Hi James,
1 year ago I pushed new update for one of my WordPress themes it was expensive update therefor I contacted the support asked them if it possible to put the item at the top of the category page, The answer was already known for me but I was just shaking the water.
I ended up by reducing the price so the item can be shown if people sorted low to high price my results were great, So I really hope if these experiments will help the market even the fact it’s really started to hurt me 