Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, I faced a challenge that every ecommerce store owner knows too well: a beautiful website that wasn't converting. My client had over 1,000 products in their catalog, and despite decent traffic, their conversion rate was bleeding. The homepage looked professional, followed all the "best practices," but visitors were treating it like nothing more than a doorway.
The data told a brutal story. People would land on the homepage, immediately click to "All Products," then get lost in an endless scroll. The carefully crafted hero banners, featured collections, and testimonial sections? Completely ignored. The homepage had become irrelevant.
What I discovered next challenged everything I thought I knew about ecommerce template selection. Instead of following the standard playbook of hero sections and feature grids, I went completely rogue. The result? Conversion rates doubled, and the homepage reclaimed its throne as the most viewed and most used page on the site.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why "best practice" templates often fail for large catalogs
How to diagnose when your template choice is hurting conversions
My unconventional approach that turned a homepage into a product catalog
When to break template conventions (and when to follow them)
A step-by-step framework for template selection based on business needs
If you're struggling with template selection or your current design isn't converting, this case study will show you a completely different way to think about ecommerce optimization.
Industry Reality
What every design blog tells you about templates
Pick up any ecommerce design guide and you'll see the same template advice repeated everywhere. The "perfect" ecommerce homepage should have:
Hero banner with compelling value proposition
Featured collections to showcase product categories
Social proof section with testimonials and reviews
Product highlights featuring bestsellers or new arrivals
Trust badges and security symbols
This conventional wisdom exists because it works for many stores, especially those with smaller, curated product lines. Fashion brands with 50-100 carefully selected items can absolutely benefit from this approach. It creates a magazine-like experience that builds brand affinity.
Template marketplaces reinforce these patterns. Browse Shopify's theme store and you'll find hundreds of templates following this exact structure. Developers create what sells, and what sells is what looks familiar to other successful stores.
But here's where this approach falls apart: it assumes all ecommerce businesses are the same. A boutique clothing store with 80 hand-picked items has completely different needs than a tool retailer with 3,000 SKUs. Yet both get pushed toward the same template structure.
The real problem? Most template advice treats symptoms rather than addressing the fundamental question: how do your customers actually want to shop? When you have a massive catalog, forcing customers through a curated "discovery" experience often creates more friction than value.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this Shopify client, they were drowning in their own success. Over 1,000 products in their catalog should have been an asset, but it had become a conversion killer. Their bounce rate was high, and the analytics told a clear story: visitors were using the homepage as nothing more than a doorway to reach the product catalog.
The client had invested heavily in a premium Shopify theme that followed every "best practice" in the book. Beautiful hero sections, carefully curated featured collections, customer testimonials prominently displayed. It looked professional and converted well in the theme demo. But real-world performance was disappointing.
My first instinct was to optimize within the existing framework. We A/B tested different hero headlines, rearranged the featured collections, and tweaked the product highlights. The improvements were marginal at best. Users still treated the homepage as a speedbump on their way to finding what they actually wanted.
That's when I dug deeper into the user behavior data. The pattern was unmistakable: people would land on the homepage, scan it quickly, then immediately click "All Products" or use the search function. They weren't interested in being guided through a curated journey – they wanted to browse and explore on their own terms.
The existing template was fighting against natural user behavior. With over 1,000 products, customers needed time to search, filter, and discover. But we were forcing them through a bottleneck of featured items and marketing messages before they could access what they came for.
I realized we weren't just choosing the wrong template elements – we were choosing the wrong template philosophy entirely.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of optimizing within the existing template structure, I proposed something that made my client uncomfortable: What if we treated the homepage like the product catalog itself?
Here's exactly what I implemented:
Step 1: Eliminated Traditional Homepage Elements
I removed everything that stood between visitors and products:
No hero banner taking up valuable above-the-fold space
No "Featured Collections" sections
No lengthy brand story or value propositions
No newsletter signup forms interrupting the flow
Step 2: Built a Mega-Menu Navigation System
I created an AI workflow to automatically categorize new products across 50+ categories, then built a comprehensive mega-menu that let users discover products without leaving the navigation. Product discovery became possible before even reaching the main content area.
Step 3: Transformed Homepage Into Product Gallery
The radical change: I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage. Not "featured" products or "bestsellers" – just the latest additions to the catalog, updated dynamically. The homepage became the catalog.
Step 4: Added Minimal Trust Elements
I kept only one traditional element: a testimonials section after the product grid. This provided social proof without interrupting the browsing experience.
Step 5: Optimized for Mobile-First Browsing
On mobile, the product grid adapted to show 2 columns with infinite scroll, creating an Instagram-like browsing experience that felt natural on smartphones.
The core insight: When you have a large catalog, your homepage should BE your catalog, not a gateway TO your catalog. Every traditional homepage element was just friction between customers and products.
Unconventional Approach
Turned homepage into product catalog instead of traditional marketing page
Smart Categorization
Used AI to automatically organize 1000+ products into 50+ logical categories
Mobile-First Design
Created Instagram-like browsing experience with infinite scroll product grid
Data-Driven Decisions
Let user behavior data guide design choices rather than following template conventions
The results spoke for themselves and validated the unconventional approach:
Conversion Rate Impact: The overall conversion rate doubled within the first month of implementation. More importantly, the homepage conversion rate increased by 300% compared to the previous template.
User Engagement: Time spent on the homepage increased by 180%. Instead of bouncing immediately to product pages, users were actually browsing and discovering products directly from the homepage.
Navigation Patterns: The mega-menu became the second-most used navigation element after the product grid itself. Users could explore categories without losing their place in the browsing experience.
Mobile Performance: Mobile conversion rates saw the biggest improvement, increasing by 250%. The Instagram-like product grid felt intuitive to mobile users who were already accustomed to scrolling through product feeds.
But the most telling metric was behavioral: the homepage reclaimed its position as both the most viewed AND most used page on the site. Instead of being a wasteland that users rushed through, it became the primary discovery and conversion tool.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me several crucial lessons about template selection and ecommerce optimization:
Industry standards are starting points, not endpoints: "Best practices" work until they don't. Your specific business model and catalog size matter more than what everyone else is doing.
User behavior trumps designer preferences: What looks good in a portfolio might create friction in real-world usage. Let data guide design decisions, not aesthetic preferences.
Template philosophy matters more than template features: It's not about finding the perfect hero section or the best product grid – it's about choosing a template approach that aligns with how your customers want to shop.
One size fits none: A boutique with 50 curated items needs completely different template logic than a catalog with 1,000+ products. Stop trying to force square pegs into round holes.
Mobile behavior is different: What works on desktop might fail on mobile. Consider how your template adapts to different devices and user contexts.
Automation enables experimentation: The AI categorization system made it possible to maintain organization at scale, which enabled the unconventional homepage approach.
Test assumptions, not just elements: Instead of A/B testing button colors, question the fundamental assumptions behind your template structure.
The biggest lesson? Your template should solve your specific customer's specific problem, not showcase your products in the most aesthetically pleasing way.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies, this translates to choosing templates based on your user journey:
Single-product SaaS: Focus on feature explanation and trial conversion
Multi-product SaaS: Prioritize clear product navigation and use case clarity
Developer tools: Lead with documentation and integration examples
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, template selection should match your catalog strategy:
Small curated catalogs (< 100 products): Traditional homepage with featured collections works well
Large catalogs (1000+ products): Consider catalog-first homepage approach
Niche specialization: Lead with search and filtering capabilities