Journal · 2026-03-12 · Amira Hassan
When the category grid still holds a shopper
A category grid that merely keeps a thumb moving is easy to praise and hard to trust. In several Malaysian commerce apps we walked this year, the first three screens of a fashion category were busy enough to feel alive: newness, a campaign tile, a row of nearly identical knitwear. Shoppers did move. They did not necessarily choose.
Holding a shopper, in the sense that matters to a merchandiser, means the grid still makes sense after the second pause. The pause is usually a comparison — two listing cards, side by side, that must be distinguishable at thumbnail size. When the cards share a ghost mannequin, a similar crop, and a price stack that wraps onto two lines, the shopper’s next act is often a jump into a product they cannot quite remember, followed by a return to a grid that has meanwhile shifted because a banner refreshed.
We have started asking catalog owners a blunt question in the briefing: which SKU in the first screen is the one a habitual shopper came to refill? If the answer is “none, this is a discovery category,” that is a legitimate stance. If the answer is a house-brand tee buried under three campaign chips, the grid is holding attention and losing the person who already knew what they wanted.
On phones used in Klang Valley traffic, the first screen is smaller than a merchandising deck implies. Badges eat the thumbnail. “Free shipping” and “12.12” and “only 3 left” stacked together do not create urgency so much as noise; we do not use fake scarcity in our own work, and we note it when a catalog performs it. A quieter card, with a truthful crop and a price that does not wrap, often holds the shopper longer because it can be compared.
None of this requires a traffic chart. It requires walking the category as it is published, on the same week the campaign is live, and writing down what the first three scrolls actually contain. That is slower than a heatmap. It is also the only way we have found to talk to merchandisers without inventing a score they will not believe.