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What are your collection pages sorted by?
One fix sits on your collection page, the other in your cart. Plus a five figure ebook, 10 high converting stores, and BFCM Insiders
Oliver Kenyon
September 30, 2026
Hey optimizer,
Most carts are designed as though the decision has already been made.
It hasn't. That assumption is the most expensive one on your store and there's a seven figure example of fixing it in this issue
01 / ROUNDUP
Weekly Content Roundup
Get the latest and greatest CRO content from around the web.
02 / CLIENT RESULTS
"They know what converts and which variables to focus on"
13 years of testing will do that.
Want this on your store? Get the most out of every dollar invested in ads
03 / A/B TEST OF THE WEEK
Check what your collection pages are sorted by
On most stores it's whatever was picked when the collection was created, and nobody has looked since.
Usually that's Newest or Best selling.
Newest shows every visitor the products with the least proof: the fewest reviews and no track record of selling.
Best selling sounds safer, but it counts units, which over weights your cheapest product.
Rank by revenue per session instead.
It tells you which products actually earn when someone looks at them. Pull it from your analytics, set the collection to Manual sort in Shopify, and drag the top earners into the first four positions.
The first row of a collection page gets a wildly disproportionate share of clicks.
On mobile it's often the only row seen at all. So the sort order isn't a preference setting. It's a merchandising decision you're currently letting a default make.
Two things to get right
Re-rank monthly, not daily. Daily reordering makes the page feel unstable to returning customers and chases noise.
And keep a proper New In collection, because your repeat buyers want it. It just shouldn't be the default view for a first time visitor who has no idea what's good.
A best seller badge helps a customer choose between the products you showed them.
The sort order decides which products they ever see.
04 / INTERNAL NEWS
Your Black Friday gets decided in October
Whatever you're planning this year, somebody in this room has already tried it and can tell you exactly how it went.
That's BFCM Insiders. 8 October, Batch LDN in Covent Garden, 60 to 80 FMCG and CPG founders, over half of them running brands north of Ā£5m.
For one afternoon they put the good stuff on the table:
ā The offer structures shifting volume this year without training your list to wait for 40% off
ā How to discount hard and still like what you see in the P&L in December
ā Stock levels, so you're not sold out on day two or sat on pallets in January
ā The TikTok hooks and creator plays converting right now, plus the site fixes you can still ship before November
ā What to do with a BFCM buyer once the discount's gone
ā Buying media in the most expensive auction of the year and coming out ahead
Free for approved guests. We read every request that comes in.
05 / EVEN MORE TESTS
Major recent cart win
We recently ran this for an ecom brand selling wood burning stoves. High ticket, considered purchase, buyers who have been researching for weeks before they ever reach the cart.
1. The selling points were written into the cart instead of being left behind on the product page.
2. The upsell row became something you page through rather than a fixed pair.
3. An estimated delivery date appeared, naming a day rather than a duration.
4. The payment marks moved under the checkout button.
The cart is the last page where someone is still deciding, and most carts are built as though the deciding is over.
Everything reassuring lives upstream. The buyer lands, sees a total, and has nothing in front of them except the size of the number.
Putting the guarantee, the delivery date and the payment methods on that one screen answers the three questions that surface at exactly that moment.
+$1,534,404
ANNUALISED (FORECAST)
It transfers to considered purchases with a real delivery question attached. On a $20 impulse basket there is nothing left to reassure.
A cart isn't a receipt.
It's the last page of the pitch.
06 / PARTNER WITH US
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