Tear Up the Script?

If you’ve ever worked in marketing, you’ve probably heard a client say: “We want something really out there.”

That’s the kind of brief you expect when someone’s commissioning a radio jingle or a TV ad, where creativity is currency and breaking the mould gets you noticed.

But when it comes from an accountant, or a data-driven sales analyst combing through funnel reports, it sets off alarm bells. I’ve worked in design and UX long enough to appreciate creativity — but these days my focus is building tools that actually drive conversion. When someone’s stuck with a seven-page booking process, a “wacky design” isn’t anywhere near the top of my priority list.

CRO plays by different rules. Design and communication still matter, but the parameters are far more conservative - tighter, stricter, and ultimately unforgiving.

Why? Because e-commerce isn’t a talent show. It’s not about who can shout the loudest or who has the flashiest tricks. At its core, it’s a science where performance lives and dies by conversion rates, usability, and customer expectations built up over decades of online shopping. Jakob’s Law sums it up: users spend most of their time on other sites, so they prefer your site to work the same way as the ones they already know. Break those expectations and usability suffers.

I recently spent seven weeks in conversation with a business that approached me about fixing their e-commerce flow. Their spec was crystal clear:

• Replace a clunky 7-step checkout with a streamlined 3-step flow
• Improve performance and page speed
• Boost SEO
• Modernise the front-end

95% of it was technical. The design note? Just “modern front end.”

After sending a detailed proposal — pricing, deliverables, timeline — the concerns that came back were… about whether I could do “out there” designs. Suddenly the focus shifted to parallax scrolls and animations.

Here’s the reality: their core demographic is 17–22 years old. They live on their phones. And on mobile, those flashy effects either don’t work or add nothing to the experience.

I checked the inspiration sites they’d been comparing me to. On desktop, yes, lots of wow factor. On mobile? They looked like… standard websites. Because physics.

This isn’t unusual — many projects stall because design expectations drift away from conversion realities.

The Science of Conversions

This is why the “golden route” in conversion design is the user who already wants your product, lands on your site, and clicks “buy” within seconds. For everyone not already sold, you need clear messaging, familiar navigation, prominent CTAs, trust signals — and ruthless reduction of friction.

Twenty Years of Habits You Can’t Ignore

E-commerce has been shaping user behaviour for over two decades. Customers now expect:

• Carts in the top-right corner
• Navigation that looks familiar
• Smooth, fast checkouts
• Clear CTAs that stand out

Try to break those conventions and you break trust. That “creative” navigation that hides categories under quirky icons? It doesn’t feel clever. It just feels confusing. Follow conventions unless you have strong evidence not to — this is the practical application of Jakob’s Law.

When users can’t find what they need where they expect it, they bounce.

Even small departures from norms can hurt findability (e.g., moving the logo or cart to unconventional locations). Large-scale UX research from Baymard also shows how fragile checkout behaviour is: the average cart abandonment rate hovers around 70%, so any extra friction is expensive.

The Illusion of Disruption

Now, can you break the mould? Absolutely. But only if you’re playing in Apple’s league: huge brand trust, pre-sold visitors, and the budget to validate risky ideas with research and testing. Most businesses don’t have that luxury.

Apple can afford to plaster its homepage with immersive video and layered parallax animations because users already know what they’re there to buy. A few fancy transitions won’t stop someone buying the new iPhone.

For everyone else, disruption comes at a cost. To reinvent the wheel safely, you need:

• Teams of UX researchers
• Large-scale usability testing
• Continuous A/B experiments
• Market research budgets in the hundreds of thousands

Speed expectations on mobile are brutal: 53% of visits abandon if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, and modest speed gains can move revenue. A Google/Deloitte study found that a 0.1-second improvement in mobile speed lifted retail conversions by about 8% on average. (Source)

If you’ve got £20k–£30k for your site, you’re not buying disruption. You’re buying into 20 years of collective industry knowledge on what works. And what works has already been tested at scale. As I often tell clients: “Innovation without validation is just expensive guesswork.”

Where Creativity Belongs

This doesn’t mean your site has to look bland. Creativity has its place:

• Brand storytelling
• Product photography
• Motion used sparingly to draw attention
• Copy that feels alive, not robotic

But the structural pillars of e-commerce — navigation, checkout, site speed, trust signals — are not where you experiment. Creativity should enhance usability, not override it. NN/g’s guidance on animation is clear: keep motion subtle, unobtrusive, and purposeful, or it becomes overwhelming and distracting.

• Hero carousels dilute focus. Real-world tracking shows carousels get ~1% CTR, and ~85% of those clicks go to the first slide — the rest are largely ignored.
• Full-screen video intros waste time. They bloat pages, distract from CTAs, and are notorious on mobile. Case write-ups report that removing background videos improved sign-ups and reduced exits.
• Heavy CSS/JS/WebGL animations slow everything down. Aside from performance hits, motion that competes with the task increases cognitive load and can derail goal completion. Use motion for feedback and signposting, not spectacle.

The best websites use design to support clarity. In many cases, the most effective checkout is the one nobody notices. So next time someone says ‘we want something out there,’ remember: in e-commerce, boring often wins.

What the Data Shows

Years of conversion research and UX testing highlight a few key truths every merchant should keep front of mind:

• Clarity beats beauty: messy but clear copy works better than sleek but vague messaging; users should grasp the value in seconds. (Jakob’s Law + decades of usability findings.)
• Social proof works: nobody wants to be the first to try. Reviews and testimonials reduce risk perception and nudge completion (widely reported across conversion research; Baymard’s abandonment data underscores how fragile decisions are).
• Load time kills conversions: animations that take 8–30 seconds to load won’t even get seen. Mobile users are ruthless on speed; 3+ seconds load = mass abandonment, while even 0.1s gains can lift conversions. (milliseconds Make Millions)
• Cognitive overload drives people away: too much movement overwhelms users and makes them quit. Keep animation purposeful
• Strong CTAs stand alone: one colour, unique to the button, draws the eye. Give your primary action a distinct look so it pops in scan patterns; avoid surrounding it with equal-weight distractions (common CRO guidance).

In other words: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You need to make the wheel obvious, fast, and easy to turn.

Design Flair vs Conversion Flow

There’s a time and place for bold, disruptive design. But in e-commerce, it’s rarely the checkout.

That energy belongs in campaigns, storytelling, and ads designed to attract customers. Once they land, the journey needs to be boringly efficient.

Or, to put it simply:

“Great e-commerce design doesn’t win design awards. It wins sales.”

Conclusion – Build for Customers, Not for Ego

So yes, tear up the script if you’ve got the budget to validate every decision with real data.
But for most businesses, success lies in clarity, predictability, and proven best practices.

Customers don’t come to marvel at your parallax animations. They come to buy.

And the best compliment your checkout can get? That nobody noticed it at all.

Further reading (high-signal sources)