Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, while working with a B2C e-commerce client, I discovered that following industry best practices isn't always the best practice. Their store was drowning in its own success—over 1000 products in their catalog—but 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.
This isn't just about optimizing ecommerce sites for sales—it's about understanding that sometimes the most effective strategy comes from looking outside your industry entirely. When everyone in your industry follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise.
Here's what you'll learn from this experiment:
Why traditional homepage structure fails for large product catalogs
How to turn your homepage into your catalog itself
The AI workflow that automated product categorization across 50+ categories
How breaking "rules" led to doubled conversion rates
When to ignore industry standards and when to follow them
This approach worked because it removed friction rather than added features. Sometimes, the best ecommerce optimization isn't about what you add—it's about what you remove.
Industry Knowledge
What every ecommerce guru preaches
Walk into any ecommerce conference or read any conversion optimization blog, and you'll hear the same gospel being preached. The industry has crystallized around a handful of "proven" homepage structures that everyone swears by.
The Traditional Ecommerce Homepage Formula:
Hero banner with your main value proposition
Featured products section showcasing bestsellers
Category blocks with beautiful imagery
"Our Collections" carefully curated sections
Social proof testimonials and reviews
Brand story section to build connection
This structure exists because it works—for certain types of stores. It's perfect for brands with 20-50 carefully curated products, strong brand identity, and clear customer personas. Think fashion brands, artisan goods, or luxury items where the shopping experience is part of the value.
The problem? This approach assumes your visitors want to be guided through a journey. It assumes they have time to browse, discover, and be delighted by your curation. It treats every visitor like they're window shopping on a leisurely Saturday afternoon.
But what happens when you have 1000+ products? When your customers are looking for something specific rather than browsing for inspiration? When your strength isn't curation but variety and availability?
The conventional wisdom falls apart. Those carefully designed sections become obstacles. That beautiful hero banner becomes wasted real estate. Your "featured products" represent 0.5% of your inventory, leaving 99.5% of your value proposition invisible.
Yet most ecommerce stores keep following this playbook because it's what "successful" stores do. The problem isn't the playbook—it's applying it blindly to every situation.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this B2C Shopify client, they had a classic ecommerce problem disguised as a success story. Their conversion rate was bleeding, despite having over 1000 products and decent traffic. The client was frustrated, and I needed to figure out why visitors weren't converting.
My first instinct was to follow the textbook. I started with the standard conversion optimization improvements every UX designer knows:
Enhanced product galleries with benefit-focused captions
Implemented sticky "Add to Cart" buttons
Integrated customer reviews below product details
Optimized the mobile experience
These changes helped, but I knew we were still leaving money on the table. The real insight came from analyzing user behavior data. I discovered two critical patterns:
Pattern 1: The Homepage Bypass
After tracking user sessions, I realized 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—a beautiful obstacle between visitors and what they actually wanted.
Pattern 2: The Choice Paralysis
With over 1000 products, customers needed time to search through the site and find the perfect product. But our carefully designed homepage was optimized for inspiration, not exploration. We were forcing a boutique experience onto a department store inventory.
This is when I realized we were treating symptoms, not the disease. The problem wasn't our conversion tactics—it was our entire approach to homepage design.
Most businesses treat their website pages as isolated islands. But I started thinking: what if we could transform every page into a relationship-building opportunity? What if the homepage itself could solve the discovery problem?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of fighting against user behavior, I decided to embrace it. If visitors were bypassing our carefully crafted homepage to get to products, why not give them exactly what they wanted immediately?
The Radical Homepage Restructure:
I completely eliminated the traditional ecommerce homepage structure:
Removed the hero banner entirely
Deleted "Featured Products" sections
Scrapped "Our Collections" blocks
Eliminated everything that stood between visitors and products
Instead, I transformed the homepage into the catalog itself. We displayed 48 products directly on the homepage, with only one additional element: a testimonials section for social proof.
The Navigation Revolution:
But here's where it gets interesting. With 1000+ products, navigation becomes critical. I built an AI workflow to automatically categorize new products across 50+ categories, creating a mega-menu navigation system that made product discovery possible without leaving the homepage.
The AI workflow worked like this:
Product Analysis: When a new product was added, the AI analyzed its attributes, description, and metadata
Smart Categorization: Instead of simple tag-based sorting, the AI read product context and intelligently assigned items to multiple relevant collections
Dynamic Updates: The navigation updated automatically, ensuring new products were immediately discoverable
The Psychology Behind the Change:
This wasn't just about design—it was about psychology. Traditional ecommerce homepages assume visitors want to be guided. But when you have massive inventory, your customers often know what they're looking for. They want tools, not tours.
By turning the homepage into the catalog, we:
Removed friction from the customer journey
Showcased inventory breadth immediately
Reduced clicks to purchase significantly
Made the homepage relevant again
The core principle that drove this success wasn't following a framework from a blog post. It was understanding that in ecommerce, friction kills conversions. Every extra click, every additional page, every moment of confusion costs you customers.
Key Insight
The homepage became the destination, not the starting point. Users could browse, filter, and purchase without ever leaving the main page.
AI Automation
Automated categorization across 50+ categories meant new products were instantly discoverable without manual intervention.
Friction Removal
Eliminated an entire step from the customer journey by combining homepage and catalog functionality.
Psychology Shift
Treated visitors as shoppers with intent rather than browsers seeking inspiration.
The outcome challenged everything I'd been taught about homepage design:
Immediate Impact:
The homepage reclaimed its position as the most viewed AND most used page
Conversion rate doubled compared to the traditional structure
Time to purchase decreased significantly
Bounce rate improved as visitors found what they needed faster
The most surprising result was psychological. The client reported that customer feedback shifted from "I couldn't find what I was looking for" to "I found exactly what I needed quickly." We hadn't just optimized conversion—we'd optimized the entire shopping experience.
Long-term Benefits:
Reduced customer support tickets about product discovery
Higher average order values as related products were more visible
Improved SEO performance as the homepage showcased more inventory
This experience taught me that "best practices" are often just "common practices." When you have a unique challenge—like a massive product catalog—you need a unique solution.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment fundamentally changed how I approach ecommerce optimization. Here are the key lessons that apply beyond just homepage design:
1. Question Industry Standards
Best practices exist for good reasons, but they're not universal truths. Always ask: "Does this practice serve my specific situation, or am I following it because everyone else does?"
2. Follow User Behavior, Not Design Trends
Analytics don't lie. If users are consistently bypassing your carefully designed sections, that's not a user problem—it's a design problem. Embrace actual behavior rather than fighting it.
3. Inventory Size Changes Everything
The strategies that work for 20 products fail at 200, and fail catastrophically at 2000. Your optimization strategy should scale with your catalog size.
4. Friction Is the Enemy
Every click between intent and purchase is an opportunity for abandonment. The best feature isn't always a new feature—sometimes it's removing an unnecessary step.
5. Automation Enables Experimentation
Without the AI categorization system, managing 1000+ products would have been impossible. Smart automation doesn't replace strategy—it enables bolder strategic choices.
6. Context Matters More Than Conversion Tactics
Button colors and headline tests matter less than fundamental structural decisions. Optimize your foundation before you optimize your details.
What I'd Do Differently:
I'd implement more sophisticated personalization earlier. While the one-size-fits-all catalog approach worked, different customer segments could benefit from slightly different homepage experiences.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies, apply similar thinking to your feature pages and pricing structure:
Lead with your most-used features, not your most impressive ones
Remove friction from trial signup processes
Make pricing transparent and immediately accessible
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, consider your catalog size when designing your homepage:
Large catalogs (500+ products): Consider the catalog-as-homepage approach
Implement mega-menu navigation for better product discovery
Use AI or automation to manage categorization at scale