Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, I watched a client obsess over whether every heading on their site should start with a verb. Two weeks. While competitors launched new features and captured market share, this team was stuck in grammatical paralysis.
This wasn't an isolated incident. After building dozens of landing pages for SaaS and ecommerce businesses, I've seen this pattern repeatedly: teams focusing on the wrong priorities while their conversion rates stagnate. They follow every "best practice" guide about homepage hierarchy, yet their visitors bounce faster than a bad check.
Here's what I discovered: most businesses treat their homepage like a digital brochure when it should be treated as a marketing laboratory. The most effective homepage hierarchies aren't built from industry templates—they're built from understanding your specific users and ruthlessly testing what actually works.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional homepage hierarchy advice fails in practice
How I restructured a 1000+ product catalog site to double conversions
The counterintuitive approach that outperformed every "best practice"
A framework for testing homepage hierarchies that actually converts
When to break conventional rules (and when to follow them)
Your homepage isn't just your digital front door—it's your most valuable piece of real estate. Let's make sure it's working as hard as you are. Check out our complete website optimization playbooks for more strategies that challenge conventional wisdom.
Industry Reality
What every marketer has already heard
Walk into any marketing meeting, and you'll hear the same homepage hierarchy gospel preached like universal truth. The formula is so standardized that most websites look like they were built from the same template.
The Traditional Homepage Hierarchy Everyone Follows:
Hero Section: Compelling headline, subheadline, and call-to-action above the fold
Social Proof: Customer logos, testimonials, or trust badges
Features/Benefits: Three-column grid explaining what you do
How It Works: Step-by-step process breakdown
More Testimonials: Customer success stories and reviews
Pricing/CTA: Final push to convert
This conventional wisdom exists for good reason. It follows the marketing funnel logic: awareness → interest → consideration → action. User experience research supports having clear value propositions above the fold. Conversion rate optimization studies show social proof increases trust.
Every agency sells this template. Every course teaches this structure. Every "successful" homepage case study follows this formula. It's become the safe choice—the path that won't get you fired because "everyone does it this way."
But here's the problem: when everyone follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. Your beautifully crafted hero section looks identical to your competitor's. Your three-column feature grid blends into the sea of sameness that users have learned to ignore.
More importantly, this one-size-fits-all approach ignores a fundamental truth: your users aren't coming to your homepage the same way. Some are first-time visitors who need education. Others are return visitors ready to buy. Some came from social media, others from search. Yet we serve them all the same experience.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came when I was working with a Shopify client drowning in their own success. They had over 1000 products in their catalog, decent traffic, but their conversion rate was bleeding. Despite having quality products and competitive pricing, visitors were browsing but not buying.
The Traditional Approach I Started With:
Like any seasoned designer, I began with the textbook optimizations. We crafted compelling headlines, added customer testimonials, created featured product sections, and built trust signals. The homepage looked professional, followed every best practice, and... moved the needle by maybe 0.2%.
But here's what the analytics revealed: visitors were using the homepage as nothing more than a doorway. They'd land, immediately click to "All Products," then get lost in an endless scroll through our massive catalog. The carefully designed homepage sections weren't just being ignored—they were creating friction between users and what they actually wanted.
The Data That Changed Everything:
After analyzing user behavior with heatmaps and session recordings, the pattern became clear:
68% of homepage visitors immediately scrolled past our hero section
The "Featured Products" section had a 12% click-through rate
"View All Products" was the most-clicked homepage element by far
Average session duration was 3.2 minutes—too short for product discovery
We weren't dealing with users who needed education about our value proposition. These were people who already understood what we sold. They came to shop, not to be sold to. Our beautiful, conversion-optimized homepage was actually slowing them down.
That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. Instead of trying to convince people to buy, we needed to make it easier for people who already wanted to buy.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of following the conventional homepage playbook, I proposed something that made my client uncomfortable: What if we treated our homepage like the product catalog itself?
The Radical Restructure:
We stripped away everything that stood between visitors and products:
Eliminated the hero banner that was taking up prime real estate
Removed "Featured Products" sections that were underperforming
Deleted "Our Collections" blocks that created unnecessary clicks
Scrapped the traditional navigation flow that forced linear browsing
What We Built Instead:
The new homepage displayed 48 products directly on the homepage in a clean, browsable grid. But this wasn't random—we used data to curate the selection:
AI-Powered Categorization: I built an automated workflow that analyzed product performance, seasonality, and search trends to determine which 48 products to feature
Mega-Menu Navigation: Instead of hiding categories in dropdowns, we created a comprehensive navigation system that let users explore without leaving the homepage
Smart Filtering: Users could filter the homepage grid by category, price, or popularity without navigating away
One Trust Element: We kept a single testimonials section below the product grid—the only "traditional" element that remained
The Technical Implementation:
This wasn't just a design change—it required rebuilding how the homepage functioned:
Dynamic product loading based on inventory and performance metrics
Automated categorization using AI to sort new products into 50+ categories
Real-time filtering without page reloads
Mobile-optimized grid that worked seamlessly across devices
The core insight: we turned the homepage into the catalog itself, eliminating the friction of multiple clicks between discovery and purchase. Instead of treating the homepage as a marketing page, we treated it as the first step of the shopping experience.
This approach worked because it aligned with user behavior rather than fighting against it. People came to shop, so we gave them shopping. They wanted to browse products, so we made products the hero.
Elimination Strategy
Remove everything between users and their goal—friction kills conversions more than poor design
AI Categorization
Automated product organization using AI workflows that analyzed 50+ categories for new inventory
Dynamic Loading
Real-time product updates based on performance metrics and seasonal trends kept content fresh
Mobile-First Grid
Responsive design that worked seamlessly across devices without compromising browsing experience
The transformation was immediate and dramatic:
Within 30 days of launching the new homepage structure:
Homepage engagement increased 180% - users were finally interacting with our content
Conversion rate doubled from 1.8% to 3.6% across the entire site
Average session duration increased to 7.2 minutes - people were actually browsing
Cart abandonment decreased by 23% - the streamlined experience reduced friction
But the most surprising result was qualitative: the homepage reclaimed its throne as the most valuable page on the site. Instead of being a necessary evil that users rushed through, it became the primary shopping destination.
Customer feedback reflected this shift. Comments went from "hard to find what I'm looking for" to "love how easy it is to browse." The homepage wasn't just converting better—it was providing a better user experience.
The client's perspective changed too. Instead of viewing the homepage as a marketing expense, they saw it as their most valuable sales tool. This mindset shift led to continued optimization and testing rather than "set it and forget it" thinking.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons that emerged from this homepage hierarchy experiment:
User Behavior Trumps Best Practices: The most important hierarchy is the one your users actually follow, not the one experts recommend
Friction Analysis Beats Feature Addition: Sometimes the best optimization is removing elements, not adding them
Context Matters More Than Convention: A homepage hierarchy that works for a SaaS company might fail spectacularly for a large catalog ecommerce store
Data Over Opinions: Heatmaps and user recordings revealed truths that assumptions missed entirely
Mobile Changes Everything: Traditional desktop hierarchies often break down completely on mobile devices
Speed Matters More Than Perfection: A fast, simple hierarchy consistently outperforms a slow, complex one
Test Radical Changes: Incremental improvements rarely breakthrough plateaus—sometimes you need dramatic shifts
When This Approach Works (And When It Doesn't):
This catalog-as-homepage strategy works best for:
Large product catalogs where discovery is the main challenge
Brands with existing awareness who don't need education
Mobile-heavy traffic that prefers browsing over reading
It doesn't work for:
Complex products requiring significant explanation
New brands needing to establish credibility
B2B services where trust-building is paramount
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, focus on user intent alignment. Analyze your homepage analytics to understand actual user behavior, not assumed behavior. Test radical simplifications that remove friction from your signup flow. Consider whether users need education or just easier access to your product.
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, prioritize product discovery over marketing messages. Large catalogs benefit from homepage-as-catalog approaches. Test elimination strategies—remove elements that create clicks between users and products. Implement smart categorization to handle inventory at scale.