Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
OK so here's something that happened last year that completely changed how I think about customer journey mapping. I was working with this Shopify client who had over 1000 products and their conversion rate was bleeding out. They came to me with these beautiful customer journey maps - personas, touchpoints, emotional states, the whole nine yards. Problem? They were still hemorrhaging money.
The breakthrough came when I realized we were optimizing for theoretical journeys instead of actual revenue paths. While everyone was mapping the "ideal" customer experience, real customers were abandoning their carts because they couldn't figure out how to navigate from product A to checkout without getting lost in a maze of 1000+ products.
Here's what you'll learn from my experiment turning a 1000+ product catalog into a revenue-generating machine:
Why traditional user journey mapping fails for large ecommerce catalogs
The counter-intuitive homepage strategy that doubled conversions
How to map actual purchasing paths instead of theoretical user flows
The one structural change that made navigation irrelevant
When to break every UX best practice in the book
This isn't about creating better journey maps. It's about questioning whether you need them at all. Let me show you what happened when I threw conventional wisdom out the window and optimized for actual conversion behavior instead.
Industry Reality
What every ecommerce consultant preaches
Walk into any ecommerce strategy meeting and you'll hear the same sermon about customer journey mapping. The industry has collectively decided that understanding your customer's emotional journey is the holy grail of conversion optimization.
Here's the standard playbook every consultant recommends:
Create detailed buyer personas - Map out demographics, pain points, and motivations for each customer segment
Define touchpoint moments - Identify every interaction point from awareness to purchase and beyond
Map emotional states - Chart how customers feel at each stage of their journey
Optimize each touchpoint - Remove friction and enhance positive emotions at every step
Create seamless experiences - Ensure smooth transitions between awareness, consideration, and purchase
This approach exists because it works beautifully for simple product catalogs and straightforward purchase decisions. When you're selling 5-10 products with clear use cases, mapping the customer journey makes perfect sense. You can optimize each step of a linear path from discovery to purchase.
But here's where this conventional wisdom breaks down: complex ecommerce stores with hundreds or thousands of products don't have linear customer journeys. They have chaotic browsing patterns where customers need time to discover, compare, and find the right product for their specific needs.
The traditional journey mapping approach fails because it assumes customers know what they want and follow predictable paths. In reality, browsing a large catalog is more like wandering through a marketplace than following a guided tour. The more time you spend mapping theoretical journeys, the less time you spend optimizing for actual purchase behavior.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
So this client comes to me with a massive problem. They've got this Shopify store with over 1000 products and their conversion rate is absolutely terrible. But here's the thing - they'd already spent months working with another consultant who created these incredibly detailed customer journey maps.
I'm talking museum-quality work here. Beautiful personas, detailed emotional journey phases, touchpoint optimization recommendations, the works. It looked like something you'd present at a UX conference. The only problem? Sales were still flat.
When I dug into their analytics, I found something fascinating. The data showed that most visitors were using the homepage as nothing more than a doorway. They'd land there, immediately click to "All Products," then get completely lost scrolling through an endless catalog. The bounce rate from the product listing page was brutal.
Their existing customer journey map showed this nice, clean path: Homepage → Category → Product → Cart → Checkout. But the actual user behavior was more like: Homepage → All Products → Scroll → Scroll → Scroll → Leave.
The fundamental mismatch was this: their journey maps were optimized for customers who knew what they wanted, but their actual traffic was people who needed time to browse and discover. It's like trying to optimize a farmer's market using the customer journey principles of a single-product store.
I realized we had two choices: spend months trying to guide people through a complex navigation system, or eliminate the navigation problem entirely. Guess which one I picked?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of mapping more customer journeys, I threw out the entire concept and focused on one simple question: how do we get products in front of eyeballs as fast as possible?
Here's exactly what I did, step by step:
Step 1: I killed the traditional homepage structure
Out went the hero banners, featured collections, and "About Us" sections. Out went the category grids and marketing copy. I turned the homepage into what it should have been all along: a product gallery.
Step 2: I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage
Not 8 featured products. Not 12 best-sellers. Forty-eight products visible immediately when someone lands on the site. The homepage became the catalog, eliminating an entire step in the theoretical customer journey.
Step 3: I built a mega-menu navigation system
For people who wanted to browse by category, I created a mega-menu that could handle 50+ categories without making the site feel overwhelming. But more importantly, I set up an AI workflow to automatically categorize new products, so navigation maintenance became hands-off.
Step 4: I added exactly one additional element
Below the 48-product grid, I added a testimonials section. That's it. No marketing copy, no brand story, no newsletter signup. Just products and social proof.
The psychology behind this was simple: when someone has 1000+ products to choose from, the biggest barrier isn't decision paralysis - it's discovery paralysis. They can't find products that interest them in the first place. By putting 48 products immediately visible, I eliminated the most common drop-off point.
This approach completely violated every homepage "best practice" in the book. No hero section telling the brand story. No clear value proposition above the fold. No guided customer journey from awareness to consideration to purchase.
Instead, I optimized for the actual behavior I saw in the analytics: people wanted to see products immediately and make their own decisions about what interested them. Rather than trying to guide them through a predetermined journey, I gave them immediate access to the inventory and let them create their own paths to purchase.
Real User Behavior
Tracked actual clicks and paths, not theoretical flows. Most customers ignored navigation entirely.
Conversion Focus
Optimized for purchase decisions, not journey stages. Direct product exposure beat guided discovery.
Homepage as Catalog
Made the landing page the browsing experience instead of a gateway to browsing.
AI Organization
Automated product categorization scaled to 50+ categories without manual maintenance overhead.
The results were immediate and dramatic. Within two weeks of implementing the new structure, the homepage became the most viewed AND most used page on the site again. More importantly, the conversion rate doubled.
But here's what surprised me most: the average time to purchase actually decreased. When customers could see 48 products immediately instead of having to navigate through category pages, they found what they wanted faster. The friction wasn't in the checkout process - it was in the discovery process.
The client went from treating their homepage like a marketing brochure to treating it like what it actually needed to be: a functional storefront. By eliminating the gap between landing and browsing, we removed the biggest conversion killer in their funnel.
The testimonials section below the products ended up being crucial for conversion, but only because customers could see it after they'd already found products that interested them. Social proof works much better when people are already considering a purchase than when they're still trying to figure out what you sell.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me that the biggest enemy of ecommerce conversion isn't poor user experience design - it's overthinking the user experience design. Here are the key lessons:
Map actual behavior, not ideal journeys - Your analytics show you what customers actually do, not what they're supposed to do according to your personas
For large catalogs, discovery beats guidance - When you have 1000+ products, letting customers explore is more effective than trying to guide them
Every click is a conversion killer - The more steps between landing and product browsing, the more people you'll lose
Homepage real estate is inventory space - Your most valuable web page should showcase your most valuable assets: your products
Best practices are industry averages - When everyone follows the same playbook, breaking the rules becomes a competitive advantage
Customer journey complexity scales with catalog size - The more products you have, the less predictable customer paths become
Automation enables personalization at scale - AI-powered categorization let us organize 1000+ products without manual overhead
The biggest lesson? When you're drowning in conversion problems, the solution isn't better journey mapping - it's eliminating the journeys that don't lead to revenue.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS platforms with multiple product tiers or feature sets:
Display key features immediately on homepage rather than hiding behind "Learn More" buttons
Make pricing visible upfront for customers ready to evaluate options
Use trial signup as primary CTA, eliminating extra discovery steps
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores with extensive product catalogs:
Homepage should showcase products, not brand messaging
Implement mega-menu navigation for category browsing without leaving main page
Use AI automation for product categorization to maintain organization at scale