Browsers request /favicon.ico on every page load, declared or not. One missing icon can become the largest source of 404s in your logs, burying the real broken links.
A discount that will not apply is usually one of five settings: the code's active dates, the usage limit, the minimum purchase, the customer eligibility, or the product eligibility.
When two apps inject scripts into the same checkout step, the symptoms are flaky: a button that works sometimes, a discount that applies on alternate orders. Isolate by disabling one app at a time.
A declined card shows the customer one message and your gateway log another. The decline codes tell you whether it is the card, the bank, or your settings.
Test mode is a switch on the gateway, not on the store, and a store left in test mode takes orders nobody can pay for. The stuck order is the symptom. The switch is the cause.
Theme changes do not delete your redirects, because redirects do not live in the theme. They live in Navigation, and the 404s after a launch usually come from changed URLs, not lost redirects.
A theme update does not merge your edits. It replaces the theme files with the new version, and every snippet, CSS tweak, and Liquid change you made directly in the theme code goes with the old version.
If your custom checkout code stopped working, it did not break. Shopify removed the thing it ran on. Checkout.liquid is deprecated, and the replacements do not run the same code in the same places.
Shopify discount combinations follow explicit rules: one code per class can combine unless combinations are switched off. Most stacking complaints trace to a setting, not a bug.
When picking a variant updates neither price nor image, the break is usually JavaScript: a theme event that stopped firing, an app intercepting clicks, or variant data missing from the page.
Size chart modals fail in the same handful of ways on phones: clipped tables, dead close buttons, focus that escapes, and a link that opens nothing because a script waited on the wrong event.
Shoppers browse in one currency and meet another at checkout when Markets settings, a currency app, and checkout currency are not aligned. The fix is alignment plus an honest message before payment.
Native Shopify search matches prefixes, not synonyms or true stemming, so boots can miss where boot hits. You cannot retrain it, but you can stop the zero results page from ending the visit.
Deleting products without redirects orphans every link, bookmark, and search result pointing at them. A pre deletion redirect map turns a cleanup from a traffic loss into a tidy consolidation.
Duplicated a theme and now every report shows two title tags per page. The extra title usually lives in a copied snippet or a leftover app block. How to find and remove it safely.
The item adds, the drawer opens, but the count badge still says zero until refresh. That is a section rendering mismatch: the AJAX response updated the drawer HTML but not the badge, or the other way round.
When selecting a variant changes nothing, the cause is usually a theme script error, a missing price element hook, or an app conflict. The diagnostic order that finds it fastest.
Contact form notifications in spam are usually authentication and address problems, not content problems. Sender setup, SPF and DMARC, and the reply to trap to check first.
Missing from Google almost never means penalized. It means canonicalized, noindexed, or never submitted. The check order that finds the real cause in an afternoon.
New customer accounts do not use passwords, so a missing login email is not a password problem. Settings, spam filtering, and app conflicts, checked in order.
A customer with a code that fails at checkout is a sale about to walk away. The expiry, minimum, product, and stacking rules that quietly reject valid looking codes.
Search that returns nothing, will not open, or ignores new products usually has a simple cause. A step by step fix list from settings to theme code and apps.
The announcement bar is set up but invisible on the storefront. The usual culprits: theme settings, app conflicts, and the dismissal cookie that hides it from you but not your customers.
Contact form submissions that never arrive are usually a notification or spam-filter problem, not a broken form. The five places to check, in order, and the fix for each.
You uploaded a favicon but the browser tab still shows the default icon. The four usual causes, from aggressive caching to hardcoded theme links, and the fix for each.
The search bar shows on desktop but vanishes on mobile, and customers cannot find products. The theme settings, header layouts, and app conflicts that hide it, and how to bring it back.
Abandoned checkout emails recover real revenue, so when they stop sending it hurts twice. The settings, consent rules, and timing issues that silently pause them, and the checklist that gets them flowing again.
Blurry product images are usually a theme serving the wrong image size, not a bad photo. The srcset, crop, and upload mistakes that soften product photos and how to fix each one.
Shoppers who search convert at multiples of browsers, so a dead search box is a revenue leak. The typo tolerance, synonym gaps, and app conflicts behind empty results.
Discount codes fail for a short list of configuration reasons: schedules, usage limits, eligibility, product conditions, and combination rules. How to diagnose the failure in order.
Usually muted-autoplay policy, a theme that never renders video on mobile, or a file that is too heavy. The symptom-first checklist that finds the cause.
Storefront Fix Guide blog
Troubleshooting notes for common Shopify storefront problems.