Products are grouped in categories, but can too many categories hurt the UX?

Question

I am working on an e-commerce platform, with products such as vouchers, gift cards, health subscriptions, gym subscriptions, etc. as employee benefits. The users can log in and choose a few subscriptions each month, or edit their existing subscriptions.

We have a lot of products, from different brands and the way we have the set up categories is: Home - Rewards and subscriptions - Sports - "Gym Name" - Gym subscription for 6 months So you don't see all the Sports products, you have to choose the Gym name first

But I am not sure this is a good idea, since the user has a lot of decisions to make, without seeing the products or prices. On other e-commerce platforms, I noticed all the products are visible at once, in a category, you don't have to choose if you want to see Samsung or Apple (you have filters).

On the other hand, if I show all the products in the "Sports" categories, there might be products with the same thumbnail multiple times, and the user might be overwhelmed by the number of products.

What do you think is the right way to show the products, so that the user feels in control and satisfied?

Answer 1

I don't think you're too far off. You just need to show more information to help the user know what to do next.

Do you have research showing that users want to see all sports products together on one screen? It might be comparing apples to oranges to zebras. I think keeping another level of organization for big categories like "Sports" - showing "Gym Memberships", "Running Clubs", "Golf Discounts" etc. is the right approach.

Once your user is at the Gym Memberships level (as an example), you could allow comparison by brand with filters at the top. You could combine all of the offers into one criteria range (in this example, Silver's Gym has a range of prices), and then the user could click into a brand to learn more.

When the user clicks on into brand, they would see all the offer(s) and can make a selection based on full information.

Answer 2

Thank you, Izquierdo, but I think I found exactly the answer I was looking for in this article: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/category-pages/ "Don’t Force Customers to Go Through Category Pages"

Here is the conclusion, in case anyone else is having the same problem with categories and what is the best way for the user to navigate through them:

Conclusion: Although category pages can provide helpful context, they also create an extra step for users, who must navigate through them before they can see actual products. When the content on category pages is not helpful or relevant, users can react negatively to them.

As a result, it’s important to use traditional category pages only when they are truly necessary — typically for complex products or sites with many subcategories — and allow users to skip them by linking to product subcategories within the global navigation. Consider whether a hybrid approach could deliver necessary product or marketing information directly on the product-listing page.