
We took a quick look at COS's online shopping experience
From product discovery to checkout, a few things stood out that may be worth exploring further.
The observations below are based on Baymard's ecommerce UX research and fashion industry benchmarks.


“Having Baymard is like having access to a magical UX super power. I can't believe how helpful and easy to use it is, given the vast array of tools and information they provide!”

PDPs - Use Both “Bullet Lists” and “Blocks of Text” for Product Descriptions
Product descriptions play a critical role in helping shoppers evaluate whether a product is right for them. When key information is difficult to scan or buried within large blocks of text, shoppers can struggle to find the details they need to purchase with confidence.
We identified an opportunity to make product information easier to consume, helping shoppers evaluate products faster and make more informed purchase decisions.


PLPs - Always Allow Users to Sort Product Lists and Search Results by “Price”, “User Rating”, “Best-Selling”, and “Newest”
Sorting is a shortcut to relevance. When shoppers can’t order products by the criteria they care about, they’re forced to scan manually, overuse filters, or miss suitable products altogether.
Baymard’s desktop benchmark found that 62% of sites are missing relevant sorting options or don’t provide sorting at all.
We identified an opportunity to make product exploration faster, more relevant, and better aligned with how fashion shoppers compare products before purchase.


PLPs - Always Provide Highly Relevant Alternative Queries on Mobile Results Pages
Search users don’t always describe products the same way a site does. When search results don’t offer relevant alternatives or adjacent suggestions, shoppers can assume the product isn’t available and leave.
We identified an opportunity to make search more forgiving, helping shoppers recover from imperfect queries and continue discovering relevant products.


“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
How leading fashion ecommerce teams approach these challenges
High-performing ecommerce teams typically combine multiple sources of insight when improving customer experiences:
- UX research
- Industry benchmarking
- Competitive analysis
- Design pattern libraries
- Team training and enablement
- Expert guidance when needed
The goal is not simply identifying issues, but building confidence in which improvements will have the greatest impact.
Find the UX issues costing your team conversions
The opportunity is bigger than these three findings.
Speak to a Baymard expert to uncover where friction is limiting product discovery, weakening purchase confidence, and slowing shoppers down before checkout. We’ll show how Baymard’s research and benchmarks help your team prioritize the improvements with the greatest commercial impact.
Explore All Features

Research-Backed UX Insights
Refining your user experience and justifying your design decisions has never been easier.
UX Best Practice Guidelines
Over 700 UX best practice guidelines based on 200,000+ hours of user testing.
UX Audit Service
Get an in-depth audit for your site carried out by our team of UX experts.
UX-Ray
Scan your site to identify UX issues, surface improvement opportunities, and decide where a deeper expert review could have the biggest impact.
UX-Query
Get instant answers to any UX question, backed by 200,000 hours of research.
UX Benchmarking
Get UX performance measures for your site and see how you stack up against the industry leaders and direct competitors in your market.
Review Tool
Self-assess the UX performance of your site with our manual UX review tool.
Research Personalization
Access tailored insights – your UX audit findings seamlessly integrated into our research database giving you
UX Design Examples
18,000+ annotated full-page UX design examples from the world's biggest brands.
Training & Certification
Accelerate your career and gain access to industry-leading insights and best practices.


