We’ve talked a ton about website optimization on this podcast… even Q4-specific optimizations. I’ll drop those links in the show notes if you want to do a deeper dive.
But I know how it goes… your to-do list is never-ending, and sometimes you just need a quick-fire, timely episode to give you the kick in the pants to actually get it done.
I was inspired by a conversation with a lounge member who already had a lot of the right information, but needed to finesse the way she was presenting it. so today, I want to talk about a few must-consider automations and the best way to present them on your website
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Keep the Main Attraction Above the Fold
When it comes to your website, the most valuable real estate you have is what’s above the fold. That’s the part of the page people see without having to scroll — and if your most important stuff isn’t there, you’re already fighting an uphill battle.
Customers are pressed for time and have short attention spans. They want to know within the first few seconds if they’re in the right place when they land on your website and if they don’t find it easy to navigate or find what they’re looking for… they’re gonna go somewhere else.
I often run into issues like this on people’s home pages. Whether it’s because the banner is too tall or the text and button aren’t positioned in the best place… if that top banner doesn’t scream “clickable” it’s possible you’re losing attention on your most valuable home page asset.
This also happens on collection pages. There are a lot of reasons why you might have content at the top of your collection page. Whether it’s a lifestyle photo with a collection description, SEO text, or even helpful customer service information to guide the buyer through their shopping journey.
And while there is nothing inherently wrong with that content, I probably told you to put it there, you want to be intentional about how that content is presented.
For example, this lounge member. She has written content at the top of her collections, but her theme renders it really big. It takes up a lot of real estate and pushes her product listings below the fold.
She also ran into issues on her product page where the title was a few lines long, pushing the rest of the product information further down the page.
How exactly you go about fixing this is going to depend on your theme. It might just be a built-in styling or layout option you have to change. Or, you might have to think a bit outside the box for how you actually render the information on your website.
Let’s take the collection content. Instead of adding it to the collection description of the shopify admin and letting your theme render the way it was designed, maybe you use a different section, say a side-by-side image with text section so you can make better use of the upper part of the page.
When it came to her product title that also required a bit of out of the box thinking. While the long names were helpful for customers coming a collection, once they got to the product page they didn’t need the extra long full title. In that case, I recommended she either make the entire title smaller on the page OR… use metafields to store an alternate product name and use that on the product template instead of the main product.
At the end of the day, every website is different. The exact issues you’ll run into are going to be unique to your theme, your product assortment, and even your brand aesthetic.
The key is to look at your site with a really critical eye — not as the store owner who knows where everything lives, but as the customer who’s trying to make a fast decision. Ask yourself: what’s showing up first? Is it the stuff that actually drives the sale? Or is it filler that’s taking up space?
And if you do run into roadblocks with your theme, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Sometimes it’s as simple as tweaking a setting. Other times it’s about getting creative with how you render or style the information. The goal is always the same: keep the most important content front and center, and make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy.
Make Your Product Pages Do the Heavy Lifting
If your collection page gets people in the door, your product page is what actually makes or breaks the sale. This is the page where customers are making that final decision: “Do I trust this brand? Do I want this product? Do I feel confident enough to spend my money here?”
And here’s the mistake I see way too often: either merchants don’t include enough information, leaving customers with unanswered questions, or they dump way too much, giving people walls of text that nobody is ever going to read. Both of those approaches kill conversions — especially during Q4 when shoppers are moving fast and making snap decisions.
The goal here is simple: answer every question that could stand in the way of a purchase… but present that information in a way that’s quick, clear, and easy to digest.
Size & Fit Information
If you sell apparel, jewelry, shoes, or anything where fit is even slightly in question, this is non-negotiable. Shoppers won’t gamble on the unknown, especially during holiday gifting.
Now, how you display a size chart depends on your assortment. If you’ve got one universal chart, you can probably just link to it in a popup — most Shopify themes will let you surface content from a static page. But if your sizing varies by product, you’ll want to get more granular. In that case, use metafields so each item displays the chart that’s actually relevant. That way, your customer doesn’t have to figure out whether the chart they’re seeing applies to the product in front of them.
And don’t be afraid to add some visual aids here — a photo of someone measuring with a tape measure can be 10 times clearer than a block of text explaining how to measure your bust or inseam.
Product Details and FAQs.
This is where you think about the questions people are already asking you in your DMs or your inbox. What’s the fabric? How do I care for it? What’s included in the box? How long will it take to ship?
The trick is not just answering those questions, but presenting the answers in a way that doesn’t overwhelm people. Instead of one giant paragraph, break your info into accordion sections. Fabric and care in one. Shipping and returns in another. Sustainability or guarantees in a third. Customers can quickly scan, expand what they care about, and move on with their purchase.
If you have a particularly confusing or intricate product you might even want to add a full product FAQ section underneath the product information.
For example, one of my clients sell growth chart rules for kids —you know, to track their height. At the top of the product page we added the must-know information, exactly what they need to make a buying decision. Essentially, details about personalization, installation (so they know how easy it is), material details, and shipping time frames.
Then, underneath that in the center of the page we have the more in-depth questions they get, sometimes even after the fact. Like, what should I use to mark my kids height, what if I get it dirty, can I change the dimensions. Yes, these are all questions that might be important to a potential customer, but they’re not the universal questions everyone needs to make a buying decision. These are for those more… shall we say… needy customers.
Reviews & Social Proof
Fresh reviews build trust, but only if they’re easy to find. Don’t bury them 12 scrolls down. Feature a snippet of your star rating right under the product title. This is super simple to do on Shopify and your product information section should have a review star block. Then of course you have your standard review widget, but you can also add a custom section with any additional user generated content you want to feature like videos, and photos. Visual feedback from customers can give a shopper that final nudge to add-to-cart way faster than your own product description ever will.
Your Buttons
It sounds silly, but you’d be shocked how often I see this. Is your add-to-cart button easy to find, or is it buried below the fold because the product name or price takes up half the screen?
Customers are impatient. Make that add to cart button obvious. And no, it’s not necessarily the color that matters. At least not enough to make a material difference as a small business. But what does matter is the contrast. Make sure it stands out.
I’m also not a huge fan of the quick pay buttons on product pages. If you have a small product assortment or are a one-product store, it’s probably fine. But if your customers tend to shop around and add a bunch of items to their cart, consider removing it from your product pages. Don’t worry, they can still get to it from checkout. The problem on the product page is it immediately removes them from the shopping experience and it doesn’t trigger add to carts and start checkouts properly, so if they don’t complete their purchase you might not be able to follow up with them.
Cross-Sells
I’ve been talking about cross-sells since day one of running eCommerce Badassery. They are a tried and true tactic for helping customers and increasing your AOV. Think “complete the look,” “pairs well with,” “don’t forget the refills.” or do you want fries with that. I love a good pop-up or post-purchase cross-sell opportunity, but don’t sleep on the recommended items on the product page. And I don’t just mean the passive carousel of products that sits at the bottom of the page that most people never see. I mean the complementary products that you can add to the upper portion of your product page with the help of the Shopify Search and Discovery app.
The Product Page Strategy
Here’s the mindset shift I want you to take away: Your product page should feel like your best salesperson. The kind who anticipates your questions before you even ask them. Who knows when to give you the details, when to show you proof, and when to just get out of the way so you can hand over your credit card.
When you think about your product pages that way, you’ll stop just filling in fields in Shopify and start designing an experience that moves customers from “maybe” to “take my money.”
Navigation & Filters: Guiding Customers to the Right Products
When a customer lands on your site, they’re usually on a mission. Your job is to get them from “I think you have what I need” to “add to cart” with as little resistance as possible. That’s what navigation and filters are really about. Not fancy menus. Not clever labels. Clarity. Speed. Confidence. When these two pieces work together, people find the right product faster and feel confident hitting that add-to-cart button.
Unfortunately, this is one of the areas I see merchants overlook the most. But it’s tricky because there is no universal formula.
Focus on What Matters Most
Your navigation should reflect how your customers actually shop and what drives your sales. A women’s boutique might highlight tops, denim, dresses, and accessories. Another clothing store who makes the most revenue from their graphic tees might put multiple tee categories front and center, while everything else sits under a general apparel & accessories link.
Think about your hero products, your bestselling categories, or even the pain points your customer shops by. A skincare brand might organize by category (cleansers, moisturizers, serums) but also by concern (dryness, acne, aging) — because that’s how their customer thinks.
If you sell branded merchandise from other brands, then you probably want a shop by brand option too.
Keep It Clear and Manageable
Menus aren’t just about what’s included, but also how they’re presented. If your menu gets too long, it becomes hard to actually click the links. Just like we talked about keeping things above the fold earlier in this episode, the same is true for your menu. If you have a lot of links in one columns, look at other ways you can group them and create subcategories to create a mega menu. Those subcategories don’t even need to link anywhere, but should serve as a heading for the links underneath.
For example, let’s say you have gifts as a main parent category. Underneath that you might have a subcategory heading that says shop by price, with your individual collections listed underneath. You might also have shop by recipient, personality, or occasion.
You’ll also want to check your menu out on mobile. Even if it’s manageable on desktop, there might be widgets that cover up portions of your menu on a smaller screen.
Rotate Links as Needed
Just like you want to think through what’s important to your business and how your customer shops, you might also want to rotate things throughout the year depending on the time of year. Cycle in seasonal links when they’re relevant, like Holiday Shop or Mother’s Day gifts. Then you can retire them when the season is over.
While I typically recommend links like Wholesale live in your footer, there might be certain times of year, or even just seasons in your business when wholesale is more of a focus. If that’s the case, it’s okay to move it to the top so it gets more attention. You just don’t want to do it at the expense of another priority.
Use Multiple Paths to Your Best Sellers
Every time I think about merchandising, whether in store or online, I always think back to a story my uncle told me about the days when he was selling women’s shoes. He could have a particular pair of shoes out on the floor in two different places. He would watch customers pass the shoe the first time, only to pick it up when they saw the same shoe on a different shelf in a different part of the store.
Point is, just because you featured something somewhere doesn’t mean your customer saw it. So it’s okay to feature them more than once. Remember, we want to design our store for multiple different types of shoppers. Back to that client with the growth chart rules I mentioned earlier. These are featured everywhere on her site and multiple times in her menu.
Not only are they the hero image on her home page, but they’re under 3 of the main menu items. Best sellers, milestones, and kid’s decor.
No matter where that customer starts, whatever they think they’re looking for, they’re bound to be presented with those growth chart rulers.
Collection Filters are Vital
Your site organization doesn’t stop at the navigation menu, your collection filters matter too. Especially if you have a wide product assortment. As mentioned, it’s really important to consider how your customer shops when designing your navigation strategy. Spoiler alert… they all shop a little different.
Using skincare for example, just because someone clicked through to the cleanser category, doesn’t mean they don’t have a specific skin concern they want to solve. Sure, you might have a collection dedicated to that concern, but that’s not where your customer is at – so you’ll want to make sure skin concerns are also included as a filter.
Your collections, aka your navigation and your filters are going to be redundant. That’s okay. You’re doing it for all the different customers who are going to browse your store in different ways.
Not only do they browse differently, but they have different entry points too. Maybe one customer lands on your home page and uses your navigation menu while another ends up directly in a collection.
Your job is to have both methods available so the customer can interact with whichever makes sense for them.
The Wrap Up
At the end of the day, your website isn’t just a digital storefront — it’s your 24/7 salesperson. Every choice you make, from what shows above the fold to how you build your product pages to the way you structure your navigation and filters, either moves someone closer to the buy button or adds friction that makes them click away.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Your business is unique, your customers are unique, and your site should reflect that. So instead of chasing some perfect formula, I want you to look at your own website with fresh eyes. Ask yourself: If I were my customer, could I find what I’m looking for quickly? Do I have all the information I need to feel confident buying?
If the answer is anything less than a hell yes, then that’s your signal to tweak, test, and keep refining.
And if you feel too close to it, like you can’t see it clearly. Ask someone else. At my previous day job we actually had an agency that did regular website testing for us. We would give them specific tasks, like find X product, or tell us about our rewards program. We would give them little missions to complete and their screen would get recorded while they were doing it. This would give us insight into what it was like to navigate our website, find information, etc. Now you don’t need an agency to do this, but you do need someone who isn’t already familiar with your business or website. You want them to be flying as blind as possible for the most accurate results. I’ll tell you, it can be pretty eye opening.
Lounge members, if you want my feedback, post your site in the activity feed and I’ll take a peek.
If listening to this episode made you feel like you need a hefty content overhaul on your site, but you’re not sure how to properly organize it, check out Shopify Secrets. This will show you how to utilize metaobjects and metafields to streamline product content and present it in a clean and organized way.
And I know, all of this sounds like a lot of work. And it might be, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Prioritize what is lacking the most at the moment, just in time to get yourself in tip top shape for the holiday season, and you can revisit the rest in the new year.
Listen to this Episode
Episodes Mentioned
294. How to Increase the Conversion of Your Best Seller This Holiday Season
295. Updates to Make to Your eCommerce Website for the Holiday Season
Replay: 187. How to Write Product Descriptions that Convert with Reese Spykerman
