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. Instead of following the playbook everyone else was using, I turned the homepage into the catalog itself.
Here's what you'll learn from this experiment:
Why traditional homepage structures fail with large product catalogs
How a responsive grid approach can replace multiple page types
The exact implementation that doubled conversion rates
When to break industry standards strategically
How AI categorization can scale your grid organization
This isn't about following design trends—it's about solving real business problems with unconventional solutions. When you have a unique challenge like a massive product catalog, you need a unique solution. Check out our ecommerce playbooks for more conversion optimization strategies.
Industry Reality
What every ecommerce ""expert"" recommends
Walk into any ecommerce design agency today, and they'll hand you the same homepage blueprint that's been recycled for the past decade. The "proven" structure goes like this:
Hero banner with your latest promotion - because apparently every visitor needs to see your 10% off deal first
Featured collections section - usually showcasing 3-4 curated categories
Best sellers or trending products - typically showing 6-8 items in a neat grid
Brand story or mission statement - because visitors definitely want to read about your journey
Customer testimonials - social proof sprinkled throughout
This approach exists because it works for stores with 50-200 products. When you can manually curate your "best" items and your customers can reasonably browse your entire catalog, traditional homepage design makes sense.
The problem? Most agencies apply this same template regardless of catalog size. They'll take a store with 1000+ products and still try to funnel everyone through 6-8 featured items on the homepage. It's like trying to showcase a department store through a boutique window.
The conventional wisdom assumes that curation always beats browsing. But what happens when your strength isn't your ability to pick winners—it's your variety? What happens when customers come to you specifically because you have everything, not because you have the "best" of something?
That's where traditional homepage design breaks down completely. And that's exactly the situation I found myself in with this 1000+ product Shopify store.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this client came to me, they had what most ecommerce stores dream of: a massive, well-organized catalog of over 1000 products. But their conversion rate was stuck in the basement, and their bounce rate told the real story.
After diving into their analytics, the problem became crystal clear. Users were treating the homepage like a hallway—a place you pass through to get somewhere else, not a destination. The heat map data was devastating: barely anyone scrolled past the hero section. Instead, they immediately clicked "All Products" or used the search bar.
The traditional homepage design was actively working against them. Visitors who came specifically for the variety were being funneled through a narrow selection of "featured" products that represented maybe 1% of their catalog. It was like having a massive warehouse but only displaying products in a tiny storefront window.
Here's what the user journey looked like:
Land on homepage → See 8 featured products
Realize these aren't what they want → Click "All Products"
Get overwhelmed by 1000+ products in a basic list view
Try to filter/search → Get frustrated with the interface
Leave without buying anything
The client had tried the usual fixes: better product descriptions, improved checkout flow, faster page speeds. Nothing moved the needle because they were solving the wrong problem.
The real issue wasn't their products or their checkout—it was that their homepage was designed for a boutique, but they were running a department store. Customers wanted to browse and discover, but the homepage design was forcing them into a curation mindset that didn't match their shopping behavior.
This mismatch between user intent and page design was costing them conversions every single day. Something had to change, and it wasn't going to be another A/B test on button colors.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of following the traditional homepage playbook, I decided to treat this like a product discovery problem. If users were immediately jumping to "All Products" anyway, why not give them what they wanted right from the homepage?
Here's exactly what I implemented:
Step 1: Killed the Traditional Structure
I removed everything that wasn't helping users find products: the hero banner, featured collections blocks, mission statement, and most testimonials. The homepage became laser-focused on one thing: helping people discover products they wanted to buy.
Step 2: Built a Mega-Menu Navigation System
Instead of relying on basic category dropdowns, I created an intelligent navigation system with over 50 category combinations. But here's the key part—I built an AI workflow that automatically categorized new products across these categories based on their attributes, descriptions, and existing category patterns.
This meant when they added a new product, it would automatically appear in multiple relevant category filters without manual work.
Step 3: Transformed the Homepage Into a Product Gallery
The revolutionary part: I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage in a responsive grid layout. Not "featured" products or "best sellers"—just the first 48 products from their catalog, with intelligent filtering options prominently displayed above the grid.
The grid responded perfectly across devices:
Desktop: 6 columns showing detailed product cards
Tablet: 4 columns with optimized spacing
Mobile: 2 columns with touch-friendly interactions
Step 4: Added Strategic Content Elements
I didn't eliminate social proof entirely—I added a testimonials section after the first row of products. This provided trust signals without disrupting the browsing flow.
Step 5: Implemented Smart Filtering
Instead of making users hunt through categories, I added prominent filter buttons right above the product grid: by price range, by category, by newest arrivals, by popularity. Users could immediately start refining what they saw without leaving the homepage.
The technical implementation was surprisingly straightforward. Using Shopify's Liquid templating and some custom JavaScript, I created a dynamic grid that pulled from their product catalog and responded to filter selections in real-time.
The AI categorization system ran through AI automation workflows that analyzed product titles, descriptions, and existing tags to suggest category placements. This meant their team could focus on adding products instead of spending hours organizing them.
Homepage as Catalog
Turned the homepage into the main browsing destination instead of a gateway to other pages
AI Categorization
Automated product organization across 50+ categories without manual sorting
Responsive Grid
48 products displayed perfectly across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices
Strategic Filtering
Added prominent filter options above the grid for immediate product refinement
The results spoke for themselves and challenged everything I thought I knew about ecommerce homepage design:
Conversion Rate Doubled: From 1.2% to 2.4% within the first month of implementation. This wasn't a gradual improvement—it was an immediate jump that sustained over time.
Homepage Engagement Transformed: The homepage went from being a pass-through page to the most engaged page on the site. Average time on page increased by 180%, and scroll depth improved dramatically.
Bounce Rate Plummeted: Dropped from 68% to 41% as users started actually engaging with the homepage instead of immediately jumping to other pages.
Product Discovery Increased: Users were viewing 40% more product pages per session because they could easily browse and filter right from the homepage.
But the most telling metric was user behavior: the "All Products" button clicks dropped by 75%. Users were finding what they needed directly from the homepage grid, exactly as intended.
The client was initially nervous about such a dramatic departure from "best practices," but the data convinced them quickly. Within three months, they had recovered the entire cost of the redesign through increased sales.
This approach worked because it aligned the page design with actual user behavior instead of forcing users to adapt to design conventions. Sometimes the best user experience comes from giving people exactly what they're looking for, even if it breaks every design rule in the book.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me lessons that changed how I approach ecommerce design entirely:
1. User Intent Trumps Best Practices
When users consistently behave differently than your design expects, the design is wrong—not the users. If everyone immediately clicks "All Products," maybe that should be your homepage.
2. Catalog Size Determines Strategy
Stores with 50 products need curation. Stores with 1000+ products need discovery tools. One-size-fits-all homepage designs ignore this fundamental difference.
3. AI Can Scale What Humans Can't
Manual product categorization becomes impossible at scale. AI workflows can maintain organization automatically, freeing up human time for strategy.
4. Responsive Isn't Just About Screen Size
True responsive design adapts to user needs and business constraints, not just device dimensions.
5. Sometimes More Is More
In a world obsessed with minimalism, showing more products upfront actually reduced cognitive load for users who came to browse.
6. Test Your Assumptions
What I thought would create chaos (48 products on homepage) actually created clarity for users who wanted variety.
7. Navigation Is Product Strategy
Your menu structure directly impacts product discovery. Invest in intelligent categorization systems, not just visual design.
I'd approach similar projects by analyzing user behavior data first, then designing around observed patterns rather than industry templates. The best conversion optimization often comes from strategic rule-breaking, not incremental improvements.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS platforms with extensive feature sets:
Display key features directly on homepage instead of hiding behind "Learn More" buttons
Use filtering to help users find relevant use cases quickly
Implement smart categorization for different user personas and needs
For your Ecommerce store
For online stores with large product catalogs:
Show products immediately instead of forcing users through category pages
Implement responsive grids that work across all devices seamlessly
Use AI to automatically organize and categorize products at scale
Add prominent filtering options above product grids for instant refinement