While building a SaaS product recently I started noticing something odd about ecommerce.
The entire UX is built around search + filters + product pages.
But when you actually look at how people buy, a lot of purchases only happen after a conversation.
Customers ask things like:
“Which one is better for daily use?”
“Can you give a small discount if I buy two?”
“Will this arrive before Friday?”
“Is this good for beginners?”
That’s basically sales conversation, not browsing.
Yet our entire ecommerce stack is optimized for catalog navigation, not decision-making.
So it made me wonder if the core interface might be wrong.
Instead of forcing people to scroll through 40 product pages, what if the buying flow started like this:
“I need a good office chair under $300 that ships this week.”
Then the system could:
• narrow the options
• answer questions
• compare products
• guide the purchase
All in one conversation.
I've been experimenting with this idea while building a small SaaS project called Convos, basically turning storefronts into conversational interfaces instead of static product pages.
Still early, but it made me question whether browsing catalogs is just a legacy UX we never replaced.
Curious what other SaaS founders here think.
Are search + filters actually the best interface for ecommerce, or are we just stuck with it because that's how it's always been done?