Designing User-Friendly Ecommerce Sites

70% of business owners find it hard to boost their conversion rate beyond a certain number. Most have tried: - improving their copy - improving their product images - different offers and FOMO strategies Yet they struggle to move the conversion needle. That's when I suggest looking at something more fundamental. The information hierarchy. It's the order in which you arrange content. The most important, relevant information/sections being shown first. Ignoring information hierarchy can make your users feel confused, uninformed, or even miss crucial steps. Ultimately making them bounce or not convert. In this example, using daily objects product page, I've implemented changes that can increase the conversion rate by improving the information hierarchy. Below are the 6 changes I recommend a/b testing - 1. Adding an announcement bar highlighting a sale, an offer you're running, or your free shipping threshold. 2. Moving the product name, reviews, and price above the image. This way, the space b/w the image and add-to-cart is reduced. Making it appear closer than it is. 3. Adding image thumbnails. This is critical if your images contain information like product features. 4. Showing product benefits before the add-to-cart CTA in an easy-to-consume format (like bullet points). 5. Optimizing the area around the add-to-cart by highlighting the shipping and return policies. 6. Highlighting offers close to add-to-cart as that's when the user is considering taking an action. Other changes I made: 1. Adding the logo bar with hamburger, search, and cart icon. This is important to maintain if you're driving ad traffic directly to product pages. 2. Adding the in-line / within-the-page add to cart. I'm seeing more brands removing the within-the-page add to cart CTA and replacing it with a sticky one. Make sure you a/b test this before implementing. 3. In the options section, adding an action verb like 'Choose' or 'Select' next to 'Color', 'Size'. This prompts the user to take an action. Found this useful? Let me know in the comments! P.S. The best way to identify gaps in your information hierarchy is by using heatmaps and scroll-maps tools like Microsoft Clarity. It's free to use and can help you back your hypothesis with actual user insights. #conversionrateoptimization #uxdesign

Why white packaging still one of the best sellers? Why does minimalism continue to thrive in the beauty and fashion sector, surrounded by attention-grabbing calls? Many prestigious brands continue to bet on minimalist proposals, what do they do to generate attraction and what we can learn from them? → Resonate in consumer mind with honesty and transparency. White, a natural color, suggests purity and allows the focus to be on the product itself. This resonates with consumers who value authenticity and appreciate seeing the product through the packaging. It actually has a lower carbon footprint and tends to be much more economical to manufacture or recycle. This can be the ideal complement to match your brand or product's storytelling and be a reassurance for the consumer when making a selection. → Demonstrate uniqueness, exclusivity trough focus on details. Minimalism can imply high-quality ingredients or craftsmanship. The absence of busy graphics positions the product as sophisticated and deserving of a premium price point. The product details are exalted and must have a high-end finish; this is the difference the consumer will perceive and associate with your brand's values. White acts as a blank canvas, allowing the product itself to take center stage. This is a good tool for products offered with high added value, serving as an enhancer, a synonym of uniqueness and exclusivity. → Aligns with eco-conscious practices and sustainability values. It's no secret that there is a growing number of users looking to connect with the values of sustainable brands. The clean, uncluttered look avoids excess materials and inks, reflecting a commitment to reducing environmental impact. Consumers increasingly associate minimalism with eco-conscious practices. A minimalist approach aligns with a growing consumer preference for simplicity and ease. Clean lines and uncluttered design convey a sense of calm and focus on the product's core functionality. → The expressiveness of the white canvas. Don't think that just because a packaging is white, it shouldn't be expressive. The strategic use of basic elements can be very powerful: the typography, materials, shapes, and finishes you choose will be much more noticeable and will have a special force. The key is to maintain white spaces and highlight them. Your product should be like the showcase of a jewelry store; don't try to fill it with things. Instead, use the space to create uniqueness. Concluding... Minimalist packaging continues to be an important anchor for generating successful products, as long as we know how to make the most of the details, highlight the elements that compose it, and create value in the user experience through its materials and finishes. To conclude, I leave you with a selection of images that I have searched for you. I hope they serve as inspiration for your next success. #beauty #minimalistpackaging #beautypackaging #sustainablepackaging #luxurypackaging

SaaS landing pages don’t fail because of bad features. And before someone comments: “But our product is powerful!”  Hear me out. Power doesn’t sell. Clarity does. Users don’t land on your homepage to explore. They land to answer one question: 👉 “What do I get if I stay?” That’s exactly what we focused on in this R&D SaaS CRM homepage concept. No gimmicks. No fluff. Just outcome-driven UX. Here’s how this page is engineered to convert 👇 1. Clear outcome, instantly “Forward, Automate, Close your Deals” Not features. Not buzzwords. A result. Users know what they’ll achieve in 3 seconds. 2. Automation promise, not explanation The subtext doesn’t teach automation. It reassures it. Email → Deal Manual → Automatic Effort → Closed-won 3. One primary CTA “Try Free for 7 Days” No choice overload. No secondary distractions. One action. One path. 4. Visual cues that guide attention Floating UI elements aren’t decoration. They: - Create motion - Direct focus - Simulate product value Your eyes move where we want them to. 5. Context before commitment Inbox. Transfer email. CRM cards. Users see the workflow before signing up. No imagination required. 6. Trust without shouting Clean UI. Enterprise polish. Calm spacing. Trust is built quietly, not announced loudly. The truth is… High-converting SaaS pages aren’t designed. They’re strategized. You don’t convince users. You remove friction. You don’t explain value. You show it. That’s what good UI/UX really does. This is an internal R&D concept by our design team. But the principles? They’re battle-tested. If your SaaS homepage isn’t converting, it’s probably not a traffic problem. It’s a clarity problem. PS: Save this post if you’re building a SaaS. Revisit it before your next homepage redesign.

Simple, Yet Striking. From the art movements of the 1950s to the iconic branding of Apple and Nike, the mantra "less is more" proves that simplicity has power. But here's the real challenge—how do you make sure your minimalist design doesn't get lost in a sea of plain white packages and black serif fonts? It's easy to blend into the crowd when everyone's playing the same game. That's where bold choices in colour, texture, and unexpected details come into play. Gabriele Melo's work with Wener Skincare is a perfect example of this balance. Her packaging is anything but ordinary, flaunting bold colours and textures that grab attention without screaming for it. Take the Clay-based Enzymatic Cleanser—its texture feels like fresh pottery, giving a nod to its clay formula. This tactile detail ensures the product stands out while maintaining a sleek, refined look. The design doesn't stop at textures. It also uses clean sans serif fonts and soft colours to create a calm background, letting the products stand out. Plus, there's a playful gradient on the sides of the boxes—just enough to spark joy and curiosity during the unboxing. The takeaway? Minimalism doesn't have to be bland. It's about stripping down to the essentials and then adding that unique element that makes your brand unforgettable. Textures can make you feel something. A splash of colour can turn plain into powerful. Even the simplest fonts can pack a punch. So, is less truly more, or is it time to shake up minimalism with a bit of the unexpected? 📷Gabriele Melo

I've helped 20+ VC-backed startups drive profitable growth. One core element of that is messaging uplifts. If you're a B2B startup, here’s how to nail yours: But first, let’s unpack why startups do such a bad job with their messaging especially on websites. They try to cram everything onto it, thinking it's their most important page. But here's the reality: 🦗 Your homepage gets little traffic initially 🎯 Most visitors land on campaign landing pages instead 🕵️ Those who do visit your homepage are often referrals The solution: Reframe your homepage as a referral and navigation tool. Think of it as a one-page pitch with clear pathways to other crucial information. Here's how to structure it: 1. ABOVE THE FOLD ↳ Value prop headline - benefit led statement (under 10 words) Example: "Pay the world." ↳ 25-word max product description - what the product allows you to do  Example: "Your business and customers can send payments to—and accept payments in—every corner of the world. Instantly." ↳ CTA to "Why us" page TIP: This section gets the most attention. Make it count! 2. JUST UNDER THE FOLD ↳ Social proof (customer logos, ratings, press coverage) ↳ CTA to case studies WHY: Build trust quickly with recognizable names and success stories. 3. FURTHER DOWN ↳ 3 lead benefits (not features!) ↳ Key product distinctive capabilities  ↳ CTA to product page REMEMBER: Benefits solve problems. Features are just tools. 4. WRAP UP ↳ Final CTA (e.g., book a demo) PRO TIP: Make this CTA stand out. It's your last chance to convert! This blueprint helps your homepage quickly answer: ↳ What do you do? ↳ Who do you serve? ↳ Why should they care? Key components to include: 🎯 Clear value proposition 🤝 Social proof  💡 Benefits and capabilities  🧭 Intuitive navigation If you follow the above plan, you should get a vastly superior UI/UX and double-digit growth in conversions. What's your biggest homepage challenge? AMA in the comments 👇

Scaling E-commerce Recommendations: How Allegro Built Three Systems from One Architecture Allegro, Central Europe's largest e-commerce platform, recently shared their approach to building recommendations at scale-serving 20 million active buyers with 20k requests per second at 40ms p99 latency. Their solution tackles a critical industry problem: maintaining dozens of recommendation placements without building dozens of separate models. Instead of choosing between expensive foundation models or high-maintenance domain-specific systems, they took a third path. The Core Architecture At the heart sits a Two Tower retrieval model using content-based filtering. Products are represented purely by content features (title, price, hierarchical category) rather than learned ID embeddings-a strategic choice for Allegro's highly dynamic catalogue where traditional ID-based approaches would constantly overfit to volatile inventory. Each product passes through dedicated embedding tables for its features, concatenates into a single vector via an MLP, then gets L2-normalized. The architecture uses weight tying between query and target towers, creating a shared "Product Encoder" that can be trained efficiently on a single GPU using sampled softmax loss with mixed negative sampling. Offline: models train on behavioural data, then Faiss builds daily-refreshed ANN indexes. Online: millisecond-level similarity search retrieves candidates. Three Use Cases, One Foundation 1. Similarity-TT: Standard item-to-item retrieval trained on co-view data. Query product -> encode -> ANN search -> similar products. 2. Complementary-TT: Modified query tower adds a complementary categories mapping (derived from co-purchase patterns). The model concatenates query product embedding with target category embedding, with an auxiliary loss enforcing category reconstruction. Same serving infrastructure, just queries both product + target category. 3. Inspirational-TT: Same encoder, but hierarchical ANN indexes enable controllable diversification. K-means clusters product embeddings into second-level indexes, with centroids forming a top-level index. User's recent 100 views (7 days) aggregate by category, query retrieves from diverse clusters. The Key Insight Rather than treating similarity, complementary, and inspirational recommendations as separate problems requiring separate architectures, Allegro reframed them as variants of similarity search-adjusting either the model (Complementary-TT's category injection) or the serving mechanism (Inspirational-TT's hierarchical indexes) while keeping the core encoder unchanged. A compelling reminder that thoughtful architectural choices can dramatically reduce complexity while maintaining effectiveness at scale.

You have to speak the same language without saying the same words. That is how a ‘brand consistency’ is built I onboarded a client recently who had been working on her socials through 3 different agencies. But after almost a year, she felt like something was missing or there’s something just not right. That’s when she reached out to me. And the main problem was a very inconsistent brand presence. The website felt high-end. But the LinkedIn posts sounded like a generic “growth hacker.” The newsletters looked overly sophisticated, But Instagram felt like an afterthought and more so casual. Obviously when 3 different agencies are going to handle 3 different platforms, maintaining a consistent tonality becomes a major challenge. Especially when brand doesn’t have a solid foundation. This inconsistency doesn’t just look unaligned but also creates a disconnect from your audience that slowly chips away your perceived value. We started working on her LinkedIn first and later her Instagram, website and newsletters as well. And what did we do? On LinkedIn we positioned her with authority but kept accessible. On Instagram, we maintained the visual language but simplified the messaging. On the website, we brought depth, showcasing expertise without overwhelming. In emails, we carried the same tone as conversations: personal, valuable, intentional. And even in DMs, we protected the brand voice (because that’s part of the experience too). When done right, your audience feels the same trust, familiarity, and confidence, no matter where they meet you. Platform aesthetics may change. Personality doesn’t. If you’re serious about building a consistent, premium brand presence across LinkedIn, Instagram, Website, and Email, let’s talk. Because building an online brand is not just mindless posting. #aashified #linkedin #brand

Grateful to be featured in the "Shoptalk Hot Takes" interview by Blenheim Chalcot and ClickZ.com alongside George Looker to unpack omnichannel commerce. 5 key takeaways and tactics from my conversation: 1. Design for Customer Continuity, Not Just Channel Expansion 💡 71% of customers expect brands to personalize interactions across every touchpoint. Tactical: Map out customer journey across channels, then design experiences that recognize and reward continuity—cart persistence, loyalty rewards, browsing history sync, etc. 2. Build the Infrastructure: Unify Data Streams Across All Touchpoints 🧠 Data fragmentation = missed opportunity Tactical: Integrate POS, e-commerce, mobile, social, and marketplace data into a centralized data lake or unified commerce platform. 3. Establish a Single Source of Truth for Customer Profiles 🔍 Brands with unified profiles see up to 2x better campaign performance. Tactical: Implement Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to consolidate behavioral, transactional, and engagement data into unified customer profiles. 4. Partner Strategically for Scale, Not Just Stack ⚙️ A bloated tech stack doesn’t equal agility As I noted, Retailers are getting sharper about which partners can scale with them. Ecosystem efficiency matters more than ever. Tactical Step: Audit your tech stack and partnerships consistently. Prioritize partners that offer extensibility, future-proofing, and proven omnichannel success. 5. Measure What Matters: Unified KPIs Across Commerce 📈 You can’t optimize what you don’t measure holistically Tactical: Align your analytics stack to report holistically across channels—tie marketing to merchandising, CX to LTV, and inventory to revenue. 🧠 Bottom line: think holistically, move strategically, and build ecosystems that scale experience with agility, not just transactions. Complete list in comment 👇 #ecommerce #omnichannel #unifiedcommerce

I've designed over 300+ websites. Let me share my 2025 guide to high-converting web design. This is based on real-world results. First of all: - I don’t mind sharing this for free - Sharing this doesn’t damage my business - Knowledge like this helps everyone build online Above-the-Fold (The First Impression) Users decide in 3 seconds if they’ll stay or leave.  Your hero section should: ✅ Clearly state what you offer ✅ Show an action-driven CTA ✅ Be visually engaging, not just "pretty" Example: "Welcome to our website!" "Get high-converting landing pages designed to sell." Make it obvious.  No one has time to "figure out" what you do. Navigation (The Silent Salesman) Your navbar isn’t just for structure… …it’s for conversions. Keep it: 🔹 Minimal (5-6 key links max) 🔹 Clear (No jargon like "Solutions" say what it is) 🔹 Sticky (Users shouldn’t scroll back up to navigate) Bonus: Add a direct CTA in your navbar. "Contact" (Too generic) "Get a Free Quote" (Action-driven) Call to Action (The Money Button) A weak CTA kills conversions.  Your CTA must be: 🔹 Actionable (Use verbs) 🔹 Specific (What’s in it for them?) 🔹 Contrasting (Make it pop visually) "Learn More" (Vague) "Get Your Free Audit in 2 Minutes" (Compelling) 80% of websites I review bury their CTA…BIG mistake.  Make it visible, bold, and repeated multiple times. Speed & Performance (The Dealbreaker) Users hate waiting. A slow website loses 40% of visitors before they even see your content. Speed up by: ✅ Optimizing images (No 5MB hero images, please) ✅ Minimizing plugins (Every extra plugin slows you down) ✅ Using a fast hosting provider Speed = Conversions. Google ranks faster websites higher too. Mobile Responsiveness (The Non-Negotiable) 80%+ of the traffic comes from mobile.  Yet, so many websites still fail mobile UX. Test these 3 things: 1️⃣ Tap Targets – Are buttons big enough? 2️⃣ Text Size – Can users read without zooming? 3️⃣ Layout – Does everything stack properly? "Pinch-to-zoom" is a sign your site is failing mobile users.  Fix it. Trust Signals (The Convincer) Before buying, users ask: "Can I trust this?" ✅ Show testimonials (Not just a wall of logos, real words) ✅ Add security badges (Especially if selling something) ✅ Use case studies (Proof > Promises) A simple testimonial next to a CTA can increase conversions by 34%. Don’t hide them on some random page… …put them where users take action. Read this far?  Now you know exactly what to do… This guide is literally worth thousands of dollars.  So I really hope you appreciate it. P.S. Ask me anything about web design:)