Design decision postmortem: Why LoopCart chose pagination over infinite scroll

Design · 3 min read

LoopCart, a D2C marketplace for household essentials, faced a strategic choice as catalog size grew: adopt infinite scroll to encourage discovery or keep pagination to support curation and navigation. Product and UX research revealed that shoppers performing goal-directed tasks (re-stocking staples) were getting lost in an endless feed, while discovery shoppers did benefit from continuous browsing. The team decided to split experiences: pagination for structured categories and infinite scroll for editorial collections.

Designers implemented clear affordances — visible page numbers and jump-to filters for category pages, and a curated 'infinite shelf' for inspiration boards. The engineering trade-off included maintaining robust deeplinks and reducing client-side memory for paginated routes. UX writing emphasized control language like 'View more results' and shown item counts, helping reset expectations and provide reference points during browsing.

Performance metrics after the rollout were favorable: add-to-cart rate in structured categories rose 11%, time-to-purchase decreased, and support queries about 'lost items' fell significantly. LoopCart's decision underscores that a one-size-fits-all pattern can backfire; tailoring scrolling mechanics to distinct user intents preserved discovery while restoring control for transactional shoppers.