How many products should a category page show?

Enough to fill two screens before anything loads, which on a phone is about twelve. Beyond that, filters matter far more than the count.

What decides it

The number itself is not what decides anything — the ordering is. A category page whose first row is not what most people want is a page people leave, whether it holds twelve products or two hundred.

The part that gets skipped

A product page has one job. Everything on it that is not helping somebody decide is in the way.

Consistency beats cleverness. A customer learns your store once, and every screen that behaves differently costs them.

The photograph is usually the product page. Everything else is supporting it.

Where an app fits

The same screen designed several ways is the point: a catalogue of four hundred lines needs a different home screen from one of forty.