This is such a common pain point with larger catalogs and you’re already thinking about it the right way, guided selling is exactly the direction worth going.
A few things that actually work for this:
Searchanise and Boost Commerce both go way beyond basic search, they handle natural language queries and filter by price, occasion, use case etc. Good starting point without heavy lifting.
For the conversational/guided selling angle specifically, Rebuy is worth looking at, it combines smart recommendations with cart logic so “gift under $50 for office” type queries can surface the right products dynamically.
Octane AI is another strong one, it’s built specifically for quiz and guided selling flows, works well for stores with deep catalogs where customers don’t know exactly what they want coming in.
The early results you’re seeing with guided selling make sense, when customers feel like the store is listening it removes the overwhelm of 400 SKUs completely.
This is something very common, Search only really helps when users already know what they’re looking for, so apart from a good search app integration you can use quiz option to land them to the specific products, also you can used conversional based AI Chatting apps that focus on product recommendations which are available in shopify app store.
Totally agree we faced the exact same issue.Search and collections only work when users already know what they want but most customers actually come with vague intent like “gift under $50” or “something for office.” We started using a conversational AI assistant on our store that understands these kinds of queries asks a few follow-up questions and then recommends products accordingly almost like a real salesperson.
Since then, we’ve seen much better engagement and users are able to find relevant products much faster
We’ve worked on this exact problem with stores in a similar SKU range, around 300-600 products, and the pattern is usually the same. As we saw, customers don’t know the product names, they know the problem they want to solve.
Skincare was one of our strongest categories. It significantly improved the shopping experience because one of the most common use cases was asking for a morning or evening face-care routine for a specific skin type, like dry or oily skin. The system could then recommend the exact 4-5 products they needed.
What worked best was making the experience conversational. It asks a few quick questions, like skin type, budget, and routine type, then recommends a relevant set of products.
On one skincare store, we also saw multiple comments on price-comparison pages from customers saying it helped them find the right products without endlessly scrolling.
with 400 SKUs the default Shopify search is definitely not going to cut it. your customers are telling you exactly what they want through those chat messages (“gift under $50”, “something for office”) and the store can’t answer that.
the lowest-effort high-impact fix is curated collections based on use case, not just product category. make a “gifts under $50” collection, an “office essentials” collection, a “best sellers” collection. put those front and center on your homepage. most shoppers browse by intent, not by product type. after that, look into a smarter search app like Searchanise or Boost that handles natural language queries better than Shopify’s built-in search.
We’ve been exploring this problem too — especially for stores with larger catalogs where customers don’t know what to choose or where to start.
One approach we’re testing is a guided bundle / guided shopping experience, where customers go through a step-by-step product selection flow instead of browsing large collections manually.
This works especially well for categories like skincare, supplements, PC builders, and other products with compatibility or conditional logic.
Here’s a sample beauty/skincare bundle experience: