The Shopify Guy has been fixing the same handful of store problems since 2012. Here is the list.

A store audit almost never turns up something exotic. It turns up the same five or six problems, in a different order, on a different theme.

Updated August 18, 20268 min read

Jon Yeazel, who built an audience under the handle @the.shopify.guy, has worked on Shopify brands since 2012, long enough to have audited stores through several full cycles of ecommerce design trends. What stands out about his content is not a secret tactic. It is the opposite: the same handful of problems keep showing up in nearly every store he looks at, regardless of category, price point or theme.

That is worth taking seriously precisely because it is boring. A recurring problem across thousands of stores is not a coincidence. It is a signal that most brands are optimizing the parts of their store that feel important and skipping the parts that actually move conversion.

The recurring problems, in the order they usually get fixed

Problem	Why it keeps happening	The fix
Product photography that looks like inventory, not a product	Founders shoot photos to document the item, not to sell it	Shoot for the scroll: lifestyle context, scale reference, and at least one image answering the question a customer is actually asking
A homepage that explains the brand instead of selling the bestseller	Founders assume a visitor needs the whole story before they will buy	Lead with the product that already converts. The story earns its place after the sale, not before it
Branding that is consistent in the logo file and nowhere else	A brand kit gets built once and never audited against the live site	Walk the actual site, not the brand guidelines document, and fix what does not match
A checkout flow with unnecessary friction	Default theme settings get shipped without a second look	Remove every field, click and redirect that is not strictly required to complete the purchase

None of these require a redesign. They require someone to actually look at the store the way a first-time visitor does, which is harder for a founder to do on their own store than it sounds.

The photography point is worth dwelling on

A product photo’s job is not to show what the item looks like. A description already does that. Its job is to answer the specific hesitation stopping someone from clicking Add to Cart, and most stores never diagnose what that hesitation actually is.

This is the single most repeated theme in his content: brands under-invest in photography relative to how much of the conversion decision it actually carries, and over-invest in copy relative to how little of it a scrolling visitor actually reads. A visitor decides whether to keep looking within the first two or three images. Everything below that is read by the people who were already going to buy.

A self-audit you can run this week

1Open your bestseller’s PDP on your phone, on cellular data, as a stranger would. Note the first thing that makes you hesitate. That is the thing to fix first.
2Count how many of your product images answer a real customer question, scale, in-use, material detail, versus how many just show the item on a white background from a slightly different angle.
3Walk your homepage and ask whether a first-time visitor can find your bestseller in one click. If the answer is no, the homepage is optimized for the story, not the sale.
4Time your own checkout flow with a stopwatch. Every step that adds friction without adding trust is a step worth removing.

Questions founders ask

Who is the.shopify.guy?

The.shopify.guy is Jon Yeazel, an ecommerce consultant and content creator who has worked on Shopify brands since 2012, sharing store optimization, branding and product photography guidance.

What is the most common problem Jon Yeazel flags in store audits?

Product photography that documents an item rather than selling it is one of the most frequently repeated issues, since most stores under-invest in imagery relative to how much of the buying decision it actually influences.

Should a homepage lead with a brand story or a bestselling product?

For most stores, leading with the bestseller converts better, since a first-time visitor typically needs to see and want the product before they are receptive to the brand’s story.

How can I audit my own Shopify store for these issues?

Open your bestseller’s product page as a first-time visitor would, count how many images answer a real customer question versus simply showing the item, and time your own checkout flow for unnecessary friction.