Hi all, this is my recommended layout and it’s based on these simple core insights with larger eCommerce stores.

1. Large stores have many skus, your mobile customers mostly want to swipe up or tap search (HotJar / Google tracking will show most people tap search on your site)
2. The remaining customers who want to browse on mobile, won’t give you much time.  They WILL scroll, they do NOT like to tap between pages and wait for pages to load.
3. When in doubt, look at Shopify’s mobile UX, it always has a great search bar for mobile users

Thus, here is my Ideal Mobile UX Layout for LARGE Inventory eCommerce brands on WooCommerce

Notice how long and skinny it is?  It’s built for the habit of thumb flipping up.  Capturing that last 30-20% of customers who are not just on your site to tap the search icon!  There are some alternative 3 column layouts but with real large brands, the spacing will feel too crowded.

What about the majority who are searching?

There are a few good search enhancement plugins for WooCommerce which I use consistently.  There are even some fuzzy search options.  This all depends on your product title having well thought out words and to some degree, users knowing what they need.

I don’t think anyone ever wants to tap more than 3 times to find their eCommerce product.  There’s just not much more we can improve on search than what’s already out there in the plugin world.

In any case, it’s always recommended to direct the user to the Product Page or the Category Page via your Instagram/TikTok/other ads for this reason!