Rivera: Shortening E-Commerce Funnels Can Destroy Product Value and Differentiation
Carl Rivera · 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify · Nov 14, 2025 · at 22:55
Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify, reflects on product lessons from iterating on the Shop app navigation and conversion funnels.
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“And I think a conventional truth in e-commerce is that whenever you can cut the funnel. Like whenever you can remove a step, remove it. And so we did that, then we kind of go from like, you know, you have discovery, show the right thing. So you click in on the product and you convert. And that's like a shorter journey. But for the role that we play in the minds of consumers and the role that we want to be playing in the world of e-commerce, The extra step, which is a long step, by the way, of getting to know the merchants, and really, like, getting to understand not just the product that hooked you, but their entire collection of products, their merchandising, their story, was the step that made shop be special. And that was the thing that, like, we could never optimize away, even if it shortened the funnel.”
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