Our testing shows that sorting is a generally under-prioritized area of e-commerce that has remained largely unchanged for the past 10–15 years (the entire history of modern e-commerce), with little-to-no innovation. In fact, some sites have started removing sorting features from their product lists altogether in a misguided attempt at simplification. This trend and general stagnation stands in sharp contrast to how important sorting features are to users.

Even for users with extensive domain knowledge or just general web shrewdness, in testing sorting proved to be a powerful feature and was often combined with filtering (“I filter the cameras for ‘water resistant’ models and $300–$500, and then sort that list by customer ratings to see the ‘best ones’ first”).

Learn More: Besides exploring the 591 “Sorting Tool” page design examples below, you may also want to read our related article on “Don’t Base ‘Customer Ratings’ Sorting on Averages Only” and “Category-Specific Sorting: A New Way to Sort Products”.

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