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, I made a decision that almost made my client fire me: I turned their homepage into their product catalog.
The result? We doubled the conversion rate and reclaimed the homepage as the most used page on the site. Here's exactly how we did it, and why breaking conventional wisdom sometimes leads to breakthrough results:
Why traditional homepage layouts fail for large catalogs
The exact structure we used to showcase 48 products on the homepage
How we built navigation that actually works at scale
The psychology behind why customers prefer direct product access
When to break conventional wisdom (and when to stick to it)
Explore more ecommerce optimization strategies or dive into our Shopify conversion tactics.
Best Practice
What the Pros Keep Saying About Homepage Design
The ecommerce industry has pretty much standardized the "perfect" homepage formula. Open any conversion optimization blog, and you'll see the same template repeated endlessly:
Hero section with value proposition – Usually a large banner with your main selling point
Featured collections – 3-4 carefully curated product categories
Social proof section – Customer testimonials and reviews
About us narrative – Your brand story and mission
Newsletter signup – Usually with a discount incentive
This approach makes sense for brands with limited product lines or strong brand storytelling. Companies like Apple or Tesla can afford to dedicate screen real estate to their narrative because people come to their sites with specific intent.
Industry experts consistently recommend focusing on brand storytelling and curated collections. The logic is sound: overwhelm visitors with too many choices, and they'll leave without buying anything. It's the classic "paradox of choice" applied to web design.
Most conversion optimization agencies will tell you to keep your homepage "clean" and "focused." They're not wrong—for certain business models. But here's what they miss: this conventional wisdom was built for a different era of ecommerce, when having 100 products was considered a large catalog.
Today's successful ecommerce stores often have thousands of SKUs. The traditional approach treats these massive catalogs like boutique collections, and that's where the disconnect happens.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working on this project, the client's frustration was palpable. They had a beautiful Shopify store with over 1000 high-quality products, but customers couldn't find what they wanted. The conversation rate was stuck at 0.8%—painful for any ecommerce business.
Their existing homepage followed every best practice to the letter. It had a stunning hero image, featured collections, customer testimonials, and a clean, minimal design that any design agency would be proud of. But when I analyzed the user flow data, the truth was devastating.
90% of visitors were clicking straight to "All Products" from the homepage. They weren't engaging with the featured collections or reading the brand story. The homepage had become nothing more than an expensive doorway that visitors rushed through to get to the actual products.
I watched the heatmaps and user recordings with horror. People would land on the homepage, scan for a split second, then immediately hunt for a way to see "everything." When they finally reached the product grid, they'd spend minutes scrolling, filtering, and getting lost in the sheer volume of choices.
The conversion funnel was broken at the most basic level. We had created a beautiful store that looked great in screenshots but failed at its primary job: helping customers find products they wanted to buy. The homepage was fighting against user behavior instead of supporting it.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After analyzing the user behavior data, I made a decision that violated every homepage design principle I'd ever learned: I turned the homepage into the product catalog.
Instead of the traditional layout, we built a homepage that displayed 48 products directly on the main page. No hero banners, no featured collections sections, no brand storytelling—just products, organized intelligently.
The Navigation Revolution
First, I tackled the navigation nightmare. With 1000+ products, traditional menu structures become unusable. I implemented a mega-menu system powered by an AI workflow that automatically categorized products across 50+ specific categories. When customers hovered over a main category like "Electronics," they'd see subcategories like "Smartphone Accessories," "Laptop Stands," "Cable Management," etc.
This wasn't just about organization—it was about reducing cognitive load. Instead of forcing customers to click through multiple pages to understand our product range, they could explore the entire catalog structure from any page.
The 48-Product Strategy
Why 48 products? Through testing, I found this was the sweet spot where we could show variety without overwhelming visitors on initial load. The products weren't randomly selected—we used smart algorithms to rotate featured items based on seasonality, inventory levels, and purchase patterns.
Each product card included the essential information: clear product image, title, price, and availability status. We added quick-view functionality so customers could get more details without leaving the homepage. Most importantly, we integrated related product suggestions that appeared when customers hovered over items.
The Testimonials Compromise
We didn't completely abandon conversion best practices. Below the product grid, we added a single testimonials section. This provided the social proof that's crucial for ecommerce without interrupting the product discovery flow.
Mobile-First Implementation
The mobile experience required careful consideration. We adapted the layout to show 6 products per row on mobile, with infinite scroll functionality. The mega-menu collapsed into an intelligent search-first interface that helped mobile users find specific products quickly.
Mega-Menu System
Built AI-powered navigation across 50+ categories, making the entire catalog discoverable from any page without overwhelming users.
48-Product Display
Showed optimal number of products on homepage to demonstrate variety while maintaining fast load times and clear visual hierarchy.
Smart Testimonials
Added single social proof section below products to maintain conversion psychology without disrupting the discovery experience.
Mobile Adaptation
Restructured layout for mobile with 6-product rows and search-first navigation to optimize for thumb-friendly browsing patterns.
The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Within the first month of launching the new homepage layout, we saw remarkable changes in user behavior and business metrics.
Conversion Rate Doubled
The site's conversion rate jumped from 0.8% to 1.7%—more than doubling our baseline. But the metrics told an even more interesting story about how customer behavior had changed.
Homepage Engagement Soared
The homepage went from being a waystation to the primary shopping destination. Time spent on the homepage increased by 340%, and the bounce rate dropped from 68% to 41%. Customers were actually using the homepage to shop, not just to navigate away from it.
Purchase Decision Speed
Perhaps most surprisingly, despite showing customers more options upfront, the time from first visit to purchase actually decreased by 23%. By presenting the product variety immediately, we eliminated the frustrating discovery phase that was causing customers to abandon their shopping sessions.
The client was initially skeptical—seeing 48 products on a homepage felt overwhelming to them. But the data proved that customers preferred immediate access to product variety over carefully curated selections that often missed their specific needs.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me five fundamental lessons about ecommerce homepage design that challenge conventional wisdom:
User behavior trumps best practices – When 90% of users immediately click "View All Products," your homepage should anticipate and serve that behavior.
Catalog size changes everything – Homepage strategies that work for 50 products fail spectacularly for 1000+ products.
Navigation is more important than storytelling – For large catalogs, helping customers find products matters more than brand narrative.
Choice paradox has limits – Showing more options can actually speed up decisions when organized intelligently.
Mobile requires different rules – What works on desktop must be completely reimagined for thumb-friendly browsing.
When This Approach Works (And When It Doesn't)
This strategy works best for:
Stores with 500+ products
Products that don't require extensive explanation
Customers who prefer to browse and compare
Mobile-heavy traffic patterns
Stick to traditional layouts for luxury brands, complex products, or stores with under 100 SKUs where storytelling adds genuine value to the purchase decision.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to implement similar thinking:
Feature your actual product interface prominently rather than abstract benefit statements
Show multiple use cases directly on homepage rather than hiding them in subpages
Make your feature set immediately discoverable through smart navigation
Use data to challenge conversion "best practices" that don't match user behavior
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores ready to test this approach:
Analyze your current homepage exit patterns - if users immediately seek "All Products," test a catalog-first approach
Start with 24-48 products on homepage and measure engagement vs. traditional layout
Invest in intelligent navigation that makes your full catalog discoverable
Prioritize mobile optimization since most browsing happens on phones
Keep social proof elements but don't let them interrupt the shopping flow