Your Homepage Is NOT Your Front Door

Your Homepage =/= Your First Impression

The most difficult real estate to adjust on an ecommerce site? The homepage.

The most important real estate on an ecommerce site? Definitely not the homepage.

Internally, most brands still think about their store in a very linear manner.

You enter through the homepage → navigate through collections → reach a product you like → proceed to cart & checkout.

That is the journey that some users take. However, that segment is far from a majority. In most cases we observe around 10-15% of users landing on the homepage.

In the majority of cases your site begins with the above the fold experience on your PDP.

For many users it becomes a one-page website. Orienting, motivating, and reassuring them within a few swipes is the ultimate challenge.

Adjusting the experience accordingly is one of the first things we do with brands who struggle on PDP → Cart rate.

So where does that leave your homepage?

Unless you are actively driving traffic to it, users reaching the homepage did so intentionally. They are likely either returning visitors or customers proactively seeking you out.

That is the reason we place a stronger emphasis on product discovery over brand elements on the homepage.

In our 2025 Intra-Site Funnel Benchmark Report we found, on average, 30% of homepage users advance to view a product. For a higher-intent cohort this is extremely low.

Improving that rate largely comes down to functionality (with some considerations for catalog size). The easiest levers to pull are straightforward:

❏ Homepage Hero - Users often display blindness to a vague header. The larger the catalog the more they cruise past because what are the odds you are displaying what they need to see front and center?

❏ Shop by Category - Showcasing your top 4-6 categories under the hero is our default pattern. First time customers and users who know exactly what they are looking tend to use this method of product discovery more.

❏ Shop Best Sellers / Featured / New Arrivals - We rarely like to lead with this on large catalogs. If you have hundreds of SKUs, what is shown is unlikely to be relevant. But for a repeat customer seeking you out “what’s new / popular” is a common thought process.

❏ Navigation Menu - Main product categories work best as a top-level option. And, if you can visually separate categories from rotating collections even better. 30% of your users will interact with a menu so nailing this is vital.

Curious to know how your homepage performs?

Check out our Intra-Site Funnel Looker report to evaluate how well your users advance from the homepage to a product page. (Step 3 - Under Landing Page Category)

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