This page is for a merchandiser who must decide what a homepage's own limited space shows first. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows that a homepage cannot feature every style a business sells, so someone must decide which styles earn that space and which do not, using real sales data rather than habit.
Cedar & Co. holds stock made to stock from its own forecast and sells it through 12 shops and one online store. Its homepage can feature only a handful of styles above the space a customer sees without scrolling, exactly like a physical shop's own limited window and entrance space. A style left off the homepage is not removed from sale; it simply becomes harder for a customer to find, and a homepage built from habit rather than from real sales data can leave a fast-selling style buried while a slower one sits in the featured space.
You need: no previous lesson needed, though lessons T23-C01-L01 and T23-C01-L02 give useful background.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: what e-commerce merchandising decides overall (lesson T23-C01-L01), writing a product page (lesson T23-C01-L02), category pages (lesson T23-C01-L04), and a full store checklist (lesson T23-C01-L05).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Homepage | The first page a customer sees on a website, whose limited space decides which styles a customer notices before searching or browsing further. |
| Top navigation | The menu bar at the top of a website, whose limited set of links decides which categories a customer can reach in a single click. |
| Featured space | The small number of positions on a homepage reserved for the styles a business most wants a customer to notice first. |
| Click-through rate | The share of customers who see a featured style on the homepage and click through to its own product page. |
| Hero product | The single style a fixture or display is built around, chosen because it is the piece the store most needs a customer to notice first. |
A homepage has the same limited-space problem a physical shop's entrance and window have: only a small number of styles can occupy the space a customer sees first, whatever the total number of styles a business actually sells. The rule is that this space should go to whichever style is earning it right now, measured by click-through rate and sales, not to whichever style has always been there or whichever a manager personally prefers. A homepage is a working decision, reviewed on a schedule, not a display set once and left alone. A style that once earned its place can lose it as customer taste shifts through a season, and a business that never rechecks the decision has no way of noticing the change until sales figures elsewhere already show it.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A domestic brand selling from its own forecast | Cedar & Co. holds a basic T-shirt shape made to stock from its own forecast and a newly restocked seasonal top, both wanting the same homepage featured space. | Make to stock still requires an active homepage decision; a forecast tells the brand how much stock to hold, not which style earns the customer's first glance. |
| An export brand running its own online store | An export brand's own online store faces the identical limited-space problem as a domestic one, deciding between its own best-selling style and a newly launched one for the same featured position. | The market, export or domestic, does not change the rule; any homepage has limited space regardless of where the business sells. |
| A hybrid brand running wholesale and its own site together | A brand supplying a wholesale account and running its own online store decides homepage placement only for its own site, since a wholesale account's homepage belongs to the retailer buying the style. | Whoever owns the homepage owns the featured-space decision; a brand without its own site has no homepage of its own to decide about. |
| A homepage decision made only once at launch and never revisited | A homepage set up at a business's launch and never reviewed again keeps featuring an old best-seller long after a newer style has overtaken it in sales. | A homepage frozen at launch stops reflecting real sales, the same trap a stock plan falls into if never reviewed after the first season. |
Cedar & Co.'s homepage has one featured space above the space a customer sees without scrolling. The basic T-shirt shape has held that space since the online store launched, priced at USD 14.50. A newly restocked seasonal top is ready and competing for the same space. Cedar & Co. runs both styles in the featured space for one week each, on the identical homepage traffic of 4,000 visits, and measures the click-through rate to each style's own product page.
Both styles saw the identical 4,000 homepage visits, so the traffic itself explains none of the 2.7-percentage-point gap. The only variable was which style occupied the one featured space, which is the homepage decision this lesson teaches, not a difference in overall demand for the brand. A brand that assumes its founding style would always outperform a newer one, without testing both under the same traffic, would never have discovered this gap at all.
The methodA common mistake is treating homepage placement as a one-time setup decision rather than an ongoing one, leaving an original best-seller in the featured space long after a newer style has overtaken it in actual click-through rate. What this costs a business is featured space spent on a style that no longer earns the attention it receives, while a better-performing style stays buried in a category page a customer must actively search to find. The homepage's own limited space is wasted on habit instead of spent on whichever style is actually converting attention into sales right now.
A homepage can only show a small number of styles in the space a customer sees first, no matter how many styles a business actually sells. That space should go to whichever style customers are actually clicking through to buy right now, not to whichever style has always occupied it. A brand that never rechecks this decision keeps a once-strong style in the spotlight long after a newer style has quietly earned more attention, wasting the homepage's own limited space on habit instead of on real sales performance.
Cedar & Co.'s basic T-shirt shape has occupied the homepage's one featured space since launch. The seasonal top's own trial week just finished, earning a 6.0% click-through rate against the basic T-shirt shape's 3.3% on the identical 4,000 visits. The store manager who set up the original homepage wants to keep the T-shirt featured because it was the brand's founding style.
Here is the note the store manager sent:
Should the basic T-shirt shape stay in the homepage's featured space? Decide before opening the answer.
No, the featured space should go to the seasonal top based on the click-through data. Two facts decide this.
First, both styles were tested on the identical 4,000 homepage visits, so the 6.0% versus 3.3% click-through gap reflects real customer behaviour, not a difference in traffic. The founding-style argument is a preference, not a sales measure, and this lesson's rule is that featured space goes to whichever style earns it now.
Second, moving the basic T-shirt shape to a category page does not remove it from sale; a customer who wants it can still find and buy it there, while the homepage's own limited space is now spent on the style actually converting more attention into visits to its own product page. The founding style keeps its place in the store, just not in the one space with the least room to spare.
The corrected decision is to feature the seasonal top now and recheck both styles' own click-through rates again on the next scheduled review.
Using this lesson's own worked figures, applied to four weeks of homepage traffic:
If Cedar & Co. keeps the basic T-shirt shape featured out of habit, the 440 lost click-throughs and the USD 638.00 at-risk revenue shown here recur every four weeks the decision is not rechecked, and the same gap can repeat every time a newer style quietly overtakes an older one still occupying the homepage's own limited space.
Open the course workbook's "Online Listing Checklist" sheet, using the columns that record traffic, clicks, and the resulting click-through rate. Enter both the basic T-shirt shape's and the seasonal top's own figures to see how the checklist would have flagged the featured-space decision before this lesson's review.
[Download the E-commerce merchandising checklist](../../templates/T23-C01-e-commerce-merchandising-checklist.xlsx)
1. Cedar & Co.'s basic T-shirt shape earns a 3.3% click-through rate from the homepage's featured space, and a newly restocked seasonal top earns 6.0%, both measured on the identical 4,000 homepage visits. Which style should occupy the featured space?
2. A different homepage has two styles competing for its one featured space: Style X earns 400 click-throughs from 8,000 visits, and Style Y earns 320 click-throughs from the same 8,000 visits. Which style should be featured?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | الصفحة الرئيسية | Page d'accueil | Ana sayfa | The first page a customer sees on a website, whose limited space decides which styles a customer notices before searching or browsing further. |
| Top navigation | التنقل العلوي | Navigation supérieure | Üst gezinme | The menu bar at the top of a website, whose limited set of links decides which categories a customer can reach in a single click. |
| Featured space | المساحة المميزة | Espace mis en avant | Öne çıkan alan | The small number of positions on a homepage reserved for the styles a business most wants a customer to notice first. |
| Click-through rate | معدل النقر | Taux de clics | Tıklama oranı | The share of customers who see a featured style on the homepage and click through to its own product page. |
| Hero product | المنتج الرئيسي | Produit vedette | Ana ürün | The single style a fixture or display is built around, chosen because it is the piece the store most needs a customer to notice first. |
You now know how a homepage decides what a customer sees first. The next lesson moves one step in, to the category page a customer reaches after clicking through. Back to the course map