What Top Ecommerce Stores Get Right - And How to Bring It to Your Clients

Introduction and Framing

Katie opened by establishing the core premise of her talk: when agencies design WooCommerce stores for clients, they are working within fixed budgets, while simultaneously being surrounded every day by massive ecommerce platforms that have spent millions refining their interfaces. Rather than treating this as an insurmountable gap, Katie reframed it as an opportunity. Those big platforms have already run the experiments.

They have already tested what works. And their UX patterns are there to be studied, borrowed, and implemented using the plugin ecosystem that exists for WooCommerce.

She structured the session around four concrete case studies, each paired with a practical WooCommerce implementation path. She was also clear about the business rationale for agencies: these features should be positioned as upsells or optional extras in proposals.

Even if the client has not asked for them, presenting these ideas thoughtfully demonstrates expertise, adds perceived value to the pitch, and increases the likelihood of winning the project at a higher price point.

Case Study 1: Macy's - Making Products Easy to Find

The Macy's Benchmark Macy's is one of the largest department store retailers in the United States, with a catalogue of tens of thousands of products. Katie pointed to their approach to product search and filtering as the standout feature worth emulating. On a site with that volume of inventory, browsing without guidance is essentially useless. Macy's solves this through a highly functional filtering system that allows customers to progressively narrow down results based on multiple criteria such as colour, style, size, and price range. Crucially, the filter criteria change depending on the product category, so the options presented are always contextually relevant.

The filters are displayed prominently above the product grid (not buried in a sidebar), they use visual elements like colour swatches and range sliders, and they work equally well on mobile. This combination means that a customer can arrive at Macy's looking for, say, a navy blue midi skirt in a size 12, and get to a refined list of matching products in a handful of clicks, without needing to scroll endlessly through irrelevant results.

The Default WooCommerce Problem Katie was candid about the limitations of WooCommerce's built-in filtering. Default WooCommerce filters appear only in the sidebar, which is increasingly at odds with modern ecommerce design (most contemporary stores have eliminated the sidebar entirely). On mobile, sidebar filters are effectively invisible or severely degraded. The filter options are also limited in their visual presentation, relying on text-based lists rather than swatches or sliders. For a store with a small product catalogue, this may be acceptable. For anything

approaching Macy's scale, or even a modest catalogue of a few hundred products, it falls well short.

The WooCommerce Solution Katie's recommended solution for clients with meaningful product catalogues is the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin built by her own company, Barn 2. This plugin replicates the Macy's-style filtering experience by: Allowing filters to appear above the product grid (not only in the sidebar) Supporting visual filter formats including image-based selectors, colour swatches, and range sliders Ensuring filters work properly on mobile, since above-grid filters remain visible regardless of screen size Adapting the available filter options to the specific needs of different product categories For lower-budget projects, she acknowledged that default WooCommerce filters are still better than nothing, and that clients with small catalogues may not need anything more sophisticated. But for any client selling a significant number of products, the investment in proper filtering pays for itself through improved product discoverability and reduced customer frustration.

Case Study 2: Amazon - Encouraging Customers to Buy More

The Amazon Benchmark Amazon was Katie's second case study, and she chose it not because its visual design is particularly elegant (she noted it can look cluttered) but because of the sheer density of conversion-driving mechanisms packed into every product page. Amazon is extraordinarily focused on increasing the average order value of every transaction. Katie broke down three specific tactics that she believes agencies can and should bring to their WooCommerce projects.

Tactic 1: Subscribe and Save Amazon's "Subscribe and Save" feature allows customers buying eligible products to choose between a one-time purchase at full price or a recurring subscription at a reduced price.

Katie described this as one of the most effective customer retention mechanics available to any ecommerce store.

Her key insight here is that agencies tend to think of subscriptions only for the obvious product types, such as software, meal kits, or streaming services. But many more physical products are candidates for subscriptions than people realise. Coffee was the example from Amazon's own interface. Supplements, cleaning supplies, pet food, and personal care

products are all natural fits. Any product where a customer will inevitably need to re-purchase is potentially a subscription product.

The plugin she recommended is WooCommerce Subscriptions, which is a well-established solution in the ecosystem. Her advice was not about the plugin itself but about the mindset: when quoting a project for a client selling consumables or repeat-use products, proactively propose subscriptions as an option and articulate the revenue impact. A client who runs a small coffee brand, for example, is going to generate substantially more annual revenue from a base of subscribers than from purely transactional one-off buyers.

Tactic 2: Volume Bundles The second Amazon tactic Katie highlighted was the way Amazon presents quantity-based pricing. Rather than relying on a standard dropdown (buy 1, buy 2, buy 3), Amazon uses a visual card-based layout that shows each quantity tier clearly alongside the price per unit and the total savings. The visual format makes it much easier for customers to recognise the value of buying in larger quantities and makes it feel like a simple, attractive choice rather than a dull decision.

Katie noted that at the time she began researching this, she could not find any WooCommerce plugin that replicated this specific feature, even though it is common on Shopify through various apps. This gap led Barn 2 to build the feature into their WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin. Agencies can now use this plugin to create visual volume bundle displays on product pages, which she illustrated with an example showing a jacket listed with multiple quantity tiers.

She was careful to distinguish this from wholesale pricing: volume bundles of this type are suited to low-to-mid quantity nudges (e.g., buy 1, buy 2, buy 3) rather than bulk wholesale ordering. For wholesale, different pricing structures are more appropriate.

Tactic 3: Related Products and Cross-Sells The third Amazon tactic is the sophisticated way Amazon presents related, complementary, and recommended products throughout the product page. Amazon uses multiple approaches simultaneously: "Frequently Bought Together" sections where customers can add bundled items in a single step, dynamically generated recommendations based on browsing history, and purchase-based suggestions. The cumulative effect is a product page that almost always offers the customer something additional that is genuinely relevant to them.

Default WooCommerce does have a related products feature, but Katie described it as limited in two key ways. First, it requires manual selection for each product (assigning cross-sells and upsells individually per product), which is time-consuming and often skipped.

Second, the related products appear at the very bottom of the product page, where most customers never scroll. It is better than nothing, but barely.

She recommended two alternatives:

Smart Related Products Pro (by Shark Themes): This plugin uses AI-driven recommendations, dynamically selecting and displaying related products based on the individual customer's browsing history and viewing behaviour. This removes the manual overhead of assigning cross-sells product by product, and ensures the suggestions are personalised rather than generic.

WooCommerce Product Options (Barn 2): Katie described this as a different conceptual approach to cross-selling. Rather than showing related products at the bottom of the page, this plugin allows those related products to appear as options directly on the product page, above the Add to Cart button. The example she used was a smartphone product page where, before the customer even clicks Add to Cart, they are presented with options to add a case and accessories. Those accessories are separate products elsewhere in the store, but they are presented as though they are part of the smartphone purchase decision.

This positioning is the key insight: by forcing the customer to at least see and consciously decide about the add-ons before they add the primary product to the cart, the conversion rate on those add-ons increases substantially compared to presenting them far below on the page.

Case Study 3: Booking.com - Urgency and Social Proof

The Booking.com Benchmark Booking.com was Katie's third case study, and she chose it specifically because of how aggressively and systematically it deploys urgency signals and social proof across its interface. As Katie put it, the site is masterful at making you feel like you are going to miss out if you do not act immediately.

She walked through the specific mechanisms visible on a typical Booking.com listing page: Badges signalling time-sensitive deals: "Time Limited Deal," "Late Escape Deal," and similar labels create the impression that a good price is expiring soon.

Scarcity signals: Text like "We have 2 left" explicitly communicates that availability is running out.

FOMO wording: Katie highlighted a particular example of an apartment listed as a standalone property with only one unit. Booking.com had labelled it "Only 1 left at this price on our site." As she noted, there was only ever one of this apartment to book because it is a private listing. There was no shortage created by demand; the apartment simply has a quantity of one by definition. Yet the phrasing creates the same psychological urgency as a legitimately scarce hotel block. This illustrates exactly how far Booking.com goes to manufacture a sense of FOMO even where it might not genuinely exist.

The WooCommerce Solution Katie's recommended plugin for replicating this kind of urgency and social proof functionality in WooCommerce is Notification X, which she noted Barn 2 uses on their own website. Notification X displays pop-up style notifications informing current visitors of recent purchases or activity on the site (for example, "Someone in London just bought this product"), which creates live social proof without requiring the site owner to do anything after initial setup.

Beyond the pop-up notifications, Notification X includes multiple features all aimed at the same goal: creating urgency, demonstrating social proof, and signalling scarcity. Katie described it as one of the more versatile FOMO plugins she had tested and noted that it can be extensively customised to suit specific client contexts. She recommended it as a strong addition to client proposals, particularly for stores where the product or service has time-sensitive value or limited availability.

Case Study 4: Sephora - Visual Product Options and Customer Loyalty

The Sephora Benchmark Sephora, the global cosmetics and beauty retailer, was Katie's fourth and final case study.

She drew attention to two distinct things Sephora does particularly well: making product variations genuinely visual, and creating deep customer loyalty through a structured rewards program.

Visual Product Variations Katie opened this section by directly comparing default WooCommerce's variation display against Sephora's approach. In WooCommerce, product variations are shown as dropdowns.

She acknowledged that for some attributes (size, for example), a dropdown is a reasonable format. But when the attribute in question is colour, the dropdown format creates unnecessary friction.

When a customer is choosing a lipstick shade or a foundation colour, they do not want to read a list of words. They want to look at the actual colour and click on it. Sephora delivers exactly this through colour swatch selectors: small, visually accurate representations of each available shade that a customer can scan at a glance and click to select. In some cases, Sephora even uses custom photographic images for each swatch rather than simple colour fills, effectively capturing the finish or texture of the product in miniature, a particularly impressive feat for shimmer or metallic shades.

Katie noted that Amazon, despite being held up earlier as a positive example, actually handles colour selection poorly: customers have to click on a text label for a colour and then mentally match it to a product image elsewhere on the page. Sephora's approach is meaningfully better and should be the target for any WooCommerce store where colour or visual appearance is central to the product.

She also used this section to show a second application of the same principle: selling gift wrapping options. Rather than a dropdown listing wrapping paper designs by name, she showed an example using WooCommerce Product Options (Barn 2) where each wrapping paper option is displayed as a clickable image of the actual paper design. The difference in clarity and appeal is obvious: customers can see exactly what they are selecting.

The recommended implementation is again WooCommerce Product Options (Barn 2), the same plugin featured earlier for cross-selling. In addition to displaying related products as add-ons, it can also be used to replace dropdown variation selectors with visual alternatives including image-based selectors, colour swatches, and button-style selectors.

Customer Loyalty Programs The second Sephora feature Katie discussed was their Beauty Insider loyalty program.

Sephora has built a points-based rewards system that customers accumulate over time through purchases and redeem for discounts or rewards. The program is tiered, so customers who spend more unlock greater reward levels, creating a gamification dynamic: the more you spend, the more you benefit in future.

Katie noted that the naming and branding of the program is itself a piece of psychology.

Calling it "Beauty Insider" is deliberate. The word "insider" creates a feeling of belonging to an exclusive club. The word "beauty" flatters the customer. Together, the name reinforces the emotional connection to the brand.

The practical effect is that Sephora customers are far less likely to drift to a competitor for their next purchase, because switching means abandoning accumulated points and status.

This kind of stickiness is enormously valuable for client businesses.

The recommended WooCommerce implementation is YITH WooCommerce Points and Rewards, which Katie described as versatile and feature-rich. It allows clients to define their own points-earning logic, set redemption rules, give customers visibility into their points balance within their account area, and create the kind of tiered or accumulated reward experience that Sephora delivers.

Closing Recommendations for Agencies

After completing all four case studies, Katie returned to the strategic framing she had introduced at the start. Her closing advice to agencies was direct: these features should become a standard part of how you think about and propose WooCommerce projects.

Most clients do not know these features exist, and they will not ask for them. That is not a reason to exclude them from proposals. It is a reason to include them as optional extras, with a brief explanation of the benefit and, where possible, supporting data on the conversion impact of each feature. Clients who understand that these tactics are proven on the world's biggest ecommerce platforms are much more likely to opt in.

For the agency, the benefits are multiple: Competitive differentiation: Proposals that proactively address conversion strategy stand out against generic quotes that simply list deliverables.

Higher project values: Optional extras that clients choose to include increase the average contract size.

Better client outcomes: Clients whose stores perform better are more likely to return, refer others, and expand their relationship with the agency.

Katie's final summation was that nobody needs an enterprise budget to implement enterprise-level UX patterns. The patterns are there to be borrowed, and the tools to implement them already exist in the WooCommerce ecosystem.

The Future of Web Agencies and Ecommerce (Q&A Segment)

The session closed with a question from the host: what does a web agency look like in two years, and what does ecommerce look like in two years?

On Web Agencies Katie's position was that agencies will need to lean harder into demonstrating real expertise, specifically the kind of evidence-based, data-informed thinking that AI cannot yet replicate.

She acknowledged that AI has made it possible for anyone to spin up a basic website quickly.

But the ability to generate a website is not the same as the ability to make good decisions about what that website should do, how it should serve the client's specific business needs, and what the evidence says about which features will move the needle. That judgement, applied with genuine context about the individual client, is what agencies must emphasise and make visible to clients.

On Ecommerce Specifically Katie suggested that ecommerce sites are, at least for now, somewhat less threatened by AI-generated competition than simple brochure or portfolio sites. The reason is complexity: ecommerce stores have rigorous requirements around payment processing, security, inventory management, tax compliance, and fulfilment logic. These requirements make AI-generated ecommerce sites significantly harder to produce reliably. That said, she was clear that this represents a time advantage, not a permanent shield. The principle remains the same: agencies need to provide genuine, tailored value.

Plugins and Tools Referenced

• WooCommerce Product Filters (Barn 2 Plugins): advanced filtering above or in the sidebar with visual swatches and sliders.
• WooCommerce Subscriptions (official extension): subscription and recurring payment support.
• WooCommerce Discount Manager (Barn 2 Plugins): volume bundles with a visual quantity-tier display.
• Smart Related Products Pro (Shark Themes): AI-driven dynamic related product recommendations.
• WooCommerce Product Options (Barn 2 Plugins): visual add-ons, cross-sells above Add to Cart, colour swatches.
• Notification X (WPDeveloper): FOMO pop-ups, social proof notifications, urgency signals.
• YITH WooCommerce Points and Rewards (YITH): customer loyalty and points/rewards program.

About the speaker Katie Keith Co-Founder, Barn 2 Plugins

Katie Keith is co-founder of Barn 2 Plugins, a WordPress plugin company with deep experience building tools for ecommerce sites. She focuses on what separates high-performing online stores from the rest.