Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
I'll never forget the moment a client asked me to "optimize their user flow" using every conversion best practice in the book. Clean navigation, minimal steps, progressive disclosure, the whole nine yards. Three weeks later, their conversion rate had actually dropped by 15%.
That's when I realized the uncomfortable truth: most user flow optimization advice treats every business like it's Amazon. But here's the thing - your business isn't Amazon, your customers aren't shopping for commodity products, and your user journey probably shouldn't look like everyone else's.
Over the past few years working with dozens of e-commerce stores, I've discovered that the most effective user flows often break conventional wisdom. Sometimes the "friction" everyone tells you to remove is actually the thing that makes people buy.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why following standard user flow templates can hurt your conversions
The counterintuitive strategy I used to turn a 1000+ product catalog into a conversion machine
How adding "friction" in the right places actually increases purchase intent
The three user flow modifications that consistently boost e-commerce sales
Real examples from stores that doubled their conversion rates by ignoring "best practices"
This isn't about following a template. It's about understanding your specific customer journey and optimizing for your reality, not someone else's case study. Let's dive into what actually works when you stop copying and start experimenting.
Industry Reality
What every e-commerce store owner gets told about user flows
Walk into any conversion optimization discussion, and you'll hear the same mantras repeated like gospel. The industry has created a standard playbook for user flow optimization that goes something like this:
Remove all friction: Every extra click is a potential exit point. Make everything one-click, reduce form fields, eliminate unnecessary steps. The shorter the path to purchase, the better.
Follow the funnel logic: Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Purchase. Your user flow should mirror this linear progression, guiding users smoothly from one stage to the next.
Minimize cognitive load: Don't make users think. Use familiar patterns, clear navigation, and obvious next steps. If someone has to figure out what to do next, you've already lost them.
Progressive disclosure: Show information gradually. Start simple, then reveal more details as users show interest. Too much information upfront overwhelms people.
Social proof placement: Put testimonials and reviews at specific points in the funnel. Use them to overcome objections at the exact moment users are most likely to hesitate.
This advice exists because it works for certain types of businesses - usually large-scale operations selling familiar products to audiences who already know what they want. Amazon perfected this approach because they're selling commodities to people who've already decided to buy.
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart: it assumes all customers, all products, and all purchase decisions are the same. It treats complex purchase decisions like simple ones, and unique products like commodities.
When you have a specialized product, a complex catalog, or customers who need education before purchase, following these "best practices" can actually work against you. The friction everyone tells you to remove might be the very thing that helps customers understand why they need your product.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The project that changed my perspective on user flows came from a client with over 1,000 products in their e-commerce catalog. They were drowning in their own success - great products, steady traffic, but terrible conversion rates.
When I analyzed their user behavior, I discovered something that made no sense according to conventional wisdom: visitors were using the homepage just to immediately click through to "All Products" and then getting lost in an endless scroll. The traditional homepage structure - featured products, hero banners, curated collections - was completely irrelevant to how people actually shopped.
The traditional approach we tried first: We followed every user flow best practice. Simplified navigation, reduced the product catalog to featured collections, created clear category hierarchies, and streamlined the path to purchase. We A/B tested different homepage layouts, optimized product page flows, and removed every possible point of friction.
The result? Conversion rates stayed flat, and in some cases actually decreased. People were bouncing from the curated homepage because they couldn't find what they were looking for quickly enough.
That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. The issue wasn't that the user flow was too complex - it's that we were forcing people through a flow that didn't match their actual shopping behavior.
The breakthrough came when I looked at the data differently. Instead of asking "how do we guide users through our intended flow," I started asking "how are users actually trying to shop, and how can we support that behavior?"
The answer led to one of the most counterintuitive user flow optimizations I've ever implemented - and one of the most successful.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
The Homepage-as-Catalog Experiment
Instead of fighting user behavior, I decided to embrace it. If people wanted to browse the full catalog immediately, why not give them exactly that?
Here's what I did: I turned the homepage into the product catalog itself. No hero banners, no "featured products" sections, no marketing copy. Just 48 products displayed directly on the homepage, with minimal additional elements.
Step 1: Eliminated Traditional Homepage Elements
Removed the hero banner completely
Deleted "Featured Products" and "Our Collections" sections
Scrapped promotional content and company messaging
Eliminated everything that stood between visitors and products
Step 2: Built a Mega-Menu Navigation System
Since the homepage was now focused entirely on products, navigation became critical. I created an AI-powered workflow that automatically categorized new products across 50+ categories, making product discovery possible without leaving the navigation menu.
Step 3: Optimized for Mobile-First Browsing
With products front and center, mobile optimization became crucial. I redesigned the grid system to showcase products beautifully on smaller screens, ensuring the browsing experience was seamless across devices.
Step 4: Added Strategic Trust Elements
The only non-product element I kept was a testimonials section placed after the initial product grid. This provided social proof without interrupting the browsing flow.
The Psychology Behind This Approach
This strategy worked because it acknowledged a fundamental truth about e-commerce: for stores with large catalogs, the homepage isn't a landing page - it's a discovery tool. Customers don't want to be sold to immediately; they want to explore and find products that match their specific needs.
By removing the traditional "funnel" approach and letting customers browse freely, we eliminated the friction of having to navigate through multiple layers to find products. The conversion increase happened because we shortened the actual user journey, not the theoretical one.
Implementation Details
The technical implementation required careful planning. We used lazy loading for product images, implemented infinite scroll for larger catalogs, and created smart filtering options that appeared contextually based on the product category being viewed.
We also implemented dynamic product rotation, ensuring that returning visitors would see fresh products on each visit, increasing the likelihood of discovering something new.
Key Insight
The homepage doesn't need to be a marketing page - it can be your primary product discovery tool when you have a large catalog
Smart Navigation
AI-powered categorization eliminated the need for complex menu structures while maintaining discoverability
Mobile Priority
With products as the focus mobile optimization became critical for maintaining the browsing experience across devices
Strategic Friction
Sometimes the best user flow removes choice overload by presenting curated options upfront
The results challenged everything I thought I knew about homepage optimization:
Homepage Performance: The homepage went from being a pass-through page to the most viewed AND most used page on the site. Visitors were finally finding what they were looking for without having to dig through multiple navigation layers.
Conversion Rate: Overall conversion rate doubled. More importantly, the time from landing to purchase decreased significantly because customers could immediately start browsing without having to figure out the site structure.
User Behavior Changes: Heat map analysis showed that users were spending more time actually looking at products rather than trying to navigate the site. Scroll depth increased dramatically, and product page views per session went up by 40%.
Unexpected Benefits: Customer support tickets decreased because people could find products more easily. The simplified structure also improved site speed, which had a positive impact on both user experience and SEO.
The most telling metric was that cart abandonment rates decreased. When customers could find what they wanted quickly, they were more committed to completing the purchase.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me several crucial lessons about user flow optimization:
1. User behavior trumps best practices every time. No amount of theory can substitute for actually watching how your customers interact with your site. The data will often contradict conventional wisdom.
2. Friction isn't always bad. Sometimes what looks like friction is actually helping customers make better decisions. The key is understanding the difference between helpful friction and annoying friction.
3. One size fits none. User flow optimization strategies that work for simple product catalogs fail completely for complex ones. You need to match your flow to your specific customer journey.
4. Test counterintuitive ideas. The biggest wins often come from trying approaches that seem to break the rules. If everyone in your industry does something one way, there might be an opportunity in doing it differently.
5. Homepage purpose varies by business model. For simple product lines, a traditional homepage works great. For complex catalogs, the homepage might need to be something completely different.
6. Mobile changes everything. User flows that work on desktop often fail on mobile, especially for product discovery. Always test your flows on the devices your customers actually use.
7. Speed wins over beauty. Users will tolerate a less polished interface if it helps them find what they want quickly. Function beats form when it comes to conversion optimization.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS platforms with complex feature sets:
Consider making your features page the primary landing experience
Use smart categorization to help users find relevant functionality quickly
Test removing traditional sales copy in favor of direct product access
For your Ecommerce store
For online stores looking to optimize user flows:
Analyze actual browsing behavior before redesigning navigation
Test homepage-as-catalog for stores with 100+ products
Implement AI-powered product categorization for better discovery