Most ecommerce websites are built around a familiar structure.
A homepage introduces the brand. From there, customers move into product listing pages, browse a selection of products, view product detail pages, add items to their cart and eventually proceed to checkout.
It’s a logical model. It mirrors how businesses like to present their products and it reflects how many ecommerce platforms are structured by default.
The difficulty is that customers rarely follow that journey.
When I begin analysing a new website, one of the first things I look at is the flow of users through the expected stages of the customer journey. Rather than focusing on sessions or event counts, I look at how many actual users move between key steps: landing pages, listing pages, product pages, carts and checkout.
Mapping that flow often produces a very different picture from the one businesses assume.
But, everyone arrives at our homepage don’t they?
One of the most common surprises is the role of the homepage.
Internally, many organisations treat the homepage as the primary gateway into the brand. Navigation structures, promotional campaigns and internal discussions are frequently built around the belief that most visitors begin there.
Behavioural data usually tells a different story.
Depending on the brand, the homepage may account for somewhere between ten and thirty percent of entry traffic. In some cases it is much lower. I have analysed sites where fewer than two percent of users began their journey on the homepage.
Customers frequently arrive deep within the site rather than at its front door.
Instead, they land directly on product pages, category pages or informational content through search engines, social links and external referrals. The experience at those entry points therefore becomes far more important than many teams initially realise.
How much our users actually search?
A similar pattern often appears with internal search.
Search is frequently viewed as a critical navigation tool. Teams often describe it as one of the most important elements of the site experience, assuming large numbers of users rely on it to find products.
When behavioural data is examined, the picture is often quite different.
In many ecommerce sites, fewer than three percent of users interact with internal search.
Search can be valuable, but its importance is often overstated inside organisations.
For the small group of users who rely on it, search can be extremely helpful. But the assumption that most customers navigate through search rarely holds true.
When behaviour challenges architecture
Discoveries like this can feel uncomfortable at first.
Leadership teams have often invested significant effort in designing site architecture around assumptions about how customers should navigate. When behavioural evidence suggests a different pattern, the conversation quickly shifts from surprise to concern.
If customers are entering the site through different points than expected, the structure of the experience may no longer support how people actually explore the brand.
Product pages may need to carry more context.
Navigation may need to support lateral movement rather than a strictly linear journey.
Seeing the journey from the customer’s perspective
This is where a simple experience mapping exercise with executives and ecommerce leaders can be incredibly powerful.
By walking through the site from the perspective of a real user, rather than the organisation’s internal logic, assumptions begin to soften. Leaders start to see the experience less as a technical system and more as a series of decisions a customer must make.
That shift tends to humble the room slightly.
Curiosity replaces certainty, and curiosity is usually where meaningful improvement begins.
Designing journeys around behaviour
Once leadership teams begin to see the experience through behavioural evidence rather than internal expectation, discussions about improvement become far more constructive.
Decisions move away from how the organisation believes customers should navigate and towards how they actually do.
Understanding customers is not only about knowing who they are or why they buy. It also requires understanding how they move through the digital environment you have created for them.
Customers rarely follow the journey businesses design.
The most effective organisations learn to design around how customers actually behave.