Some products are bought on a spec sheet. Furniture, food, and most things made by hand are bought on a story. The site has to know which one it is selling.
Lead with the story, keep the cart one tap away
Long-form pages with a persistent, quiet buy button outperform product grids for these brands every time we have measured it.
Photography is the product page
Budget for it like engineering. A great image system with a modest stack beats a great stack with stock photography.
Measure sessions, not just conversion
Readers come back. The second and third visits are where editorial commerce actually converts.