For fast-moving e-commerce businesses, a slow or messy feedback process directly impacts your bottom line. Vague bug reports and endless email chains between marketing, content, and development teams delay crucial fixes and optimizations.
This guide outlines how to use Marker.io to create a seamless feedback loop for the two most critical environments of any e-commerce store: the staging (pre-launch) environment and the live (production) environment. You will learn to capture, triage, and resolve issues faster, leading to a more collaborative, efficient, and profitable operation.
Use Case 1: Pre-Launch Quality Assurance on Staging
The goal is to gather as much feedback as possible from your internal team on your staging site before you go live. This helps you catch issues before they affect customers.
Best For: Internal teams (developers, QA, marketing) who need a fast, frictionless way to give feedback.
Recommended Setup: The Visible Widget.
How to Set It Up
Install the Snippet: Place the Marker.io JavaScript snippet inside the
<head>section of your staging website.Set Widget Visibility: In your widget settings, ensure the Button visibility is set to Visible for everyone.
How It Works
With this setup, a feedback button is always visible to your team on every page of the staging site. Anyone you invite can click it to instantly report bugs or suggest improvements without requiring special instructions.
Use Case 2: Controlled Feedback on Your Live Store
The goal is to capture critical bugs on your live website without disrupting the experience for your regular customers.
Best For: Internal teams, trusted partners, or beta testers who need to report issues on the live site.
Recommended Setup: Invisible Widget, Activated by a Secret URL.
How to Set It Up
Install the Snippet: Place the Marker.io JavaScript snippet inside the
<head>section of your live website.Set Widget Visibility: In your widget settings, select the option When secret URL parameter is added.
Define Your Secret URL: You can use the default parameters (
?bugor?feedback) or define your own custom one (e.g.,?report).Save your settings.
How It Works
The feedback widget remains completely hidden from all of your customers. When a team member spots an issue, they simply add the secret parameter to the end of the URL.
Before:
https://your-store.com/products/After:
https://your-store.com/products/?report
This action makes the feedback button appear only for them, allowing them to submit a detailed report immediately without interrupting any customers.
For even more detail on how to use Marker.io on your live website, check out this detailed guide.
The Marker.io Workflow
Whether on staging or live, a powerful feedback process relies on capturing rich context. This is where Marker.io eliminates the guesswork for your developers.
Step 1: Capture Deep Context with Every Report
A bug report is useless if your developers can't reproduce it. Marker.io automatically includes the context they need.
See the Past with Session Replay Every report automatically includes a video-like recording of the reporter's last 60+ seconds. Developers can see every click, scroll, and URL change that led to the issue, making reproduction trivial. Learn more about session replay here.
Capture Full Environment Data Automatically: Stop asking your reporters "What browser are you using?" or asking for screenshots of the developer console. Marker.io automatically captures a complete technical snapshot with every report.
This complete technical snapshot gives your developers everything they need to investigate and resolve issues faster, without ever having to ask for more info.
Capture Business Intelligence with Custom Metadata Is a bug only affecting VIP customers? Or does it only happen when a specific promo code is used? Pass this crucial business data from your store directly into every report. Learn more about custom metadata here.
Here is an example of key e-commerce data:
This custom data is automatically attached to every ticket, giving your team instant business context.
Step 2: Triage & Manage with Clear Roles (Members vs. Guests)
Instead of sending every typo to your development team, use Marker.io as your central command center.
Guests (e.g., Marketing, Content Editors, External Partners): Guests can only report issues. They see a simple form and can only track the status of their own reports. This is perfect for non-technical team members.
Members (e.g., Developers, PMs, QA Leads): Members are your core team. They can see and manage all feedback submitted to the project. Most importantly, they have access to the deep technical data (session replay, console logs, network requests, custom metadata) needed to triage and validate issues.
Feature | Guests (e.g., Marketing) | Members (e.g., Dev Team) |
Reporting | ✅ Can report issues | ✅ Can report issues |
View All Feedback | ❌ Only sees their own reports | ✅ Sees all project feedback |
Technical Data | ❌ Cannot view logs/metadata | ✅ Full access to all data |
Manage Issues | ❌ Cannot assign or change status | ✅ Can triage and manage |
Step 3: Escalate Perfect Tickets to Your Developers
Current Process
If you connect a Marker.io project to an integration like Jira, Asana, or Linear, all feedback is sent directly to that tool. Your team then manages and triages reports from within your project management software. Every ticket automatically includes the annotated screenshot and all technical data, enabling a faster fix.
Coming Soon: Triage Directly in Marker.io
We are working on a powerful new feature that allows you to review and approve feedback inside Marker.io before sending it to your developers.
The new workflow will be:
Review in Marker.io: A project manager reviews new reports and watches session replays to confirm they are valid bugs.
Push Perfect Tickets: With one click, send only vetted issues to your developers' integration.
Developers Get Everything: The ticket automatically includes the annotated screenshot, and all technical data, enabling a faster fix.
This ensures your development team only receives high-quality, actionable bug reports.
Help Us Build This Feature!
You can vote for this upcoming feature to be kept up-to-date on our progress.
Vote here: Review & Triage Feedback in Marker.io
Advanced Workflows for Proactive Quality Assurance
The best teams move from a reactive to a proactive approach to website quality.
Run "Feedback Sprints" & "Site Sweeps": Before a major sales event like Black Friday, task your marketing and QA teams with a full "Site Sweep" of the entire sales funnel using Marker.io. This helps you catch issues before they can cost you sales.
Empower Your Customer Support Team: When a customer reports a bug, your support agent can try to reproduce it. Once they do, they can use the Secret URL (
?report) on the live site to submit a perfect ticket on behalf of the customer, complete with a session replay of their own reproduction steps. This turns vague customer complaints into actionable developer tickets.
Ready to Build a Better E-commerce Store?
Streamline your website feedback and bug reporting to create the best possible shopping experience. Choose the path that's right for you:
Start Your Free Trial: The best way to see the impact is to try it yourself. Start a completely free 15-day trial—no credit card required. Get started at: app.marker.io
Book a Personalized Demo: Want a guided tour? Schedule a demo with our team to see how Marker.io can be tailored to your workflow and answer all your questions.
Have a Quick Question? Our team is here to help. Just click the chat icon on the bottom right of any page to get started.