Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, I took on a Shopify website revamp for a client drowning in their own success. With over 1000 products in their catalog, their conversion rate was bleeding—not because the products were bad, but because finding the right one felt like searching for a needle in a digital haystack.
The data told a brutal story: 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. The homepage had become irrelevant.
While every "best practices" guide preached about hero banners, featured collections, and carefully curated product sections, I went rogue. Sometimes the most effective strategy comes from looking outside your industry entirely.
Here's what you'll learn from this contrarian approach:
Why traditional e-commerce navigation fails with large catalogs
How I turned a homepage into a mega-catalog that doubled conversions
The AI automation system that manages 1000+ products automatically
When to break industry standards (and when to follow them)
The psychology behind why product-first navigation works better than feature-first
Ready to challenge everything you think you know about e-commerce website design? Let's dive into the experiment that changed how I approach navigation forever.
Industry Knowledge
What every e-commerce ""expert"" recommends
Walk into any e-commerce strategy meeting, and you'll hear the same navigation gospel repeated like a mantra. The industry has convinced itself there's one "right" way to structure online stores, regardless of catalog size or customer behavior.
The Standard E-commerce Navigation Formula:
Hero banner - Large, beautiful image showcasing your brand story
Featured collections - Curated categories like "New Arrivals" or "Best Sellers"
Product highlights - Hand-picked items to showcase quality
Brand story section - Building trust and emotional connection
Testimonials and social proof - Customer validation
This approach works brilliantly for boutique stores with 20-50 carefully curated products. Every major e-commerce platform template follows this pattern. Shopify themes, WooCommerce designs, even custom builds—they all push you toward this "proven" structure.
Why this conventional wisdom exists:
The theory makes sense on paper. You're treating your website like a physical retail store—create an experience, tell your story, guide customers through a journey. It's all about the "customer experience" and "brand storytelling." Most design agencies love this approach because it lets them showcase their creative skills.
Where it falls catastrophically short:
But here's the uncomfortable truth nobody talks about: when you have hundreds or thousands of products, this approach becomes a conversion killer. Customers don't want to be "journeyed" through your brand story when they're trying to find a specific product. They want to find what they need, fast.
The traditional navigation assumes customers shop like they're browsing a physical store. Online behavior is completely different. People know what they want, and every extra click between them and their goal increases abandonment rates.
This is where my contrarian approach comes in—treating navigation as a tool for product discovery, not brand storytelling.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The challenge landed on my desk with a clear problem: a Shopify e-commerce site with over 1000 products and a conversion rate that was steadily declining. The client had built a successful business, but their website was becoming their biggest bottleneck.
The Client's Unique Situation:
This wasn't a typical fashion or electronics store. They were in a specialized industry where customers needed to browse through hundreds of variations to find exactly what they needed. Think industrial supplies meets consumer goods—products that look similar but serve very different purposes.
The existing setup followed every e-commerce "best practice" to the letter:
Beautiful hero banner showcasing their brand
"Featured Products" section with hand-picked items
"Our Collections" blocks organized by category
Testimonials and brand story sections
The Data That Revealed the Problem:
After analyzing their traffic flow, a brutal pattern emerged. The homepage had become nothing more than a doorway—visitors would land, immediately click "All Products," then get lost in an endless scroll. The carefully crafted homepage sections were being completely ignored.
Most users abandoned the site within 30 seconds, not because the products were wrong, but because finding the right product felt impossible. The navigation was optimized for storytelling, not for product discovery.
What I Tried First (And Why It Failed):
My initial instinct was to fix the navigation menu. I spent weeks creating a mega-menu system with better categorization, improved search functionality, and more intuitive product filtering. The improvements were marginal at best.
The fundamental issue wasn't the navigation menu—it was the entire homepage philosophy. We were treating the homepage like a magazine cover when customers needed it to be more like a product catalog. Every "best practice" was working against the user's actual behavior.
That's when I realized I needed to break every rule in the e-commerce playbook.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly what I did to transform a failing navigation into a conversion machine—and why it worked when conventional wisdom said it shouldn't.
Step 1: Killed the Traditional Homepage Structure
I made a decision that horrified the client initially: I removed everything that "good" e-commerce homepages are supposed to have. No hero banner. No "Featured Products" sections. No "Our Collections" blocks. No brand story taking up precious above-the-fold real estate.
Instead, I turned the homepage into what customers actually wanted—a direct path to products. Think Amazon's approach, but cleaner and more focused.
Step 2: Built an AI-Powered Mega-Menu System
With over 1000 products, manual categorization was impossible to maintain. I implemented an AI workflow that automatically categorizes new products across 50+ categories based on product attributes, descriptions, and specifications.
This wasn't just smart categorization—it was dynamic. As inventory changed, the navigation adapted automatically. New products got placed in the right categories without human intervention. Discontinued items were removed from navigation paths instantly.
Step 3: Homepage as Product Gallery
The most controversial decision: I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage in a clean grid layout. No fancy sections, no storytelling—just products. The only additional element was a brief testimonials section to maintain trust signals.
The layout was simple but strategic:
Smart mega-menu for category navigation
48-product grid showcasing variety
Testimonials section for social proof
Footer with essential business information
Step 4: Implemented Smart Product Rotation
The 48 homepage products weren't random. I created an algorithm that rotated products based on:
Recent sales performance
Seasonal demand patterns
Inventory levels
Profit margins
This meant the homepage was always showcasing the most relevant products while automatically promoting items that needed visibility.
Step 5: Streamlined the Product Discovery Flow
Instead of forcing customers through a "journey," I created multiple fast paths to products:
Visual browsing - Customers could scan the homepage grid
Category diving - Mega-menu for specific needs
Search-first - Prominent search bar for exact matches
Every path was optimized for speed, not storytelling. The goal was getting customers to the right product page in the fewest clicks possible.
The Psychology Behind Why This Works:
Online shopping behavior is fundamentally different from physical retail. When people visit an e-commerce site, they're usually in "task mode"—they want to find something specific, compare options, and make a decision. Elaborate navigation and brand storytelling creates friction in this process.
By turning the homepage into a functional product discovery tool rather than a brand showcase, I aligned the website with actual user behavior instead of fighting against it.
Product Rotation
Automated algorithm rotating 48 homepage products based on sales data, seasonality, and inventory levels for maximum relevance
AI Categorization
Smart workflow automatically organizing 1000+ products across 50+ categories without manual intervention
Conversion Psychology
Homepage designed for "task mode" shopping behavior rather than "browsing mode" brand storytelling
Data-Driven Layout
Every element positioned based on user flow analysis rather than traditional design "best practices"
The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Within the first month of implementing the new navigation structure, we saw results that challenged everything the e-commerce industry preaches about homepage design.
Conversion Rate Performance:
The most important metric—conversion rate—doubled from the previous baseline. More importantly, the homepage reclaimed its position as the most-used page on the site. Instead of being a gateway that people rushed through, it became a functional tool that customers actually used.
User Behavior Changes:
The analytics told a compelling story. Time-to-purchase decreased significantly because customers could find relevant products immediately. Bounce rate from the homepage dropped because visitors could see product variety without digging through menus.
Most surprisingly, average order value remained stable despite the more direct approach. Customers weren't buying less—they were buying more efficiently.
Operational Impact:
The AI categorization system eliminated the manual work of organizing products. What used to take hours of admin time each week now happened automatically. New product launches became seamless because the system handled categorization and homepage rotation without human intervention.
Long-term Results:
Six months later, the client reported their highest revenue quarter ever. The combination of better navigation and automated product management had created a system that scaled with their growing inventory instead of becoming more complex.
Customer feedback shifted from complaints about finding products to compliments about the site's efficiency. The navigation had become invisible in the best way—it just worked.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me that "industry best practices" are often just "common practices" that everyone copies without questioning. Here are the key lessons that changed how I approach e-commerce navigation forever:
1. User Behavior Beats Design Theory
The most beautiful navigation in the world is worthless if it doesn't match how people actually shop. Analytics should drive navigation decisions, not design trends or agency preferences.
2. Scale Changes Everything
Navigation strategies that work for 50 products fail catastrophically at 1000+ products. You need different approaches for different catalog sizes, but most "experts" apply the same solution regardless of scale.
3. Homepage Purpose Should Match Visitor Intent
When most visitors immediately leave your homepage to find products, your homepage isn't serving its purpose. Sometimes the best "experience" is removing the experience entirely.
4. Automation Enables Better UX
AI categorization wasn't just about saving time—it created better, more consistent navigation than manual organization. Smart automation can improve user experience while reducing workload.
5. Industry Standards Are Starting Points, Not Endpoints
Every industry has its sacred cows. In e-commerce, it's the "customer journey" homepage. Sometimes the biggest improvements come from questioning what everyone assumes to be true.
6. Test Controversial Changes Gradually
When proposing radical navigation changes, prepare clients for the psychological discomfort of "breaking rules." The results will speak for themselves, but the initial resistance is always intense.
7. Product-First Beats Brand-First for Large Catalogs
Brand storytelling has its place, but not at the expense of product discoverability. When you have extensive inventory, function should drive form, not the other way around.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
Focus on feature discoverability over brand storytelling in your navigation
Use AI to automatically categorize and organize features based on user segments
Test homepage layouts that showcase core features instead of marketing copy
Implement smart menus that adapt to user behavior and feature usage
For your Ecommerce store
Implement AI-powered product categorization for catalogs over 100 items
Test homepage product grids instead of traditional hero sections for large inventories
Use mega-menus for stores with 10+ categories to reduce navigation friction
Automate product rotation based on sales data and inventory levels