Removing Popular does not make them work more in the sense the search function is still right there and so are the botbases/cr/plugins/profiles buttons. It just removes the flavor of the month and spreads the wealth around.
What you are saying is that walking 500 meters in the rain is not farther than 100 meters if I give you an umbrella. Using a search window
is more work than seeing popular products in a row and choosing one of them. This is not even up for discussion, because it is "see popular products, click" versus "click, enter text, hit search, wait for result, read results, click". The amount of work is absolutely bigger
You are argueing from a place of what you want to be true and not what empirical data has shown us after tracking users for years.
I give you that is is harder to be noticed if your products are not visible on the frontpage, but that is the extent to which I agree with your statement. And even though the store does so many things wrong from an ecommerce standpoint, displaying the flavor of the month is important. Yes, it does direct customers that way, but it also directs customers towards a sale and it does a better job of it than making them jump through hoops. In an ideal world, customers would be able to buy within 2-3 clicks/interactions and in an ideal world, the store would place cookies leading to identify a users purchases and interest data to display products out of the same category. It doesn't, so we have to make do with very limited ecommerce practices.
It is not the job of the store to spread the wealth. The job of the store is to generate revenue for Bossland GmbH and the current approach is very lacking, but it is good for the limited capabilities and options they have.
And just to make that clear: My products are rarely in the list of popular products. That is not why I am writing this. And I also fully know that there are crap products in that list as well. That is life. It is not fair. It is also not supposed to be fair.
