Product Discovery
14+
150+
$1B+
The funnel leaks in the middle
Most stores lose the sale between the homepage and the product. The visitor arrived interested, searched or browsed, hit a wall of wrong results or endless categories, and left. Nothing was broken. It just wasn't findable.
Product discovery is UX architecture: the structural design of how people move from intent to product. Search, navigation, filtering, merchandising and recommendations, working as one system instead of five features that shipped separately.
On large catalogs it's the highest-leverage design work there is. On most stores we measure, visitors who use search convert at a multiple of visitors who browse. Your analytics will show you the same gap. Discovery work closes it.
The discovery system
Site search and merchandising
Fast, typo-tolerant, attribute-aware search with merchandising rules you control. Built on Algolia when scale demands it, tuned on your actual query data either way.
Information architecture
Category structures that match how customers think, not how your org chart is drawn. On large catalogs this is the design decision that everything else inherits.
Filters and facets that work
Filters are only as good as the attributes underneath. We build them on structured product data, so "waterproof" is a fact, not a hope buried in a description.
Zero-results rescue
Every dead-end search gets an exit: synonym handling, smart fallbacks, and merchandised alternatives. A no-results page is a checkout you cancelled on the customer's behalf.
Shopify or Die
Insights into the current and future state of Shopify Plus commerce. Headless architecture, agentic commerce, integration strategy, and the engineering decisions behind stores that scale.
Designed on data, ready for agents
Discovery decisions are design decisions, made on data. They sit alongside storefront UI and UX in our design practice and get validated the same way: analytics before moodboards.
And the system you build for people is the one agents will use. Precise queries, structured answers, honest availability: that's agentic commerce on the storefront side, ready before the traffic arrives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is product discovery in ecommerce?
Product discovery is the system that moves a visitor from intent to product: site search, navigation, category structure, filtering, merchandising and recommendations, designed as one thing rather than five separate features. It is UX architecture, and on large catalogs it is usually the highest-leverage design work available.
Why invest in site search specifically?
Because searchers self-identify as buyers. They told you exactly what they want; the only question is whether your store can answer. Check your own analytics: compare conversion for search users against browsers, then look at your zero-results rate. That's the money on the table.
Do we need Algolia?
Not always, and we'll say so. Small catalogs with simple attributes do fine on native search. Algolia earns its cost when catalogs get large, attributes get rich, and merchandising rules need real control. It's our default on headless builds for exactly those reasons.
What is UX architecture?
The structural layer of experience design: information architecture, navigation systems, discovery flows and page hierarchies. It's the difference between a store that looks good and a store where ten thousand SKUs feel effortless to shop.
How does discovery help AI agents?
Agents query catalogs the way power users do: precise questions, expected answers. Discovery built on real structured attributes serves both. It's the on-site half of agentic commerce, powered by the same product data.