Promotion and operation: How to implement traffic distribution mechanism?

Last week, I talked in detail about a lot of things about building an indicator system, and many friends left messages saying that they didn’t quite understand it. The author also reflected deeply on this and will write subsequent articles separately, with each article only discussing one node analysis, which will be clearer and easier to understand.

This week we will look at what we can do after establishing an indicator system?

A typical example is the in-site traffic distribution mechanism , which is what we are going to talk about today.

01 What is the traffic distribution mechanism?

Let’s take a simple example: Taobao’s homepage has 8 channel pages, 8 advertising spaces, and various content such as Juhuasuan, Taobao Flash Sales, Good Goods, Taobao Live, etc. What content should be put in it involves the traffic distribution mechanism.

The traffic distribution mechanism is to allocate the traffic within the site to the right places through certain strategies, so as to maximize the traffic conversion or the value of the traffic.

02 Why is it necessary to establish a good traffic distribution mechanism?

Improve traffic conversion: Traffic is becoming more and more expensive at this stage. If the incoming traffic leaves without generating value, it is a huge waste for the company. Our final result indicators are made up of a number of small conversion rates, so we must not be careless about this.

Increase traffic value: Traffic is expensive, but when we cannot solve this problem, we can make traffic generate greater value until it is greater than the cost we invest. That is, when the ROI is positive, our work is valuable.

Strategic intention: When we are working on a new project or focusing on a certain business, we will definitely allocate resources to this business. Just like Meituan initially tilted its resources towards food delivery, and Taobao tilted its traffic towards Tmall. Only with traffic can we do big things, and traffic must come first before the troops move.

03 How to implement the traffic distribution mechanism?

There are two major strategies: give users what you want them to see, and give users what they want to see.

Judging from the conversion of traffic, it is definitely the most efficient way to give users what they want, but it may not be the most suitable for the platform. The content that users like may not necessarily bring you value.

So, today we will focus on how to do the first one, and then talk about the second strategy next week.

Traffic distribution usually has two major contents: one is to direct traffic to a specific business line; the other is to direct traffic to specific content (products).

The former usually uses fixed columns to divert traffic, while the latter often uses configurable ad slots.

Traffic review

Before implementing the traffic distribution mechanism, you need to do a traffic review and review each traffic entrance of the site.

The main evaluation is about which pages are usually used as entry pages from the outside, such as the home page, activity page, and product details page for e-commerce; content products usually also have content details pages, content column (special topic) pages, product home page, etc.

We first evaluate how many users start your product journey from these pages and the conversion rates of each page.

Next, we need to do one more thing: what are the entrances to the next page from these pages?

For example, the Taobao homepage will include: homepage search, homepage advertising space, content column, 16 fixed business columns, product theme aggregation column, product recommendation column, APP TAP page, etc.

Taobao's special page for good things includes content such as Gewuzhi, Selected Products, Lifestyle Hall, and Mother and Baby Hall. Taobao’s product details page includes the seller’s own product recommendations, as well as other sellers’ products recommended by Taobao.

The significance of reviewing traffic data is that when you need to actively promote a certain content, you can find a suitable entry point to try it instead of doing it on a whim. If the traffic is small, you won’t be able to see the effect. If the traffic is large and the business is not handled well, it will easily cause user loss.

Traffic value assessment

We have previously evaluated the overall entrance and exit of traffic, and the next step is to evaluate the value of traffic.

The value of traffic is calculated based on some core actions. For example, the user’s key behavior may not be purchasing, but there are also sharing, adding to shopping cart and other behaviors. What we need to do at this time is to evaluate the final conversion value of these behaviors and calculate the current value of traffic?

——For example: 1,000 people visit a topic page, 100 of them will pay for the purchase, 20 will share it, and 50 will add products to the shopping cart but not pay on the same day.

Then, we can calculate the value of this 1000 traffic with this simple formula:

Traffic value = (1000 customer unit price + 20 new users per capita + 50 customer unit price * shopping cart payment conversion rate) / 1000

(The above formula is an example of the simplest formula. In actual operation, different products have different value assessments for different actions.)

After calculating the traffic value, we need to evaluate the value of the traffic at each entrance to see whether the current entrance has reached its expected value.

Traffic redistribution

Finally, it is the redistribution of traffic. We will evaluate the traffic for each business line - that is, how much traffic I give you and how much profit you need to bring me . This income is not limited to income, it can be from attracting new users or performing certain active operations.

We will provide higher entry points for businesses with high traffic value, and help businesses with low traffic value solve corresponding problems. Then provide more traffic instead of ignoring it and giving you large traffic directly. In the end, you are the one who loses.

When guiding certain special pages or products, the issue of traffic value also needs to be considered. If I give you advertising space, you need to bring me corresponding returns. If I give you more entrances, you need to bring me corresponding profits.

Of course, for some strategic products, low traffic value can be accepted in the short term, but it is absolutely not possible to divert all the traffic without any return traffic, as this will result in a huge loss of traffic.

That’s about all for today. In the next issue, let’s talk about how to design a good traffic distribution mechanism from a product perspective.

Author: Tree Cat

Source: Tree Cat Says