How Layers Restores Real Merchandising Control Through Smarter Sort Logic
Layers Team
•
Dec 5, 2025
Collection pages guide how shoppers move through a store, yet most brands leave their sort order untouched.
It’s easy to miss how much influence it has. Baymard Institute shows that users scan only a small set of products before they decide to stay or leave. Additionally, research cited by McKinsey points to the same trend: relevance in product order can increase revenue by 10 to 30%.
The issue that brands today face is simple. Shopify’s out-of-the-box sort options can’t adjust to your goals or audience. They freeze the catalog in place and miss signals from sales trends, price sensitivity, or stock levels.
That’s why many brands run into plateaus they can’t explain.
"I think the order you display products on a collection page can have an enormous impact on your conversion rate." — David Cost, VP of eCommerce and Digital at Rainbow Shops |
This piece unpacks why sort order is often the missing link in conversions and how Layers helps teams treat it with the same rigor as paid traffic and acquisition.
Problem: Shopify's OOTB sorting leaves growth on the table
Shopify's out-of-the-box (OOTB) sort settings rely on one-size-fits-all logic, flattening your entire catalog into one static order.
Their sort rules, “best selling,” “newest,” and “price low to high,” run on fixed formulas that don’t reflect real shopper behavior or your catalog’s changing state.
Product data changes constantly, and while Layers tracks attributes like SKU coverage, days available, image presence, and variant changes, Shopify’s sorting ignores all these fields.
It also doesn’t consider calculated values, so you can’t rank items by signals like recent sales, variant growth, or product age. The list stays locked even when your store behaves differently each day.
Baymard’s research shows that when the sort order feels repetitive or narrow, mobile users leave early because they don’t see enough variety.
Some of the limitations that brands run into are:
Static sort logic: Shopify doesn’t respond to live catalog signals. This means it doesn't process updates to products, variants, pricing, and stock. Shopify’s generic algorithms ignore your unique traffic mix, brand intent, and even your merchandising strategy.
High-margin products buried: With no adaptive behavior, strong-margin or trending items move down the grid. Mobile shoppers, who typically view less than 10 products, rarely scroll deep enough to find them.
Baymard found that irrelevant or overly homogeneous sort orders cause mobile shoppers to abandon sites early because they don’t see product variety quickly enough. |
No strategic prioritization: Shopify can’t lift seasonal drops, overstocked items, or highly reviewed products without manual edits. It offers no path to use sales trends or calculated attributes to guide sorting.
No A/B testing: There’s no experiment framework for merchants to test different orders and how different rules influence sessions. This leaves teams guessing when performance dips.
No performance feedback: The platform doesn’t connect sort decisions to outcomes like conversions or AOV. There’s no attribution layer to show which order worked best.
Why sort order matters: The hidden KPI driver
Sorting is more than a layout choice. It shapes what shoppers notice first and how fast they reach a decision.
While research shows that mobile users decide within a few products, McKinsey also reports that personalized merchandising can lift conversions by up to 15%.
When sorting reflects inventory shifts, recent activity, and user signals, shoppers stay engaged and purchase more.
Conversion rate
Mobile users form opinions fast. About half of mobile users judge the page by the first row, then decide whether to keep browsing.
Position bias findings from the Journal of Marketing Research show that higher-ranked products get disproportionate clicks even when appeal is equal.
When the top row reflects signals like price ranges, stock levels, or recent activity, users reach a buying decision sooner. Besides, small ranking changes such as these can shift conversions by double-digit margins.
Bounce rate
Baymard found that when pages open with items that feel mismatched, have the wrong price range, have low relevance, or have poor stock, users tend to exit early.
AOV
Placement influences what users consider.
When stores present higher-value items early, shoppers anchor their expectations around those products
When these items sit low in the grid, they never enter the decision path, reducing the chance of higher-value orders
Engagement
Scanning depth depends on the early variety. Think with Google found that mobile shoppers engage longer when they see a mix of options right away. Repetition pushes them to abandon the list.
How Layers helps you merch like a top 1% retailer
Layers treats merchandising as a live system. It reads real-time product updates, sales patterns, and calculated fields, then lets teams shape rankings without code. This creates a level of control that static sorting can’t match.
Test different sort orders continuously
Teams can run structured tests that compare different ranking rules side by side. Each version gets a fixed share of traffic, and the system records how it performs across conversions and browsing depth. This gives teams a clear view of which sequence performs best.
Prioritize based on business goals
Layers support custom rules built from attributes and calculated fields. You can raise products tied to stock levels, recent activity, SKU coverage, price ranges, or days available.
These rules update instantly when the underlying data changes, so the page always reflects current goals.
Target sort logic by audience
Ranking rules can draw from real-time product signals. Fields like stock, recent sales, variant changes, or product age shape which items rise in the list.
These updates happen automatically, keeping the ranking aligned to your priorities.
Measure what matters
Sort experiments connect directly to metrics. Layers tracks how each version affects conversion, bounce, AOV, and browsing depth.
You can compare results in one place and apply only the sequences that work.
Why sort order is the missing piece in merchandising control
Your collection page shapes how shoppers move through your store. When the order reflects intent and current data, you guide users toward the right products with less friction. When it doesn’t, the page feels static and out of step with real demand.
Layers brings this level of control into Shopify. You can test rules, apply audience logic, and use calculated fields to shape each list. Every update reacts to real-time catalog changes, so the page always mirrors what users want.
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