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. And the results? Conversion rate doubled.
This experience taught me that when everyone in your industry follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. Sometimes the most effective strategy comes from looking outside your industry entirely. In this case, I treated their SaaS-like catalog problem with e-commerce solutions that most consultants would never consider.
Here's what you'll learn from this unconventional approach:
Why traditional homepage structures fail for product-heavy stores
The counter-intuitive homepage redesign that doubled conversions
How to turn navigation into your primary conversion tool
When to break industry standards (and when to follow them)
The psychology behind catalog overwhelm and how to solve it
This isn't about following another framework—it's about understanding when conventional wisdom becomes your biggest limitation. Let's dive into what actually happened when I threw the ecommerce playbook out the window.
Industry Reality
What every ecommerce expert preaches
Walk into any ecommerce conference or browse through conversion optimization blogs, and you'll hear the same gospel repeated like a mantra. The "proven" homepage structure has become as standardized as a McDonald's menu:
The Standard Ecommerce Homepage Formula:
Hero banner with your latest promotion or best-selling product
"Featured Collections" section showcasing 3-4 curated categories
"Best Sellers" or "New Arrivals" product grid
Social proof section with customer testimonials
Newsletter signup with discount offer
This structure exists because it works—for stores with 20-50 products. When you have a manageable catalog, curation makes sense. You can guide customers through a carefully crafted journey, highlighting your best products and creating clear paths to purchase.
The logic is sound: reduce decision fatigue by presenting fewer options, build trust with social proof, and create urgency with promotions. Every major ecommerce platform's default themes follow this pattern. Every case study showcases this approach. Every "expert" recommends it.
But here's where conventional wisdom falls apart: this structure assumes your customers know what they want when they arrive. It assumes they're ready to be guided through your curated selection. It assumes your "featured" products align with their needs.
For stores with massive catalogs—think 500+ products across dozens of categories—this approach creates a fundamental mismatch. Customers arrive knowing they need something specific, but instead of helping them find it quickly, we force them through a marketing funnel designed for browsing.
The result? Analysis paralysis. Frustrated exits. Conversion rates that plateau no matter how much you optimize your "featured products" section. Because the real problem isn't your featured products—it's that your customers can't find what they actually came for.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this particular client came to me, they weren't a startup figuring out product-market fit. They were an established e-commerce business with a serious problem: success had made their website unusable.
Picture this: 1000+ products spanning everything from electronics to home goods, organized into 50+ categories. Their Google Analytics told a story of user frustration—high bounce rates, low time on site, and conversion rates that had been declining for months despite increasing traffic.
The previous designer had done exactly what any "professional" would do. Beautiful hero banners showcasing seasonal promotions. Elegant "Featured Collections" highlighting their most profitable categories. A carefully curated "Best Sellers" section designed to drive immediate purchases.
But here's what the heat maps revealed: 90% of visitors were ignoring all of this beautiful curation and immediately clicking "All Products." Then they'd land on an overwhelming grid of 1000+ items with basic pagination. No wonder they were leaving.
I started with the "obvious" solutions first. Better filtering options. Improved search functionality. More intuitive category navigation. Smart product recommendations. These helped marginally—maybe a 10-15% improvement in engagement metrics.
But the fundamental problem remained: customers were treating the homepage like a tollbooth, not a destination. They didn't want to be sold to or guided through a journey. They wanted to find their specific item and buy it. The beautiful, marketing-focused homepage was actually adding friction to their shopping experience.
That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. Instead of trying to make visitors appreciate our curation, what if we gave them exactly what they were already asking for? What if we stopped forcing them through a marketing funnel and instead created a discovery experience?
The insight came from an unexpected source: watching how customers behaved in physical warehouse stores like Costco. They don't want a boutique experience with carefully arranged displays. They want efficient access to a massive selection. They want to browse, compare, and find exactly what they need without unnecessary friction.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly what I did that doubled their conversion rate—and why it worked when conventional wisdom said it shouldn't.
Step 1: Killed the Traditional Homepage Structure
I removed every element that marketing "experts" consider essential:
Hero banner promoting seasonal sales
"Featured Products" sections
"Our Collections" blocks
Newsletter signup interruptions
Instead, the homepage became the catalog itself. I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage with intelligent sorting based on popularity, seasonality, and stock levels. No gatekeeping. No forced journey. Just immediate access to what customers actually wanted.
Step 2: Built a Mega-Menu Navigation System
The real magic happened in the navigation. Instead of simple category links, I created an AI-powered mega-menu system that automatically organized products across 50+ categories. When someone hovered over "Electronics," they'd see sub-categories, popular items, and even related accessories—all without leaving the homepage.
This solved the core problem: customers could now discover products without having to navigate through multiple pages. The navigation became a discovery tool, not just a routing mechanism.
Step 3: Implemented Smart Product Display Logic
Those 48 homepage products weren't randomly selected. I built logic that considered:
Seasonal relevance and trending searches
Individual visitor behavior and browsing history
Inventory levels and profit margins
Cross-selling opportunities based on purchase patterns
Step 4: Added Strategic Social Proof
I didn't eliminate social proof—I repositioned it strategically. Instead of a dedicated testimonials section, I embedded customer reviews directly within the product grid. Each product showed its rating and review count, creating trust without interrupting the shopping flow.
Step 5: Optimized for Mobile-First Experience
Mobile users faced even more friction with traditional layouts. By making the homepage function as the catalog, mobile shoppers could start browsing immediately without navigating through multiple taps. The mega-menu collapsed into an intelligent search and filter system optimized for thumb navigation.
The psychology behind this approach is simple: when you have a massive catalog, discovery is more valuable than curation. Customers don't want you to choose for them—they want tools that help them choose for themselves efficiently.
Automation Setup
Built AI workflows to automatically categorize new products across 50+ categories without manual intervention
Navigation Design
Created mega-menu system that functioned as discovery tool rather than simple routing mechanism
Product Display
48 products on homepage with intelligent sorting based on popularity and visitor behavior patterns
Social Proof
Embedded customer reviews directly in product grid instead of separate testimonials section
The transformation was immediate and measurable. Within 30 days of implementing this unconventional approach:
Homepage became the primary conversion driver: Instead of being a glorified landing page, the homepage generated 40% of all sales. Previously, it contributed less than 15% to overall conversions.
Session duration increased by 180%: Visitors spent nearly three times longer on the site because they could actually find and explore products that interested them without friction.
Bounce rate dropped from 68% to 34%: When people could immediately see relevant products instead of marketing messages, they engaged rather than left.
Conversion rate doubled from 1.2% to 2.4%: The most important metric improved dramatically because we eliminated the friction between intent and action.
But perhaps the most telling result was qualitative: customer support tickets about "can't find products" dropped by 70%. The site finally worked the way customers expected it to work.
The mega-menu navigation system proved especially powerful for mobile users, where traditional e-commerce navigation often breaks down. Mobile conversion rates improved even more dramatically than desktop—a 150% increase.
Six months later, they maintained these improvements while continuing to add new products to their catalog. The system scaled with their growth instead of becoming a bottleneck.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me five critical lessons about conversion optimization that challenge everything I'd been taught:
1. Industry best practices are starting points, not endpoints. What works for most stores might be exactly wrong for your specific situation. The key is understanding why a practice exists before deciding whether to follow it.
2. Customer behavior trumps conversion theory. Heat maps and user session recordings revealed what customers actually wanted—immediate access to products. No amount of "optimization" could fix a fundamental mismatch between site structure and user intent.
3. Friction isn't always where you think it is. The client thought their conversion problem was in checkout or product pages. The real friction was in forcing customers through an irrelevant homepage experience before they could shop.
4. Personalization beats curation at scale. When you have hundreds of products, showing everyone the same "featured" items is less effective than showing each visitor products relevant to their behavior and interests.
5. Mobile-first thinking changes everything. Designing for mobile constraints often leads to better desktop experiences too. The simplified, direct approach worked better across all devices.
When this approach works: Large catalogs (500+ products), diverse customer needs, established brands with repeat customers, product-focused rather than brand-focused purchasing decisions.
When to avoid it: Small, curated collections, new brands building awareness, luxury positioning requiring storytelling, seasonal or impulse-driven purchases.
The biggest lesson? Sometimes the best optimization is to stop optimizing for what you think customers should want and instead give them what they actually want. Even if it goes against every "best practice" you've ever learned.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, apply this catalog thinking to your feature pages:
Make features immediately discoverable without forcing users through marketing funnels
Use navigation as a discovery tool, not just routing
Test direct access to core functionality vs. guided onboarding flows
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores with large catalogs, prioritize discovery over curation:
Test homepage-as-catalog approach if you have 200+ products
Build intelligent navigation that functions as product discovery tool
Embed social proof directly in product grids rather than separate sections