Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, I was working with a Shopify client who had over 3,000 products and a conversion rate that was bleeding out. Despite having decent traffic, customers were browsing but not buying. The data showed something brutal: mobile users made up 70% of their traffic but only 30% of their sales.
Like any seasoned UX designer, I started with the textbook mobile optimization playbook—faster loading times, bigger buttons, simplified navigation. These changes helped marginally, but we were still swimming in mediocrity while competitors were crushing it.
That's when I decided to challenge every mobile UX "best practice" I'd been following for years. The result? We doubled their mobile conversion rate in just 6 weeks by doing the exact opposite of what every UX guide recommends.
Here's what you'll learn from this contrarian approach:
Why mobile-first design might be killing your conversions
The homepage structure that works when you have 1000+ products
How friction can actually improve your mobile experience
Real metrics from breaking conventional mobile UX wisdom
When to ignore user experience "experts" (including me)
Most businesses treat mobile UX like a checklist from 2015. This is about what actually works when you have real customers with real money in 2025.
Industry Reality
What every mobile UX guide tells you
Every mobile UX guide follows the same tired playbook that was revolutionary in 2012 but feels outdated today. The industry consensus goes something like this:
The Mobile-First Commandments:
Design for mobile first, desktop second
Simplify everything—fewer choices, less content, minimal text
Make buttons bigger and easier to tap
Reduce friction at every step of the user journey
Prioritize page speed above everything else
These principles exist because they solved real problems when smartphones were new and users were learning how to interact with tiny screens. The assumption was that mobile users had shorter attention spans, were more impatient, and needed everything dumbed down.
Here's where this conventional wisdom falls short: it treats all mobile experiences the same. A dating app and an e-commerce store with 3,000 products have completely different user needs, but the industry applies identical UX principles to both.
The bigger issue? Most UX advice comes from big tech companies like Google and Apple, whose mobile experiences are designed for billions of users. When you're running a specialized e-commerce store or B2B SaaS platform, their one-size-fits-all approach often works against you.
The transition to my different approach started when I realized that mobile users in 2025 aren't the same as mobile users in 2012. They're more sophisticated, more patient with complex interfaces, and actually prefer more information when making purchasing decisions.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
My client came to me with a problem that looked familiar on the surface but was actually quite unique. They were running a successful Shopify store with over 3,000 products across multiple categories. Think of it like a digital department store rather than a focused boutique.
The challenge wasn't just about mobile optimization—it was about product discovery. Their strength was variety and choice, but traditional mobile UX principles were forcing them to hide that strength. Users would land on their homepage, see a simplified mobile interface with just a few featured products, and leave without exploring their massive catalog.
The data told a frustrating story. Desktop users had an average session duration of 4 minutes and visited 6+ pages. Mobile users? They stayed for 45 seconds and barely made it past the homepage. Yet mobile traffic represented 70% of their visitors.
My first instinct was to follow the standard mobile optimization playbook. I optimized their page load speeds, simplified their navigation menu, created a cleaner mobile homepage with fewer products displayed, and implemented all the "best practices" I'd been preaching for years.
The results were... mediocre. We saw a slight improvement in page load times and bounce rate, but conversion rates remained flat. Mobile users were staying slightly longer but still weren't buying. That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem.
The real issue wasn't that their mobile experience was too complex—it was that it was too simple. We were hiding their competitive advantage (massive product selection) behind a mobile interface designed for simplicity rather than discovery.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking about mobile UX as a separate, simplified version of the desktop experience and started treating it as its own powerful platform for product discovery.
Experiment #1: Homepage as Product Catalog
Instead of the traditional mobile homepage with hero banners and featured collections, I transformed their homepage into a mega product gallery. We displayed 48 products directly on the homepage with infinite scroll, essentially making the homepage the catalog itself.
This went against every mobile UX principle I'd ever learned. The page was "dense," it had "too much information," and it definitely wasn't "simplified." But it worked.
Experiment #2: Mega-Menu Navigation
Rather than hiding their product categories behind a hamburger menu, we built a mega-menu system that could be accessed with a single tap. Users could see all 50+ product categories at once and navigate directly to their area of interest.
We also implemented an AI workflow to automatically categorize new products, ensuring the navigation remained useful as their catalog grew.
Experiment #3: Information-Dense Product Pages
While competitors were simplifying their mobile product pages, we went the opposite direction. We included multiple product images, detailed specifications, customer reviews, size guides, and related products—all optimized for mobile viewing but without hiding crucial information.
The Technical Implementation
The key was making all this information mobile-friendly without sacrificing functionality. We used progressive loading, optimized image compression, and smart caching to ensure the information-dense pages still loaded quickly on mobile connections.
We also implemented touch-friendly interactions—swipe gestures for product galleries, expandable sections for detailed information, and sticky "Add to Cart" buttons that followed users as they scrolled through product details.
Quick Results
Mobile conversion doubled within 6 weeks
Mega Navigation
50+ categories accessible with single tap
Dense Information
More product details increased mobile trust
Technical Balance
Speed optimization without sacrificing functionality
The results challenged everything I thought I knew about mobile UX:
Conversion Rate: Mobile conversions increased from 1.2% to 2.4% within 6 weeks—a complete doubling of their mobile revenue.
Session Engagement: Average mobile session duration increased from 45 seconds to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Users were actually spending more time exploring the dense, information-rich interface.
Page Views per Session: Mobile users went from viewing 1.3 pages per session to 4.2 pages per session. The mega-menu navigation made product discovery significantly easier.
Time to Purchase: Surprisingly, despite having more information available, the time from first visit to purchase actually decreased. When users found what they wanted, they bought faster because they had all the information needed to make a confident decision.
The homepage transformed from being a bounce-heavy landing page to the most engaged page on their site. Mobile users were treating it like a browsable catalog rather than a traditional homepage, and that behavior translated directly into sales.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me several lessons that completely changed how I approach mobile UX:
1. Mobile Users Aren't Less Capable
The assumption that mobile users want simplified experiences is often wrong. They want efficient experiences. There's a difference between simple and efficient.
2. Industry Standards Are Starting Points, Not Endpoints
"Best practices" work when you have average problems. When you have unique challenges—like a massive product catalog—you need unique solutions.
3. Context Matters More Than Device
A person shopping for home furniture on their phone during lunch break has different needs than someone quickly ordering coffee. Design for the context, not just the screen size.
4. Information Architecture Beats Visual Design
The biggest impact came from restructuring how information was organized and accessed, not from making buttons bigger or text larger.
5. Speed Optimization Enables Complexity
You can provide rich, complex experiences on mobile if you nail the technical performance. The constraint isn't screen size—it's loading time.
6. Test Boldly, Measure Precisely
The most successful mobile UX improvements often come from testing ideas that sound wrong on paper but solve real user problems in practice.
7. Platform-Specific Advantages
Instead of treating mobile as a limited version of desktop, we designed for mobile-specific behaviors like thumb navigation, scroll patterns, and quick information consumption.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS applications, apply these principles to dashboard design and user onboarding:
Show more data on mobile dashboards, not less—use progressive disclosure
Design mobile-specific navigation for feature discovery
Optimize for task completion rather than visual simplicity
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, focus on product discovery and purchase confidence:
Transform homepages into browsable product catalogs
Implement comprehensive mobile navigation systems
Provide complete product information without hiding details