Home page operation strategy: Home page operation skills

The following is the framework directory of the entire homepage operation strategy:

1. How to use resources on the home page

1. Marketing resources

E-commerce websites have rich marketing resources, including various push notifications, home pages, channel pages, searches, and advertising resources. As long as anything is visible to users, it can be marketed. This article only discusses the home page resource position.

1) Startup screen

Generally, an app takes a few tenths of a second to load. In addition to displaying a static logo, you can also use this waiting time to place advertisements. Recently, many apps pretend to be starting up or preparing for the desktop, significantly extending the time the startup screen stays (even Xiaomi TV has learned this bad habit), and even switching to the background and then returning to the foreground to play ads again. Although the experience is poor, users have gotten used to it.

2) Advertising space

You can sell advertisements in any resource column on the home page. In addition to the startup screen, common advertising positions include search box default words, first focus, big promotion banner, marquee, channel window product placement, and first screen brand visual customization. It can be sold individually, or sold in divided traffic, or sold in a package of multiple resources. If the traffic volume is large, you can also split the traffic to push targeted advertisements, thereby achieving a significant increase in CPC/CPS revenue.

3) Home page focus picture (carousel)

For regular resource locations, traffic drops drastically after three frames. In addition to configuring fixed content, you can also set an activity pool for each frame for personalized display; or conduct horse racing, where those with better performances receive more exposure.

4) Home page visual customization

Package the visual design of the homepage as a whole and cooperate with brands, such as Super Brand Day. It basically does not change the layout framework of the homepage, but only visually customizes the entire first screen to highlight the brand characteristics, similar to the following. At the same time, it provides an entrance to brand activities to promote brand sales.

First screen overall customization

5) Floating window

This resource position is somewhat obstructive, blocking certain locations and also carries the risk of accidental touches. Floating windows usually contain sweepstakes, mini-games, check-ins, tasks, etc. to increase user stickiness. It is always in the user's sight, not affected by scrolling, and is easy to notice. It can also be used to incubate new businesses, test new columns, and help cold start.

2. Promotional resources

1) Second floor

Press and pull down on the first screen, and the app with this resource will be displayed on the second floor.

The first design I saw on the second floor was Taobao’s “One Thousand and One Nights”, which was open late at night and used exciting short videos to attract night owls.

In addition to content, the second floor can of course also be used to store activity resources. However, this resource is located deep inside and its ability to reach users is relatively weak. You can consider using a "partial display-retract" animation to provide a prompt when entering the homepage.

Taobao 2nd Floor

2) Curtain

Have you ever seen a "little rope" hanging down from the homepage (or similar hint), which, when pressed and pulled down, will pull out a "curtain" with activity resources on it?

Unlike the second floor, it does not leave the first screen, but is just a half-screen cover similar to a projection screen, showing the entrance to a specific activity.

It can be used as a supplementary part of the promotion floor. Its characteristic is high operating cost, and it is suitable for users who have a strong desire to participate in activities. From another perspective, it is suitable for precise delivery and matching, and provides activities with higher user value or stronger stickiness. You can make an animated reminder when entering the homepage.

No screenshots were saved when this resource was first launched. I don’t know if the example below is the same as the original, but the design looks a bit similar.

Curtain

3) Promotional floors

The most common non-permanent floors are opened during big promotions. The main venue is at the front, and the entrances to sub-venues are placed on the 1-2 floors below. It is not recommended to have more than two floors overall. More sub-venues can be considered to be displayed in the main venue.

Promotion banner

I usually develop multiple banner positions on the homepage (but they will not be opened at the same time). The most important banner is above the icon area, the second banner is below the icon area, and the third is on the second screen, below the fist channel.

The logic of use is that for the highest level of activities (hereinafter referred to as S-level), we do not want the icon to divert traffic, and try to guide more traffic directly into the event venue. At this time, it is advisable to place the full-width bar above the icon area, or even occupy the first screen. Users can only see the venue entrance at first glance, which can maximize the event traffic. However, if the regular entrance is moved downward, there will be certain experience problems.

The second level of activities (hereinafter referred to as Level A) allows the icon to be appropriately diverted to respect the habits of some users who do not participate in the activities . Therefore, it is placed below the icon area, but still appears on the first screen to attract the attention of users across the entire site.

The third level of activities (B or below), such as various themed promotions that take place from time to time throughout the year, are placed below the Fist Channel area because of their narrow audience and their sales capabilities are often not as good as those of the Fist Channel such as flash sales. However, they are allowed to appropriately absorb the regular "wandering" traffic that continues to move downward.

We can see that the arrangement of the activity banner position should maximize the value of the entire site. Carefully evaluate whether it is globally optimal to use the promotional banner to attract more traffic, rather than believing that the higher the position, the better and the larger the entrance, the better. In addition, the promotion team and I have done a series of in-depth analysis on how to achieve the best arrangement of promotion sessions, duration and waves. I will skip this in this article and share it with you when I write about the activities in the future.

Suggestions for using promotional resources:

• Except for special occasions such as Double 11 when users are fully motivated to participate in activities, try not to open too many promotional resources at the same time. This may cause the first screen to be extremely chaotic, with resources competing for traffic. Users will also be lost, and the dilution of the activity effect will lead to a greater decline in regular sales, which may not be worth the loss.
• The promotion level corresponds to the resource package. For example, an S-level promotion can combine the use of multiple resource slots, an A-level promotion can appropriately reduce the use of resource slots, and a B-level promotion can only open a specific resource slot. Home page operations or activity operations should have corresponding resource rules.
• Set application rules and threshold standards. For example, if you reach a certain revenue expectation, you can apply for a resource position. The higher the expectation, the more exposure you can apply for. Of course, an inventory must be taken afterwards, and even adjustments must be made dynamically in real time.
• Resource content can be delivered in a differentiated manner based on region, user preferences, traffic segmentation, etc. to improve marketing efficiency.

3. General Resources

1) Top tab

In recent years, Taobao and JD’s homepages have added tabs, configuring a first-screen entrance for each business (typically such as categories) to bring traffic to the business sub-homepage.

Home top tab

The home page tab was discussed in “The Ultimate Guide to Home Page Products”. Its problem is that there is not much traffic starting from the second tab, and the third tab drops off sharply. It may not be as good as an icon position or a channel after the third screen, but it is better than nothing, so it is not recommended.

2) Icon

The trend in recent years is more and more, from 1 row to 2 rows, from 4 to 5 in a row, and even divided into multiple screens horizontally, which everyone is familiar with.

Here is an experience that may be easily misunderstood but is very important——

Everyone still remembers that the visual heat map test of web pages shows that users focus more on the left side of the screen, especially the upper left corner. In the PC era, based on this principle, the most important information and entrances are generally placed in the upper left corner of the screen. We verified the visual heat map again on the mobile side, and the results are very close to those in the PC era, as shown below:

Icon area visual heat map

So based on this result, I moved the icon position of an important business from the middle to the first icon on the left in the first row, in order to gain more traffic.

Unexpectedly, after 4 weeks of AB testing after the adjustment, the results were unexpected, the CTR actually dropped by 13.1%! In comparison, when the rightmost icon is adjusted to the fourth from the left, the CTR increases by 10.0%; when the fourth from the left icon is adjusted to the middle, the CTR increases by 30.8%; and when the middle icon is adjusted to the second from the left, the CTR increases by 11.8%.

In-depth analysis revealed that this is because users often hold the phone with one hand, so they click less frequently in places that their thumb cannot reach. Therefore, unlike the visual hotspot, the middle of the screen or slightly to the right is the click hotspot (as shown below).

Icon click hotspot

So far we conclude that the icon position advantage is: middle position > 2nd from the left ≈ 4th from the left > rightmost > leftmost. Simply put, the closer to the middle, the better.

3) Channel position

After the homepage icon and promotion column, you usually enter the channel area. The layout can be divided into layers according to shopping styles and scenes, such as promotion floor, quality floor, and content floor.

After the revision of JD.com and Taobao, the homepage became shorter and the channel entrance became very small. Intuitively, this is not conducive to the channel gaining traffic.

Later we learned that this was because there were too many channels in the past, with seven or eight screens, and the performance was uneven. Not all business lines could make good use of the homepage entrance, and the traffic on the back screens was relatively low.

Therefore, the homepage was significantly shortened in the revision in exchange for an increase in traffic to high-quality channels. In addition, although the channel entry of row 1 and row 4 has an average 35% less traffic than the channel entry of row 1 and row 2, the subsequent screen entry is moved forward, and the overall traffic efficiency is improved.

It is worth noting that even though JD.com’s homepage looks short, it still retains more than 10 homepage channel entrances (and a channel pool with dual entrances), plus more than 20 tab entrances and 20 icons on two screens, with more than 50 channel entrances on the homepage at the same time.

At the same time, the previous vertical tiling was changed to a combination of vertical and horizontal, and many channels were exposed horizontally. E-commerce companies with fewer shopping guide columns must first provide reasonable multi-dimensional shopping guide columns to provide a professional shopping guide experience. It is too simplistic and crude to rely solely on "guess what you like".

4. Function entry

1) Search Box

The search box is a regular function entrance, but it can also be marketed by configuring default search terms, associative terms in the smart search assistant drop-down menu, etc., as shown below.

2) Shopping cart

This is an important permanent function position. Don't bother with it, otherwise users will not be able to find the settlement entrance and the consequences will be huge.

3) Personal Center (“My”)

This is where you put user-related information, such as orders, assets, memberships, etc. You can also put a small amount of marketing resources, such as in-site messages. Apart from using personalized waterfall flow to grab residual value, it is not recommended to sell goods here unless the logic matches. You can use a small red dot to mark new information (such as coupon arrival, order changes, new site messages, etc.) to guide users in and guide member conversions. Internal messages are also often placed in the upper right corner.

5. Communication points

1) Home page pop-up window

This resource position is very popular and also very annoying. Because it is mandatory and blocks the entire homepage, users must click for it to disappear, which causes disgust. This reminds me of the website experience in the PC era, which was largely ruined by pop-ups on the homepage.

When I set the rules for pop-up windows on the homepage, I usually stipulate that pop-up windows are allowed in the following situations:

1. Newcomer gift pack. After all, the newcomers have just arrived, so the pop-up greetings are very considerate, and most of the gift packages are real money.
2. High-value rights and interests are issued. For example, red envelopes with no threshold for cash discounts, or high-value coupons, etc. It is prohibited to use pop-up windows to inform about those meaningless and useless rights.
3. Important announcement. Such as stopping delivery during the Spring Festival and forced app upgrades. Ordinary announcements can be delivered using a ticker.
4. Heavyweight activities for the entire site. In fact, this can also allocate marketing resources on the first screen, without the need for pop-ups.

In short, if it is not very important or can really make users happy, try to use home page pop-ups as little as possible.

2) Marquee

This announcement resource, such as JD Express and Taobao Headlines, occupies a very short full-bar on the first or second screen, with content displayed in a scrolling manner, and there may be no landing page. You can put general announcement information or marketing information here. Click to enter.

In terms of usage, I do not recommend using all the resources on the homepage for marketing. Different resources are targeted at different things, which makes it easier to cultivate user awareness. The ticker mainly displays announcements. Click to enter the announcement details. It will be closed when there is no announcement. Think about it, if there are often small advertisements posted on the bulletin board at the entrance of the company, how many people would be willing to read the bulletin board?

3) Message entry

Many mainstream apps place in-site messages independently in the upper right corner and add a small red dot when a new message is received. Don’t underestimate this little red dot, it can double your traffic. I once did some statistics and found that the in-site message entrance with a small red dot in the upper right corner can actually capture nearly 20% of the traffic on the homepage!

In-site messages are an effective means of reaching users. In addition to sending appropriate marketing information, you should also send more valuable information, such as notifications of rights arrival, reminders of tight inventory, notifications of new product launches, exclusive events, etc., to cultivate user attention.

2. Home page operation skills

1. Home page layout strategy

1) Respect users’ existing habits

Try to maintain a similar style layout as mainstream competitors. The home page is not the place to make big innovations. I once made a homepage with a unique layout, but the data performance was poor. Interviews revealed that users had the pain point of not being able to find the entrance, and browsing efficiency dropped significantly. If you want to be innovative, you can try the second homepage.

2) Large entrances capture clicks, small entrances capture screen effects

In terms of the output of a single column, the large entrance effectively attracts clicks through high-definition pictures, precise products and other means, and the CTR is undoubtedly higher. However, if there are too many shopping guide columns, such as JD.com and Taobao in the past, each column entrance is very large, which will lead to an increase in the number of screens on the homepage. The columns with lower rankings will be in a deeper position, and the exposure opportunities will be reduced.

We have noticed that JD.com and Taobao have recently changed to a smaller entrance with 1 row and 4 items, and folded most of the original shopping guide columns, greatly shortening the homepage. According to my understanding, after each column was changed from 1 line 2 to 1 line 4, the average single traffic decreased by about 35%.

Therefore, whether to adopt a large entrance layout or a small entrance layout depends on the total number of columns, their overall quality, and the richness and comprehensiveness of the shopping guide dimensions, and decisions should be made from the perspective of global optimization.

3) Multiple homepage combinations

A homepage can only carry one style. Although it can be different for different people, there must be many marketing resources that must be exposed and core channels that must be exposed. This means that no homepage can be 100% considerate.

I have tried designs such as the second homepage and multiple homepage combinations (see "The Ultimate Guide to Homepage Products" for details). By providing differentiated shopping guide styles on multiple homepages at the same time, I have achieved good data performance.

Product managers who have the conditions can also make similar attempts and come up with brilliant innovations.

4) Elevator floor navigation

The advantage is that it can help users quickly jump to the required area, but the disadvantage is that the skipped screens lose traffic. You can decide whether to add an elevator based on AB testing. Adding "Back to Top" after three screens is definitely helpful.

5) Scenario-based layout

Generally, e-commerce users have several mainstream genes, including promotion-oriented (price sensitive), quality-oriented (pursuing quality), solution-oriented (category preference), and grass-planting hobby type (likes to watch order posts, live broadcasts, and short videos). It is recommended to aggregate channels of similar styles in the same area to allow users to do in-depth browsing in their preferred scenarios. However, if there are a lot of shopping guide channels, it is recommended to merge homogeneous channels and keep one core column for a typical scene.

6) Top tab

Personally, I feel that the tab at the top of the homepage is rather useless and should only be allocated when there are really no entry resources. If the pages are divided into tabs by category and laid out in a straight line, it will be very disadvantageous for the categories that come behind. It is better to lay them out along the homepage.

Observing the top tab of JD.com-like apps, it is mainly placed on categories. Compared with the Ditong category entrance and then another category entrance, the traffic of the top tab on the homepage should still be greater.

Therefore, don’t have too high expectations for the top tab, especially the position that cannot be seen without scratching, unless the entrance is already very deep.

7) Golden Click Zone

As discussed above, the left side of the mobile terminal is a visual hotspot, but it is no longer a click hotspot. Important columns can be placed in the middle.

8) Bottom column

As mentioned earlier, the traffic at the bottom belongs to the traditional traffic residual value. As users become more and more accustomed to the infinitely extended personalized waterfall flow, this column has been greatly enhanced. But this section can only serve as the foundation.

9) Horse Racing

There are two types of horse racing, entry position horse racing and event/merchandise horse racing.

The former places channels with better results in more prime areas to maximize output, but this should be done with caution. Because position changes may also cause users to be unable to quickly find the channel, you can regularly adjust the channel position in small amounts and provide guidance in the novice guide.

If you are displaying an activity in the first focus or activity column, or displaying individual products in the recommended area, you can create an activity pool and a product pool, and display the best activities and products through a horse racing mechanism based on personalization.

2. Increase in ingress traffic

After obtaining the homepage entrance, in addition to the characteristics of the channel itself, how can we improve the ability to capture traffic? Below are some experiences we have gained in practice for your reference.

1) Personalization

Most of the channel entrances of mainstream e-commerce have been personalized, that is, products that match the current user’s recent browsing and purchasing behavior are displayed based on algorithms. My actual test data shows that after the channel entrance is personalized, the CTR increases by about 50%. Of course, deduplication must be done on the homepage, because if the user's preferences are guessed based on individual products, the personalized algorithm will point to the same group of products. It is necessary to prevent multiple identical products from appearing on the homepage.

2) More products vs. fewer products

If you cannot personalize the entrance image, for example, if you hold a temporary event and there is no time to do automated cutouts, you can only use static event images as the entrance.

Therefore, if the entrance picture displays a richer variety of products, the CTR will be better than a single product. For example, in the two activity entrance pictures below, the picture on the left with rich products will have a much higher click-through rate than the one on the right.

The impact of the number of imported products on CTR

3) Novelty vs. Best Seller

Take a look at these two products:

The impact of entry product style on CTR

The former is a CK classic T-shirt, which is a hot seller on the website with excellent sales data. The algorithm is designed to automatically find the most popular (browsed, sold) products and place them at the channel entrance, but this product has no visual features and its ability to attract clicks is very limited.

The latter is another star product, the FOREO cleansing device, which is also a star product, but its appearance is more attractive than the CK classic T-shirt.

Test data shows that the latter is much better than the former when used as window display merchandise. Therefore, the entrance attracts traffic with new and unique products, and the landing page drives conversion with hot-selling products, with good results.

4) Don’t be too explicit

Let’s take a look at the following two sets of channel entrance designs:

It is not difficult to find that the main difference between them is that version A does not display the product name, while version B does. These are two versions of a project. Everyone thinks the latter has a better experience and should have a higher CTR.

However, the results of the 8-week AB test were beyond our expectations. The CTR of the latter is 12.69% lower than that of the former!

The only difference between the two versions is the presence or absence of a title, so we can only conclude that adding a title is harmful. We speculate that if the product image can attract users and arouse their interest, they will click on it. However, if the product is clearly written, users can further determine whether it is the product they need. At this time, they may not be motivated to click in to see the specific information on the product detail page. This example also shows that a good experience may not necessarily help in achieving the ultimate goal.

5) Red

Piaohong is a killer move for an icon to grab traffic! Please guess how big the difference is in CTR for the following set of icons before and after they turn red (the red color is the little red label in the upper right corner of the icon)?

Red

The answer is an increase of 50% to 200%!

Of course, red floating needs to be regulated:

1. Not too many icons should be red at the same time. For a group of 10 icons like this, it is recommended that no more than three icons should be red at the same time.
2. The communication of interest points of the content must be clear. If you just use vague words like "new" or "big sale", the effect will be very weak.

Because the effect of the red floating is significant, business lines will continue to apply for the red floating. At this time, the homepage operation needs to define the application standards and processes, and limit and standardize the number and content of the red floating.

6) Entrance animation

Adding animation at the entrance is also a very good way to attract attention and clicks. The specific improvement depends on the animation effect. In the past, we have also done a flip of 10 icons and displayed a 10-word sentence/slogan on special hot events, which had a very good effect.

Entrance animation

However, please be careful when using it. It is recommended not to place multiple moving elements on the same screen, otherwise it will be visually messy.

7) The lower screen is partially exposed

Take a look at these two screenshots:

Next column/product partial exposure

The first is the design of the first screen of the home page. The bottom of the first screen just reveals the header of the column below, and the header reflects the key selling point of the column. The second is the horizontal column. The products are laid out horizontally, and one screen just reveals a part of the next product.

This common guidance method can effectively drive traffic downward/to the right. When designing, do not pursue aesthetics but only fully display the columns and products.

8) Entrance copywriting

The design of entry copy needs to highlight the theme and interest points, such as product features, promotional rights, limited time and quantity, etc. These are very common, but once we tested a group of entry copy, those beautiful recommendation copy effects were defeated by a copy "Don't click, you will regret it!", which obtained very high click data. Of course, the landing page had to justify itself: "Selected good things, you will regret buying them if you click in."

This is actually the title party method of copywriting. As long as it does not cause disgust, you can refer to relevant articles on how to write popular article titles.

3. Landing page takeover

Below we will share some of our practical experiences on how landing pages can attract traffic and effectively realize their value.

1) Product exposure location matches category attributes and supply capacity

There are huge differences in traffic in different positions on the homepage, which also correspond to groups of people with different characteristics. for example:

• The first focus position, especially the first two frames, has a huge exposure volume. If the inventory of the landing page products is limited, use the first focus with caution, otherwise it will be quickly sold out, which is a waste of the cost of applying for the resource position. At the same time, if too many products on the page are out of stock, the experience will be relatively poor. The same problem exists with the activity bar.
• In flash sale channels or promotional scenario areas, most users have a strong preference for promotions and are highly price sensitive. Recommending high-value and high-priced products in these areas may not be effective unless there are large discounts.
• The content (community, video, live broadcast) area is more suitable for non-standard products or categories with strong communication needs, such as Liubai, beauty, and maternal and child products.

In short, the cost of home page resources is huge, and the resource location characteristics should be matched with business attributes and supply capabilities as much as possible to maximize traffic efficiency.

2) Home page jumps to list page vs. detail page

Let’s first take a look at the homepage entrance of the channel below. It creates a pool of selected products through buyer recommendations, and displays the items that users are interested in on the homepage in a personalized manner, while rotating products at the same time. Let’s think about this first. When you click on the product on the cover, should you be taken to a list page or the product details page?

Inlet drainage style

From the perspective of user experience, of course, it is better to go directly to the product details page, because when you click on this product, the psychological desire is to see the product details. However, our test comparison found that if you enter the details page, the average PV of the product details page per person in the entire channel is low. If you enter the list page, the PV can be increased by more than two times.

Of course, in order not to sacrifice the user experience too much, the product should appear in a prominent position on the list page so that users can find it quickly.

3) Cross-channel marketing

Landing pages can be used to cross-link between channels, direct traffic between related columns, and improve the efficiency of traffic utilization. This may cause difficulties in the data statistics of resource position output, but from an operational perspective, it can significantly improve the output of homepage resource positions.

At this point, the homepage operation strategy comes to an end. We can see that the key to operating the homepage well is to understand the ins and outs and characteristics of traffic, make scientific layout, establish a core indicator system for the homepage, clarify the direction of value enhancement, and continuously optimize, while establishing a resource allocation mechanism to maximize business output.

Author: Product meets operation

Source: Product meets operation