Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
When I started working with a Shopify client who had over 1,000 products, their conversion rate was bleeding. Not because the products were bad, but because visitors were using their homepage as nothing more than a doorway—landing there, clicking to "All Products," then getting lost in an endless scroll.
The data told a brutal story that every ecommerce owner dreads: great traffic, terrible conversions. The beautiful design that took months to perfect was actually working against them. Sound familiar?
This is the reality most ecommerce stores face. We obsess over making our sites look like award-winning portfolios while forgetting that customers just want to find what they need and buy it quickly. After years of building ecommerce sites and watching some fail spectacularly while others thrived, I've identified the design mistakes that kill conversions faster than anything else.
Here's what you'll learn from my real-world experience fixing broken ecommerce sites:
Why following traditional homepage design "best practices" actually hurt conversions
The one design decision that doubled my client's conversion rate overnight
How to structure navigation when you have 1000+ products without overwhelming customers
The hidden psychology behind why customers abandon carts (it's not what you think)
My framework for testing design changes that actually impact revenue
This isn't theory from some design blog—it's what I learned the hard way working with real stores losing real money every day their design stayed broken.
Common wisdom
What every ecommerce "expert" tells you
Walk into any ecommerce design conversation and you'll hear the same advice repeated like gospel. The industry has created a playbook that everyone follows religiously, but here's the thing—it's often wrong for your specific situation.
The standard ecommerce design formula looks like this:
Hero banner with your best-selling product or latest promotion
"Featured Products" section showcasing 4-8 curated items
"Shop by Category" blocks with pretty lifestyle images
Social proof section with testimonials and reviews
Newsletter signup with a discount offer
This structure exists because it works for some stores—specifically those with small, curated catalogs where every product can be a hero. Think fashion brands with seasonal collections or artisan shops with 20-50 carefully crafted items.
The problem? Most ecommerce stores don't fit this mold.
When you have hundreds or thousands of products, when your customers are looking for specific solutions rather than browsing for inspiration, when your strength is variety rather than curation—this conventional approach becomes a conversion killer.
Yet agencies keep building the same homepage structure because it's what looks good in case studies. Clients approve it because it matches what they see on other "successful" sites. And everyone wonders why the conversion rates stay stubbornly low.
The real issue isn't the design itself—it's the one-size-fits-all mentality that ignores what your actual customers need and how they actually shop.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this particular client approached me, their situation was every ecommerce owner's dream and nightmare rolled into one. Dream: they had built an impressive catalog of over 1,000 high-quality products. Nightmare: customers couldn't find anything, and the conversion rate was tanking.
The existing site followed every "best practice" in the book. Beautiful hero images, carefully curated "Featured Products," elegant category blocks. It looked like it belonged in a design portfolio. But the analytics told a different story entirely.
The data revealed the real problem: Visitors would land on the homepage, immediately click "All Products," then get overwhelmed by an endless scroll of items. The homepage wasn't helping them discover products—it was just a speed bump between arrival and frustration.
I spent weeks analyzing user behavior, running heat maps, watching session recordings. What I discovered challenged everything I thought I knew about ecommerce design. The problem wasn't that the site was ugly or broken. The problem was that we were designing for the wrong customer journey.
Their customers weren't casual browsers looking for inspiration. They were people with specific needs, searching for specific solutions. They wanted to find the right product quickly, compare options efficiently, and buy with confidence. Our beautiful, curated homepage was actively working against this natural shopping behavior.
This is when I realized that most ecommerce design advice comes from designers who've never actually run an online store. They optimize for aesthetics and portfolio pieces, not for the messy reality of real customer behavior and actual conversion metrics.
The client was skeptical when I proposed what seemed like design heresy: making the homepage more functional than beautiful. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and we were both tired of watching potential sales slip away every day.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's what I did that went against every piece of conventional ecommerce wisdom you've ever heard: I turned the homepage into the catalog.
Instead of hero banners and curated sections, I displayed 48 products directly on the homepage. Instead of hiding the inventory behind category pages, I made discovery the primary function. Instead of trying to tell a brand story above the fold, I let the products speak for themselves.
The technical implementation was surprisingly straightforward:
Navigation overhaul: Built a mega-menu system that showcased all 50+ categories without overwhelming users. Each category revealed subcategories on hover, allowing for precise navigation without leaving the homepage.
AI-powered categorization: Created an automated workflow that sorted new products into the correct categories based on product attributes, removing the manual overhead that was bottlenecking inventory updates.
Homepage as product gallery: Replaced traditional homepage sections with a clean, fast-loading product grid showing 48 items with smart filtering options.
Strategic social proof placement: Instead of a dedicated testimonials section, we embedded reviews and ratings directly into the product grid, making social proof contextual rather than promotional.
The psychology behind this approach: When customers have that many options, choice paralysis isn't solved by hiding choices—it's solved by making choices easier to navigate. The mega-menu let power users jump directly to what they needed, while the homepage grid let browsers discover products they didn't even know they were looking for.
We also implemented what I call "progressive disclosure"—showing enough product information to spark interest (image, price, quick specs) while keeping the interface clean. Customers could get a sense of the full catalog without drowning in details.
The most controversial part? We removed the traditional hero banner entirely. No promotional messages, no brand storytelling, no featured product spotlights. The homepage existed for one purpose: helping customers find what they needed as quickly as possible.
This wasn't just a design change—it was a complete philosophical shift from "selling" to "serving" the customer's discovery process.
Navigation Logic
Smart mega-menu with 50+ categories that revealed subcategories on hover, eliminating the need for endless category pages while maintaining clean aesthetics.
AI Categorization
Automated workflow that sorted new products into correct categories based on attributes, removing manual bottlenecks and ensuring inventory was always properly organized.
Homepage Strategy
Replaced traditional sections with 48-product grid plus testimonials, turning the homepage into a functional catalog rather than a promotional brochure.
Progressive Disclosure
Showed just enough product info (image, price, specs) to spark interest while keeping the interface clean and decision-friendly.
The results spoke louder than any design award could:
Conversion rate doubled within the first month of launch. But more importantly, the homepage reclaimed its position as the most-used page on the site, not just the most-viewed. Customers were actually engaging with it instead of immediately bouncing to search.
Customer session duration increased significantly because people could accomplish their shopping goals without getting lost in navigation loops. The bounce rate dropped as visitors found what they needed faster than ever before.
Perhaps most telling: customer support tickets about "I can't find X product" virtually disappeared. When navigation actually works, customers don't need to ask for help finding things.
The client was initially worried about losing the "premium feel" of their old design. But sales data has a way of changing perspectives quickly. When revenue increased while maintaining the same traffic levels, aesthetic concerns took a back seat to business results.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The biggest lessons from this complete homepage overhaul:
Function beats form every time: Customers don't care how beautiful your site is if they can't find what they need. Design for utility first, aesthetics second.
Category structure is everything: With large catalogs, your navigation architecture becomes your competitive advantage. Invest in getting it right.
Test against your actual customers, not industry benchmarks: What works for a 20-product boutique will kill conversions for a 1000-product marketplace.
Automation scales better than manual curation: AI categorization eliminated the human bottleneck that was preventing inventory growth.
Homepage purpose should match customer intent: If people come to browse your full catalog, give them your full catalog, not a marketing brochure.
Progressive disclosure reduces overwhelm: Show enough to spark interest, not enough to cause analysis paralysis.
Data wins arguments: When conversion rates double, aesthetic debates become irrelevant.
The hardest part wasn't implementing the changes—it was convincing stakeholders to abandon "best practices" that weren't working for their specific situation. But that's the real lesson: best practices are starting points, not finish lines.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to avoid similar design mistakes:
Prioritize feature discovery over brand storytelling on your homepage
Use clear, functional navigation instead of clever category names
Test your signup flow with real users, not internal assumptions
Make your pricing page accessible from everywhere, not hidden
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores with large catalogs:
Consider making your homepage functional rather than promotional
Invest in smart categorization and filtering systems
Test mega-menu navigation for complex product hierarchies
Use progressive disclosure to prevent choice paralysis