DTC UX - Avoid Intermediary Category Pages

For traditional multi-brand e-commerce sites, intermediary category pages help users better understand the full range of options within a particular category and highlight navigational paths and related content. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) and other small catalog sites, have fewer and less diverse products and a flattened category taxonomy. With a reduced catalog breadth, DTC sites are unlikely to benefit from the addition of intermediary categories pages. In testing, 31% of participants struggled to reach the product list, with many initially misinterpreting the intermediary category page as the product lists.