Treat discovery as a question, not a diagnosis
Before making checkout your next redesign project, ask a more basic question: can shoppers find something worth buying? The title is a provocation, not a diagnosis of every store. Without evidence from your own experience, product discovery should be a priority to investigate, not a convenient explanation for disappointing sales.
Baymard’s September 2024 product-finding research update reports 219 qualitative user/site usability sessions across 12 sites. Participants encountered more than 1,000 medium-to-severe usability issues involving product finding. That establishes plenty of scope for investigation, but it does not tell us which issue matters most for your catalogue.
As designers, our job is to turn that research into useful questions. Can someone reach a relevant category, narrow the selection and judge suitability without repeatedly opening products that turn out to be wrong?
Review the route into the catalogue
Start with a realistic shopping task rather than a homepage critique. Choose one product need and trace both a browsing route and a search route. Record where the interface asks someone to make a decision, and whether it provides enough information to make that decision.
Baymard’s update retains its recommendation to avoid hiding product categories beneath a generic Shop or Products level in mobile navigation. On desktop, that extra level is acceptable, although the research still describes it as additional friction. Review the two layouts separately rather than shrinking the desktop structure into a mobile drawer.
Also check the movement between navigation and search. Baymard observed menus opening immediately as participants moved their cursor past them, disrupting their intended action. In your review, deliberately move across the header towards search and note unintended menu openings.
Make product cards answer suitability questions
Treat a product card as a decision aid, not just an image with a price. Ask what someone needs to know before deciding that a product deserves a closer look. Keep that question specific to the category rather than filling every card with every available attribute.
The supplied research gives two useful examples. Hidden colour swatches on mobile forced users to visit product pages to see the full range. A product shown without an out-of-stock indication raised a participant’s hopes, only to disappoint them on the detail page. Both examples expose information that arrived too late.
For your next design pass, annotate each card with the questions it answers and those it postpones. Consider making all colour options available for visually driven products and showing stock limitations before the click. Then check the densest realistic content, not only the neatest sample product.
Choose interactions around the product decision
Avoid treating quick view, pagination or filtering layouts as universal design preferences. Baymard’s revised guidance supports quick views for visually driven products while continuing to advise against them for specification-driven products. The relevant question is what someone can meaningfully decide inside that smaller view.
A useful prototype exercise is to define the quick view’s purpose before drawing it. If it lets someone inspect an appearance or choose a size while remaining in the list, there is a clear task to explore. If evaluating the product requires extensive specifications, keep the full detail page central to the design.
Likewise, Baymard still prefers load more but says pagination can work with attention to implementation details. It also advises caution with horizontal filtering toolbars. Use these distinctions to guide review, not to justify replacing a working pattern purely for visual consistency.
Turn the review into a focused project
Bring the findings together in a short issue list: the shopping task, the obstruction, the relevant research and a proposed change. Separate observed problems from assumptions that still need checking. Prioritise a coherent journey through one category before proposing a catalogue-wide redesign.
To discuss a project with Scott Design Studios, bring your store URL, one priority category and the shopping task you want to improve. We can use those starting points to discuss a focused discovery review, the design questions it should answer and an appropriate scope.