Seriously, if you are going to have a website for shopping, then you MUST have a feature that allows me to customize how many items are displayed at a time. It is insulting to see 9 whole products on the screen while looking at a page navigation bar that has page 1 thru page 38 or something just as ridiculous.
Let me change to display 18, 36, or even 50 items per page. I understand that there are bandwidth and server issues involved here, but guess what? I’m a thousand times more likely to scroll to the bottom of a page before I leave your site than I am to click NEXT fourteen times.
So, if you want me to actually see what products you have and give me a chance to decide I want to buy them, then get with the program. A little bandwidth is a much better trade-off than your customers abandoning their shopping trip before they see everything you have to offer.