One of the questions we often get asked in an ecommerce project is “How should I display my Products on my Oporteo site? Will I get more sales using a grid or list view?”

In order to make a decision, you really need to understand the difference between the list and grid views.

The list view contains an image of the product on the right or left side of the screen and some information about the product, such as, the product name, price, stock, pack size, and product description. Each product is shown on a separate line on the screen

The Grid view displays multiple product images on a line with a much smaller amount of information when compared to the list view. So when viewing the catalogue, a customer can see is the product’s name, price, stock, and pack size.

List view (left) and Grid view (right) comparison 

Text or Image Heavy Products?

One of the main considerations that you must take into consideration is what type of products you are selling on your online store.

If the products you are selling heavily rely on text to describe them, such as movies, news stories, games, services, or software. These products tend to be too complex to explain in just a picture, and requires at least a sentence or two at the beginning of the product description to entice customers to click through onto the product description page.

Many products in the Food & Drink industry are fairly self-explanatory, users can identify the product that they need by the product image, SKU, and price. As users can easily identify the correct product without going into the product description (unless they need additional information such as allergens), the customer usually adds the product straight to the basket from the catalogue page.

So more products can be displayed in a grid view, and only minimal amounts of information are required by the customer before deciding to purchase, we would recommend a grid view.

Are your products text or image heavy? This could be the deciding factor

Device

But only if it was that simple….

Studies have shown that grid views tend to be easier to use on a desktop environment whereas list views are more suited to a mobile or tablet platform.

On the Oporteo platform, you have the ability to specify the default view depending on which device the customer is currently using whilst browsing the website

The main device the customer is viewing your store can influence which user experience is most appropriate.

Testing

Ultimately we recommend that that post-launch A/B testing is initiated and monitored via Google Analytics.

The conversion rate is a good indicator to which is the most successful layout, something that can be monitored in the Oporteo admin area.