A Dutch online bookstore came to us with the symptom every catalogue-driven webshop knows: mobile traffic that scrolled, hesitated and bounced. The product pages were the leaking joint: buy-button buried below the fold, wishlist competing for attention, key buying signals hidden until after a scroll. We rebuilt the page around a single question: what does a right-handed mobile buyer need to see in the first thumb-reach to commit? The conversion ratio nearly doubled on the rebuilt template.
Benchmark the category, then rebuild the page around the thumb
01 · Benchmark: read the category before redrawing the page.
We mapped how the larger eTailers in the book category handle the mobile product page. Then we mapped the niche bookstores separately, the ones with strong editorial identity. The two patterns converge on a few non-negotiables and diverge on the things that matter for brand. We took the convergent patterns as the baseline and let the divergent ones stay client-specific. That separation is the difference between a template lift and a redesign that still feels like the client.
When the price difference between webshops is negligible, the webshop with the most user-friendly interface wins the customer. That is the whole CRO thesis on a catalogue page.
02 · Redesign: buy-button above the fold, on the right, with the buying signals it needs around it.
The audit surfaced the usual pitfalls: buy button buried, wishlist visually competing with it, crucial buying information (price, availability, format) hidden below the fold even on mobile, disorganised information hierarchy, and a buy button parked on the left despite most users being right-handed. We redrew the page with the buying decision in the first thumb-reach: price and format visible without scrolling, buy button on the right where the thumb naturally rests, wishlist demoted to a secondary affordance.
The buying decision moves into the first thumb-reach: price and format visible without scrolling, buy button on the right where the thumb naturally rests.
03 · Checkout simplification: from add-to-cart to next step without a navigation hunt.
The product-page work only pays off if the checkout absorbs the extra adds-to-cart without leaking them again. We tightened the path from add-to-cart to the next step: fewer screens, clearer affordance for “continue”, no hunt for the next button after the cart-confirmation. The result was an add-to-cart rate up nearly 47% and the conversion rate up around 50% on the rebuilt mobile product page.
The product-page work only pays off if the checkout absorbs the extra adds-to-cart without leaking them again.
By the numbers
The headline figures the client cared about: conversion rate up around 50%, add-to-cart up nearly 47%, on the rebuilt mobile product-page template. The mechanism behind it: a buying decision the right-handed mobile user can make in the first thumb-reach, then a checkout flow that doesn’t ask them to look for the next step.
Visitor-to-buyer ratio on the mobile product page, before and after the rebuild.
When price is a tie, the webshop with the cleaner mobile product page takes the order.
Boring, predictable, attributable. That’s what good PPC looks like.
Every engagement starts with a 30-minute audit: free, no slides, just a screen-share through your account.
Book the audit →