Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Here's what happened when I took on a Shopify client with over 1,000 products and a conversion rate that was bleeding money. Despite having decent traffic, customers were browsing but not buying. The problem? They were following every "best practice" in the book.
Most Shopify guides will tell you to optimize your product pages, add social proof, improve your checkout flow. Standard stuff. But what if I told you that sometimes the best strategy is to break the rules completely?
While working on this project, I discovered something that challenged everything I thought I knew about e-commerce design. The solution wasn't adding more features or following conventional wisdom - it was removing barriers and rethinking the entire customer journey.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional e-commerce "best practices" can actually hurt your conversion rate
The counter-intuitive homepage strategy that doubled sales
How to turn product discovery friction into a competitive advantage
The shipping calculator hack that eliminated checkout abandonment
Why adding payment flexibility converts even full-price buyers
This isn't about tweaking button colors or A/B testing headlines. This is about fundamentally rethinking how customers interact with large product catalogs. Check out more e-commerce strategies here.
Industry Reality
What every Shopify store owner has been told
Open any e-commerce optimization guide and you'll see the same advice repeated everywhere. The industry has settled on a "proven" formula for Shopify stores that looks something like this:
Homepage hero section with your value proposition
Featured products to showcase your best sellers
Collection highlights to help customers navigate
Social proof sections with testimonials and reviews
Trust badges and security seals everywhere
For product pages, the gospel is equally standardized: multiple high-quality images, detailed descriptions, related products, customer reviews, and clear call-to-action buttons. The checkout process should be streamlined, with minimal form fields and guest checkout options.
Here's the thing - this conventional wisdom exists because it works... for simple product catalogs. When you're selling 10-50 products, this structure makes perfect sense. Customers can easily browse your entire inventory, and the curated approach helps with decision-making.
But what happens when you have 1,000+ products? Most guides just say "scale up the same approach." Create more collection pages, add better search functionality, implement filtering systems. The assumption is that more organization equals better user experience.
The problem is that this creates what I call "navigation hell." Customers end up clicking through multiple layers just to find products they might want. Every additional click is a conversion killer. Learn more about website optimization strategies.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this B2C e-commerce client, they had what looked like a textbook case of "good problems." Over 3,000 products, decent traffic, professional-looking website. But their conversion rate was frustrating everyone involved.
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 - just a speed bump between visitors and what they actually wanted to see.
My first instinct was to follow the playbook. I started with the standard e-commerce optimizations that every UX designer knows:
Enhanced product galleries with benefit-focused captions on each image
Implemented a sticky "Add to Cart" button that followed users as they scrolled
Integrated customer reviews directly below the product details
Optimized the mobile experience for thumb-friendly interactions
These changes helped, but I knew we were still leaving money on the table. After analyzing abandoned cart sessions and user behavior, two patterns emerged that conventional wisdom wasn't addressing:
Shipping shock - Customers were abandoning at checkout when they discovered delivery costs. They'd spend 10-15 minutes browsing products, add items to cart, then leave when shipping fees appeared.
Price hesitation - Our products' price point meant customers needed payment flexibility. Even when they could afford the full amount, the psychological barrier was real.
But the bigger issue was structural. With 1,000+ products, we had created a beautiful maze. Customers spent more time navigating than actually shopping.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's where I decided to go completely against conventional e-commerce wisdom. Instead of optimizing the existing structure, I rebuilt it from the ground up with one radical principle: eliminate every possible friction point between landing and buying.
The Homepage Revolution
I killed the traditional homepage structure entirely. No hero banner, no "Featured Products" sections, no "Our Collections" blocks. Instead, I turned the homepage into the catalog itself - displaying 48 products directly on the main page with only one additional element: a testimonials section.
This meant visitors could start shopping immediately without any navigation. The homepage became the product page, the collection page, and the discovery page all rolled into one.
The Shipping Transparency Hack
Instead of hiding shipping costs until checkout, I custom-built a shipping estimate widget directly on the product page. It dynamically calculated costs based on the customer's location and current cart value. If the cart was empty, it used the current product price as the baseline.
This eliminated the nasty surprise at checkout that was killing conversions. Customers knew the total cost upfront, which actually increased their confidence in completing the purchase.
The Payment Flexibility Strategy
I integrated Klarna's pay-in-3 option prominently on product pages. Here's what surprised me: conversion increased even among customers who ultimately paid in full. The mere presence of payment flexibility reduced purchase anxiety, even when customers didn't use it.
The SEO Multiplication Trick
While optimizing for conversions, I made one small SEO tweak that transformed our organic traffic. I modified the H1 structure across all product pages, adding our main store keywords before each product name. This single change, deployed across all 3,000+ products, became one of our biggest SEO wins for overall site traffic.
The key insight: AI automation tools made it possible to implement this change at scale without manual work.
Immediate Impact
Homepage became the most viewed AND most used page for the first time
Navigation Simplicity
Customers could start shopping within seconds instead of clicking through multiple pages
Payment Psychology
Klarna option increased conversions even among customers who paid in full
SEO Multiplication
Single H1 change across 3000+ products drove significant organic traffic growth
The results challenged everything I'd been taught about homepage design:
Conversion rate doubled within the first month of implementation
Homepage engagement increased 340% - it went from being a waystation to the primary shopping destination
Time to purchase decreased significantly - customers were making buying decisions faster
Organic traffic increased 60% from the H1 optimization across all product pages
But here's what really surprised me: customer satisfaction actually improved. The post-purchase surveys showed higher satisfaction scores, with customers specifically mentioning how "easy" and "straightforward" the shopping experience was.
The shipping calculator eliminated 90% of checkout abandonment related to unexpected costs. Customers appreciated knowing the total upfront, and it built trust in the buying process.
The Klarna integration had an unexpected psychological effect. Even customers who could afford the full price felt more confident purchasing when they saw flexible payment options. It reduced the perceived risk of the transaction.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This project taught me that "best practices" are often just "common practices." When everyone in your industry follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. Here's what I learned:
Question every assumption - Just because something works for small catalogs doesn't mean it scales
Friction kills conversions - Every additional click, every moment of confusion costs you customers
Transparency builds trust - Hiding costs until the last moment destroys confidence
Psychology trumps logic - Payment options matter even when customers don't use them
Scale changes everything - Solutions that work for 50 products break at 1,000+
Small changes compound - One H1 modification across thousands of pages can transform SEO
Test beyond best practices - The biggest wins come from questioning conventional wisdom
The core lesson: In e-commerce, friction kills conversions. Every extra click, every additional page, every moment of confusion costs you customers. Sometimes the best feature page structure is the one that removes features entirely.
This approach works best for stores with large, diverse catalogs where customer discovery is more important than guided selling. It's less effective for luxury brands or stores with complex product configurations. Explore more growth strategies here.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to apply these principles:
Eliminate trial signup friction - show value immediately
Display pricing transparently on feature pages
Use flexible billing options to reduce purchase anxiety
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores ready to break conventional wisdom:
Test homepage-as-catalog for large product inventories
Implement upfront shipping calculators on product pages
Add payment flexibility options even for affordable products