address."
"My only complaint is that Shiprocket takes over local pickup or anything else once the customer enters the pin code."
"My experience [with ShipStation] was marred by glitches. Similarly, Shippo was ruled out due to reports of poor customer service."
"I'm looking for a solution for... automatic 4x6 label printing... Priority labels should print to 'Zebra Printer 2' ... ShipStation [doesn't] support automatic label printing."
"We had to take our whole site down while waiting for a response and we're losing thousands waiting on them... international shipping subtracting from payment on international pre-orders."
"Nearly every stock management plugin I find utilizes value replacement instead of adjustment...moving fast, so I'm looking for ones that adjusts."
"Pirateship to Etsy integrations were disabled... as of this afternoon none of my Etsy orders are loading... Who knows how long it will last, but I will use it until they force me out."
"Etsy CHARGES SALES TAX on their shipping labels, here in NY that is EIGHT PERCENT, is why I will never buy shipping on Etsy."

Market Gap

No simple tool prevents Shopify Shipping from confidently overriding original customer addresses during label creation, especially for apartments and non-standard streets, forcing small merchants into manual reviews or returns.

A practical solution would preserve the original address, and Shopify's overridden address, and flag any major discrepancies for the seller to review before the order ships.

3. All at Sea

Returns are always going to be the most disorganised part of the cycle. When a merchant sells on Shopify, Amazon, and eBay all at once, a return at the warehouse rarely matches the financial records across all three sites. This occurs because the physical item being returned is tagged with a marketplace-specific identifier than does not communicate with the central accounting system.

Supporting Data

"Reconciling Amazon transactions is a nightmare normally, but for an UK seller on USA it seems even worse. The transaction report and settlement reports bare little resemblance to the VAT invoices."
"[Courier] gone MIA, no order pick ups, no customer service, nothing... [Driver reports] after the new years they suddenly shut down operations."
"I’m mainly trying to understand: – If you’ve had this [unsuitable inventory investigation violation] before, did it resolve without further action? ... Amazon said within 90 days they'll dispose the inventory... but i sold out months ago."
"Every few days, all my products disappear from the product page... Not just for me, but for all my customers as well... usually fixed by saving hyperlinks and clearing the cache."
"Re-saving the permalinks worked... None of these now work. However, if I go to woocommerce >> settings >> products >> change the Shop page to My Account >> Save - this now oddly shows the shop page."
"Create account page, logging in page, and return page are not loading and just showing blank... you have to disable Rocket-Loader and Zaraz."

Market Gap

No dedicated solution applies fuzzy matching to probabilistically link a returned Amazon item to its Shopify ledger despite naming mismatches. Targets mid-sized shops (10-50 employees) handling 10-20% return rates on multi-platform sales, who lose hours weekly to manual adjustments.

4. Death and Taxes

Correct taxation is becoming a technical hurdle. In the US, a supplement might be taxable in one state but considered a tax-exempt grocery in another. Standard e-commerce tax systems struggle to toggle these classifications based on the delivery address, introducing legal risk.

Supporting Data

"Looking for a solution for finance/logistics... integrate an ERP... EU based. So lots of VAT regions... making sure all sales related updates (sale, return, pre-order, shipment, etc) are pushed from shopify to an accounting tool. Current setup there is not reliable."
"I’m having a hard time finding which tool would be best... my food is considered to be a supplement in some states and a food in others. Because of the way Shopify tax works, it won't allow me to change the classification of the item based on which state we are talking about."
"Shopify's tax filing fee is an absolute dark pattern... I had no idea I'm paying almost as much in their fee as I am in taxes, I'm a small time business I would have never signed up for this."
"Disputifier situation should be a wake-up call for anyone using a chargeback tool that stores your API keys... token leak or exposed tokens... stores got mass refunded automatically."
"Shipping flat rate is billed without tax... only 5,79 shipping is added [instead of 6,95] ... ran throught the store api. Apparently 'Pay via Link' can produce this problem."
"Uneasy about relying on fully automated chargeback tools... I would rather loose a bunch of time then get a bunch of unauthorized refunds... safety first I guess."

Market Gap

Specialised plugins for Complex Goods are scarce, forcing merchants to risk non-compliance or hire experts for custom rules. The market is e-commerce sellers of supplements, CBD, and similar borderline products, who face high legal stakes and would pay for automated peace of mind.

5. Counting Chickens

Wholesale management is tethered to manual file uploads. Sellers managing hundreds of bulk accounts find that a single error in a CSV file can ruin pricing for dozens of clients.

Supporting Data

"When I create attribute for sizes... it also displays as additional information and I cannot hide it... I literally searched every possible solution but nothing seems to work."
"Connect the stock of products on the same website... if i sell one then the other product goes done 1 too... tried it with a code of chatgpt but thats not working good with variations different colors."
"Nearly every stock management plugin I find utilizes value replacement instead of adjustment... they require you do the math first, instead of let you input +743 and have the code perform the addition."
"I’m looking for a good free plugin... that allows different prices based on user roles... retail price for regular users [and] B2B prices for specific user roles."
"Recommendations on a plugin... to bulk edit variations... product with 500 variations... it would have 50 pages to scroll through... it's a ton of clicking around!"
"Wholesale accounts with custom pricing and SKUs. CSV workflows are slow, error-prone, and a single mistake can affect dozens of accounts."
"Managing 4k SKUs is a nightmare... organize shopify product images manually is killing my team. We waste hours renaming files and matching variants. dragging into bulk edit works for small batches, but with 4k skus i need to actually see the files side-by-side."
"Allows me to upload products just to the wholesale part and not the DTC site (is that even possible) ... trying SparkLayer and seeing these limitations."
"Allows me to have wholesale orders sent to a specific email while retail orders are sent to the email listed on Shopify... would love to not have to route wholesale notifications, approvals, orders through Flow."

Market Gap

No seamless, usable logic-based cataloging exists to replace uploads with persistent rules like "Wholesale Group A: MSRP minus 20%," applied automatically. The audience is high-volume wholesale sellers managing hundreds of client accounts on platforms such as Shopify Plus, who lose hours weekly to file errors and re-processing.

That's all for now.

The data from these interactions suggests that the next generation of e-commerce success will not be defined by who has the most features, but by who has the most reliable data flow.

Sellers are exhausted by workarounds and fragile connections between their storefronts, warehouses, and tax authorities. For developers, each point of friction identified in this report represents a underserved highly niche market waiting for a specialised solution.

If you found these insights useful, subscribe to The Friction Report to receive our March analysis directly in your inbox.

– the userNebula team

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