Display Product Range Effectively on Your Homepage

Findings

Baymard research shows that first-time visitors heavily rely on homepage content and main navigation to determine a site's product range. When users can't quickly grasp the full scope of products available, they often leave without exploring further - even if the site actually carries what they're looking for. This immediate judgment of product availability based on homepage presentation directly impacts conversion rates.

Tips for desktop

Show Product Diversity on Desktop

On desktop sites, users heavily rely on visual elements to understand your product range. While important categories should claim significant portions of your homepage's screen real estate, you must dedicate some space to other product types to prevent underestimation of your catalog. The key is to ensure that users don't conclude you only offer a few product types when you actually carry many.

Images play a crucial role in this presentation as they demand the most attention from users. While you can use other visual elements like graphics and fonts to draw attention to your product catalog, images typically dominate user attention. Therefore, ensure your featured product types are displayed with either an image or at least a thumbnail.

Scrub Daddy strategically showcases their most popular product lines within the top half of their homepage. Additionally, they highlight specialty souvenir items in a dedicated section, providing a comprehensive view of their merchandise offerings.

With PageFly's Content List element, you can easily create visually appealing category displays that combine both images and text, helping visitors quickly understand your product range.

Organize Your Homepage Layout

When organizing your homepage layout, aim to showcase around 40% of your product types. This percentage ensures users get an overall sense of your site's product range without overwhelming them. You can feature either specific products or categories, as testing showed both approaches are equally effective in helping users understand your product range.

Consider adopting a category-focused approach over featuring individual products, as this can help users develop a category-browsing strategy, which is often more effective for product discovery.

Tips for Mobile

Make Mobile Menu (Navigation) Visible

On mobile devices, it's important to highlight product types on the homepage. Unlike desktop sites, where users can easily see menus and hover over options, mobile navigation is usually hidden. This means users rely entirely on the homepage to understand what you offer until they open the main menu.

A great way to fix this is by adding clear, top-level navigational text links directly on the homepage. Because mobile screens are small, these links stand out more than they would on a desktop. In some cases, they may be the only thing users see, making them highly effective for showcasing your product range.

JB Hi-Fi displays the main product categories with a scrolling bar on mobile, while text links allow users to quickly navigate to the product list they are searching for.

Organize Your Mobile Page Layout

Through testing, 3 effective approaches for mobile homepage organization have been identified:

1. Full Hierarchy Display – Show all top-level categories so users get a complete view of your product range.

Build.com’s homepage displays its entire top-level hierarchy, giving users a clear overview of the full range of products available.

2. Mixed Approach – Combine featured categories with a full hierarchy, balancing visual appeal and easy navigation.

RoomMates Decor, another PageFly customer, highlighted a key category while still displaying the full list of categories below.

3. Comprehensive Layout – Use a mix of featured products, featured categories, and key top-level links to create a well-rounded browsing experience.

Amazon effectively showcases its product range by combining featured products, highlighted categories, and a list of key categories. This mix provides a clear and comprehensive view of the site's diverse offerings.

All three approaches work well as long as they display a diverse product range, helping users quickly grasp what your store offers. With PageFly, you can implement any of these approaches effortlessly, thanks to its flexible elements and mobile-responsive design.

Important Note: For stores with a small, focused product catalog - like many direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands - highlighting individual products instead of categories is often more effective. This makes it easier for users to explore the full selection and navigate directly to products, especially when the overall structure is simple.

Conclusion

Effectively displaying your product range on your homepage is crucial for preventing site abandonment and improving conversion rates. With PageFly's versatile elements and mobile-responsive features, you can implement all these research-backed strategies to create an engaging homepage that clearly communicates your product range to visitors. Whether you're showcasing categories with the Content List element or building mobile-optimized navigation, PageFly provides the tools you need to create a homepage that converts.