Blog by: Arttu Hietala - Co-Founder, Brancoy & Axel Larsson - Head of Customer Success, Depict
In the competitive world of e-commerce, collection pages act as the gateway to a brand’s product offerings. Brancoy, a Shopify agency specializing in design and development, brings its expertise to revolutionize collection pages. The mission? To create seamless, conversion-optimized collection pages that align perfectly with brand identities, ensuring an unparalleled shopping experience.
Why Collection Pages Matter
Brancoy’s Perspective:
Collection pages serve a dual purpose: presenting products in a visually stunning way and facilitating a seamless user journey. At Brancoy, we aim to create pages that evoke a sense of trust, excitement, and clarity. By balancing aesthetics and functionality, we help brands craft an experience that feels intuitive yet emotionally engaging, encouraging shoppers to explore more and make confident purchasing decisions.
Depict’s Perspective:
Collection pages are arguably the most important pages for any visual e-commerce brand. Why? Because they are often the first impression customers have when arriving from ads, organic search, or social media. These pages are also where users spend the most time exploring and discovering products, making them the critical intersection of branding and performance. That’s why all the best brands, like all the LVMH portfolio companies invest heavily in them. Unfortunately, many brands still underinvest in this crucial area, missing the opportunity to turn browsers into buyers.
Key Principles for Designing Effective Collection Pages
Brancoy’s Perspective:
1. Cohesive Branding
Design consistency is key. Shopify makes it straightforward to maintain fonts, colors, and images across collection pages, ensuring brand alignment. Use font hierarchy to guide the shopper’s attention and incorporate visual storytelling to connect emotionally with your audience. Consistency in these elements builds trust and creates a cohesive shopping experience.
Additionally, ensure that the images used for products within the collection page are visually cohesive and match in structure. Review the product image structure carefully to maintain alignment, which enhances the overall professional look and user experience.
2. Navigation and Filtering
Seamlessly integrating sleek filter designs into Shopify themes ensures usability without sacrificing aesthetics. Use Shopify’s native translation and app adaptation features to create a localized, user-friendly filtering system. This approach keeps functionality aligned with the platform’s strengths while improving accessibility. In navigation, the structure is key, and the search functionality is equally crucial. Shopify’s native Search and Discovery tool is a great starting point to enhance search capabilities. Later, tools like Searchspring or Klevu can further optimize the search experience, ensuring users can quickly find what they’re looking for.
3. Performance Optimization
From a technical perspective, fast-loading images and responsive designs are non-negotiable. Optimize images using the right aspect ratios and file sizes to balance visual quality and performance. These efforts result in faster page loads, improved SEO, and a better overall shopping experience. Helpful tools: Google Page speed insight.
Depict’s Perspective:
Great collection pages go beyond listing products—they create engaging, branded shopping experiences. At Depict, we focus on three principles:
1. Use Content
Adding non-product images or videos brings collections to life, telling your brand’s story and showcasing products in context. It makes pages more visually appealing and informative for shoppers.
2. Think Outside the Grid
A standard grid layout can feel dull and repetitive. Instead, mix product card sizes, combine flat shots with lifestyle images, and curate outfits or themes to create a more dynamic and memorable experience.
3. Thoughtful Merchandising
Move beyond simple sorting like “bestselling” or “newest.” Use tools to blend manual curation with automation, factoring in aesthetics, inventory, and sell-through rates for a smarter, more polished display.
Examples of Excellence
Shopify Stores - New, not-so-known Shopify stores.
Wall of Art: A minimalist approach combined with great SEO optimization makes this store a standout example. The clean design highlights the products while ensuring seamless navigation. Visit Store
Robyn Smith: This store exemplifies the power of minimalist design with a focus on user-friendly navigation and visually appealing grid layouts. Hover effects add a layer of interactivity without overwhelming the user. Visit Store
Café du Cycliste: This store masterfully combines lifestyle imagery with product displays, creating collection pages that feel dynamic and engaging. By mixing product card sizes, integrating lifestyle shots, and showcasing curated collections, the design avoids a monotonous grid layout and keeps customers exploring. Visit Store
Soeur: This store beautifully showcase their products in outfits, using content cards and product duplicates for a shoppable lookbook feel. Visit Store
Tools and Technologies
Brancoy’s Perspective:
For developers, tools like Shopify’s Online Store 2.0, frameworks like Cursor, and of course Depict are great ones. Shopify's 2.0 themes provide a robust foundation for creating visually appealing and highly functional stores, making it possible to achieve a lot without extensive customization.
If you want to further customize your storefront in the future, tools like the AI-powered Cursor.Ai can be incredibly helpful. Cursor.Ai is an intelligent development assistant designed to streamline coding processes by suggesting relevant code snippets, debugging, and even automating repetitive tasks.
Depict’s Perspective:
We’re biased, but using Depict or another merchandising tool goes a really long way.
Conclusion
The success of an e-commerce store hinges on its ability to present products in a way that is both visually appealing and functionally efficient. Brancoy’s expertise in collection page optimization can help your brand stand out in a crowded digital marketplace.
Brancoy’s Works: https://brancoy.com/
Check out Depict': https://depict.ai/
