We spend a lot of time talking about great experiences, so we polled our esteemed colleagues for their pet peeves. Here’s your guide to make sure you’re adding convenience and joy — not more holiday shopping stress — for your customers.
Let customers quickly see what they want
Only show products that are in stock. Shoppers don’t want to click on a product listing at the top of a category page only to find that it is out of stock in all sizes and colorways. At the least, indicate with a badge on the product image if a product is out of stock. Even better: Move out-of-stock items farther down in the list if you must show them at all. Allow customers to filter out-of-stock options from the listed results, or take it a step further and default this filter to “on.” Let the shopper opt in to view out-of-stock products, let them sign up for notifications when desired items come back in stock, and for goodness’s sake, please stop featuring products in ads and paying for the click if they’re not actually available.
Enable a filter to exclude certain product attributes. Shoppers now are more focused on fabrics and styles and are loyal to (or wary of) certain brands. Empower your shoppers to specify precisely what they want — and what they don’t want — to get them to the stuff they want to buy faster.
Optimize your product listing page (PLP)
Ensure that the number of products per page is divisible by the number of products in a row. Noticing huge drop-off for views of page two of your results? Check this rule of thumb. For example, if you display three products per row, the total number of products on each page must be divisible by three. If it’s not, you’ll have one or two products in the last row, followed by blank space. Visually, that makes it look like the shopper has reached the end of the list and there are no more products to show. They’re much less likely to look for the link to the next page and continue shopping.
Only refresh/reorder a PLP, such as a search results or category page, when it makes sense to the customer. If a customer is on a page, clicks to view a product, then uses the back button to return to the PLP, they don’t want to see the products instantly rearranged based on their perceived preferences from that click. It’s disorienting and frustrating to find different products displayed above their prior location that the shopper hasn’t seen yet (and/or to scroll downward to find items that they’ve already seen). If they try to return to something they saw a moment ago and now it’s gone, it’s a bad experience. Be consistent in a single experience, and save those updates for the next search or browse experience.
Do refresh/reorder PLPs on the next search or visit. Regular or repeat visitors don’t need to see the same products in the same positions each time they arrive — especially if they didn’t purchase last time. The more you learn, the smarter your PLP should look to loyal customers. Show them what they want and not just what they clicked on. Consider what they want right now, in this season, based on their history and other trends. Personalized product discovery experiences work best when customers don’t even realize they’re happening — they just see more of what they want.
Do not auto-reload PLPs when customers return to them. Always restart the shopper in the place they left off. Nothing makes a shopping adventure more clunky (and impossible to navigate on mobile) than a constantly refreshing PLP that dumps you back to the top of the page each time you return to it. On a desktop, a savvy shopper might right-click on a product and “view in new tab” to preserve their current position in the PLP. But many shoppers don’t know how to do that, and you shouldn’t expect them to do it in the first place.
Make sure your PLPs can keep up with your shoppers. “Infinite scroll,” popularized by endless social media feeds, can be nice for shoppers who are here for the browsing experience. But if you use infinite scroll, make sure it flows well. It’s OK to break PLPs into pages (as long as you avoid the other pitfalls above). But do not add the “view more” button to perpetually force the user to indicate that, in fact, they scrolled all the way to the bottom and wanted to see more things. There is nothing worse for a shopper than hitting “view more” four times to then have the page reload and lose their spot. This also makes it likely that you’ll have the issue in item five above, as well.
Provide granular product filters that recognize real customer preferences. What are the details that drive the “add to cart” click for customers? Ensure that every relevant product detail is exposed in facets/filters. Experiment with this over time. Some commerce search vendors will show facets lower in the list if they’re rarely chosen. Let customers drill right down to what they want. Work in the details such as product materials/ingredients, country of origin, and specific product features (shoutout to Lululemon’s “pocketed” facet on leggings).
Make return visits to your site easy
Support endless wish lists and saved-for-later items. Sometimes shoppers just want to shop … but not buy. Maybe they’re researching things for the future, shopping for a specific person/occasion, comparing prices/options to other sites, or choosing to purchase things separately. Even if they’re not buying now, give them the easiest path back. We all have short attention spans now. Remind them what they considered buying, and maybe take a page out of Amazon’s book: Let them know if the price has dropped to incentivize that delayed sale!
Limit loyalty pop-ups, and make sure that they remember — and don’t haunt — shoppers. Brands’ loyalty sign-up modals can be worse than the ghost of Christmas past. While actively browsing a page, a shopper might accidentally click and dismiss the pop-up — or decline because they’re not sure they’re that committed to the brand or purchase. Take the hint, and let them browse in peace: Don’t bother them with endless invitations. At the same time, the regret is real if they do decide to buy and then can’t find the offer anywhere. Let them have the option to sign up after declining, either with a permanent banner at the bottom of the page or by repopulating it only on the home page, where they’re most likely to look for it again. Ideally, if the shopper is a repeat customer, you can invite them to log in rather than sign up to access the loyalty discount, since they’re already your loyal shopper.
One more bonus holiday gift from us:
Provide comprehensive cart controls! If they waited a little too long and missed the sale, or came back to find their whole cart out of stock, allow shoppers to “remove all” from their cart or “save all for later.”
No one wants to click “remove,” wait what feels like an eternity for the page to reload, then scroll and do it again. Don’t make your customers sit and manually remove their out-of-stock gifts from their carts one by one. Give them the option to get notified when items come back, remove them in bulk, or select en masse what they want to move to a wish list.
That’s our picky list for the season! Check it twice to sure you’re not offending Santa this season.
For more advice on how to optimize your commerce search to facilitate shoppers’ product discovery journey, reach out for a guidance session. For more tips for the holiday season, see the rest of our holiday prep blog series for 2025!
(Coauthored with Delilah Gonzalez, senior research associate)
