Five Major Bottlenecks in E-commerce Platform Operations and Breakthrough Strategies

Traffic dividends have peaked, profit margins are narrowing, and platform rules are tightening—in 2026, e-commerce operations are going through a collective pain of shifting from “extensive growth” to “refined cultivation.” Data shows that more than 30% of merchants are operating at a loss, while another 30% are struggling on the edge of thin profit, with profits of only 0–5%. Yet the other side of a bottleneck is opportunity. The following breaks down the most common dilemmas in current e-commerce operations across five dimensions—traffic, conversion, repurchase, compliance, and team—and offers actionable solutions.

Bottleneck 1: Traffic Costs Keep Soaring — “No Orders Without Paid Traffic; Stop Spending and Orders Fall Off a Cliff”

The essence of the problem: Traffic dependency has escalated from a tactical problem to a structural risk. 47.68% of merchants say traffic costs are too high, and 44.37% are trapped in a vicious cycle of “no traffic without burning money, and sales falling off a cliff when ad spending stops.” More severely, after the wave of returns, many merchants’ actual ROI may be only 0.8—for every 1 yuan spent, only 0.8 yuan is recovered.

Breakthrough strategy: Turn “buying traffic” into “raising traffic”

First, refined operation of search traffic. For small and medium-sized merchants, paid traffic is not the only way out. Search traffic actually offers the highest input-output ratio. The specific operation can be divided into three steps: keep up with trending topics to optimize product titles and embed high-search-volume keywords to capture free trend traffic; frequently publish short video clips to show product materials and price advantages, publishing more than 10 per day and actively replying to comment-section questions; configure “search-after-view” keywords to guide users directly from seeding to the livestreaming room or store to complete conversion.

Second, link advertising with organic traffic. Do not “place ads and leave.” Instead, use advertising data to reverse-optimize organic search rankings. Place ads by cycle, observe which keywords bring high-quality organic traffic, and then incorporate those words into titles and detail pages to gradually increase the share of organic traffic.

Third, continuously accumulate content assets. Short videos, livestreaming clips, and user-generated content are long-term free traffic sources. Merchants are advised to systematically archive materials from daily operations and build a content material library, so that every piece of content becomes a reusable traffic entry point.

Bottleneck 2: Conversion Rate Won’t Rise — “Clicks Double but Conversion Is Difficult”

The essence of the problem: Traffic has been bought, but the conversion rate is low, which means the money spent has no effect. A more hidden trap is that although AI tools have greatly increased material production capacity, the broad traffic generated in batches lacks precision. Proya’s data shows that the conversion rate of AI mixed-cut videos is only 67.3% of manual videos, with ROI barely matching manual work. Internally, it is positioned as a “volume-supplement tool.”

Breakthrough strategy: Patch the “holes” in the conversion funnel one by one

First, the “4-second rule” of detail pages. Within 4 seconds of opening a detail page, users must be answered three questions: What is this? What use is it to me? Why buy now? It is recommended to place a scenario pain-point image and a one-sentence solution on the first screen, rather than a product image and brand story. Tests by some merchants show that after changing the first screen to a scenario image, the bounce rate dropped from 68% to 42%.

Second, a three-step cart-abandonment follow-up. One hour after adding to cart, send a dynamic message with a sense of urgency in a customer service tone; 24 hours after adding to cart, push a limited-time full-reduction coupon; 72 hours after adding to cart, send a screenshot of real user reviews. After a clothing store implemented this process, the cart-to-payment rate increased from 12% to 31%.

Third, upgrade AI customer service from “answering questions” to “driving transactions.” In 2026, AI customer service is no longer just an after-sales response tool. JD’s “Jingxiaozhi,” together with benchmark merchants in various categories, relies on large models and multi-agent collaboration capabilities to help merchants improve transaction efficiency and reduce order loss during traffic peaks. Merchants should configure script strategies around high-frequency scenarios such as size recommendation, parameter interpretation, and matching suggestions, and reposition AI customer service as a “pre-sales shopping guide engine.”

Bottleneck 3: Low Repurchase Rate — “New Customers Come and Go; Old Customers Won’t Stay”

The essence of the problem: In the era of stock competition, repurchase rate determines a store’s long-term profitability more than new customer acquisition. However, many merchants put all their energy into acquiring new customers and ignore the deep operation of existing users. For fast-moving consumer goods brands, membership repurchase sales can account for 65%, while small and medium-sized merchants that rely only on public-domain traffic often have a repurchase rate of less than 10%.

Breakthrough strategy: Build a dual-drive model of “public-domain screening + private-domain nurturing”

First, use group chats as a low-cost repurchase tool. Douyin e-commerce data shows that the repurchase rate of group members can increase 2 times, the probability of traffic recommendation exposure for group members increases by more than 90%, and the number of likes on video works increases by more than 20%. Key operational points: for high-repurchase categories (beauty, food, parent-child), build “hidden welfare groups” and increase activity through new-product tastings, member prices, and exclusive coupons; for high-decision categories (home, jewelry), build “pre-sales and after-sales groups” and use purchase knowledge summaries and targeted consultation to promote transactions.

Second, use package insert cards for cross-platform private-domain traffic. For merchants operating on multiple platforms, differentiated dynamic QR codes can be configured on package insert cards from different channels. Taobao orders use Taobao-version package cards, Douyin orders use livestreaming-version cards. When customers scan the code to add WeCom, the system automatically records the source tag, and subsequently pushes differentiated membership benefits and repurchase coupons based on the tag.

Third, let AI participate in membership operations. Shoplazza Technology’s Loyalty & Push intelligent membership system can combine store operations and user behavior to automatically generate and continuously optimize repurchase marketing strategies. When anomalies are detected, it proactively alerts and completes strategy adjustments with one click, upgrading AI from executing marketing activities to continuously optimizing user operations.

Bottleneck 4: Platform Rules Are Tightening, and Compliance Costs Are Rising

The essence of the problem: In 2026, platform economy regulation has entered a new stage of refinement and systematization. The State Administration for Market Regulation made it clear that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period it will promote the addition of proportional fines, suspension of relevant business, and other penalty types; formulate and implement the Negative List for Online Trading Platform Rules; and deploy special actions such as governance of the livestreaming e-commerce industry and standardized governance of second-hand e-commerce platforms. For merchants, the old extensive playbook of “get running first and figure it out later” is no longer viable.

Breakthrough strategy: Turn compliance from a “cost item” into “competitiveness”

First, establish a normalized compliance self-inspection mechanism. Focus on high-frequency risk points such as product information control, consumer safety protection, and promotion transparency. Platform compliance uation guidelines are about to be issued; merchants that conduct self-inspections against the standards in advance will gain a first-mover advantage.

Second, make good use of compliance tools provided by platforms. Taobao Tmall, JD.com, and other platforms have successively launched merchant compliance diagnostic tools that can automatically identify problems such as prohibited words in product titles and non-compliant price labeling. It is recommended to run them once a month and correct issues in a timely manner.

Third, turn compliance capability into a brand trust asset. 80.13% of merchants hope to obtain official platform certification and traffic support to enhance brand trust. Proactively display information such as authenticity guarantees, after-sales commitments, and environmental certifications, and turn compliance investment into brand value that consumers can perceive.

Bottleneck 5: Team Instability — “Operations Talent Won’t Stay, and Experience Leaves with Them”

The essence of the problem: Talent mobility in the e-commerce industry is far higher than in traditional industries. According to the China E-commerce Human Resource Management White Paper, annual employee turnover at small and medium-sized e-commerce enterprises exceeds 30%, and turnover in core positions reaches as high as 45%. More troublesome is that product selection intuition and ad placement experience often leave with the person, frequently causing breaks in team execution.

Breakthrough strategy: Use AI to turn experience into sedimented digital assets

First, build an AI operations assistant to accumulate team experience. Zixun’s LinkFox AI uses the MCP architecture as its foundation, connecting more than 30 mainstream data tools and covering major platforms such as Amazon and Walmart. Sellers only need to issue one instruction, and AI automatically breaks down the task, captures data, and completes the analysis, shortening new product research that originally took 2–3 days to 10 minutes. For small and medium-sized teams, AI is not about having fewer people, but about enabling each person to release more value.

Second, establish standardized operational SOPs. Document the operating processes of core links such as product selection, listing, ad placement, and customer service, and use AI tools to achieve quantitative management of “task coverage, autonomous completion rate, and result closed-loop rate.” New employees can get started quickly after onboarding, reducing dependence on a few core members.

Third, configure AI tools for the team as “new employees.” JD’s 14 “Jingmai” AI tools are all free and open, and new merchants can use them free for up to 1 year. Taobao Factory’s “Spark” 3.0 system provides merchants with a free intelligent working model of “1 AI store manager + N agent assistants,” helping solve the problem of uneven regional distribution of operations talent. Merchants are advised to introduce them gradually in the order of “customer service first, then materials, then paid traffic.” After each tool is introduced, observe data changes for two weeks, and only expand to the next scenario after confirming effectiveness.

Differentiated Action Checklist: Priorities for Merchants at Different Stages

New merchants (0–6 months): Solve the problem of “surviving”

• Prioritize product selection and positioning and search traffic acquisition, and use AI tools to reduce trial-and-error costs.

• Start using AI customer service to first solve response efficiency.

• Do not rush into paid traffic; first use organic traffic to verify whether the product can work.

Growing merchants (6–18 months): Solve the problem of “getting running”

• Focus on optimizing the conversion funnel and customer service efficiency to raise the conversion rate of existing traffic.

• Begin building group chats and a membership system to accumulate the first batch of high-repurchase users.

• Introduce AI material tools to increase content capacity, but be careful to control the proportion of “volume-supplement tools.”

Mature merchants (18+ months): Solve the problem of “running far”

• Deeply operate private-domain repurchases, and increase average order value through membership layering and refined outreach.

• Embed AI tools across the entire chain and establish a quantifiable, iterative AI operations maturity system.

• Pay attention to compliance developments, establish a compliance self-inspection mechanism in advance, and turn compliance into a brand barrier.

Conclusion

Bottlenecks in e-commerce operations are essentially an inevitable pain in the transition from “dividend-driven” to “capability-driven.” Traffic is expensive, but there is still room for refined search operations; conversion is difficult, but AI tools’ cost reduction and efficiency improvement have just begun; rules are stricter, but compliance capability is becoming a new competitive barrier; people are hard to retain, but experience can be sedimented into digital assets with AI. Bottlenecks will not disappear on their own, but behind every bottleneck lies an operational action that can be systematically solved. Doing the actions solidly is more reliable than waiting for the next trend.