Before going into the categories, Tayar stresses that it should be made clear that the “home” is not the most important page of a website, since any landing page is in itself a potential home page and should be treated as such.
Nowadays there is no single home page, any landing page on a site is a potential home page.
Thanks to the Google Analytics landing pages report , we can discover all the URLs that are the first page a user visits when accessing a website.
In his presentation, Ricardo illustrates this situation with a report in which we can see all these URLs. In this case, the home page has about 50,000 visits, but it does not even reach 10% of the total number of home sessions, which are distributed among many pages.
From here we conclude that when a user lands on any of these URLs, for him that will be the home page .
What is a home page for ?
The main purpose of this page is to present something australia telegram lead distribute traffic . It also helps to locate the products and services that are being searched for.
Therefore, if the first page that most users see when they land on your website is not the home page itself but a category page, it must meet the same expectations and be designed for that same purpose. Otherwise, the error rate will be very high.
Based on another e-commerce example where all the URLs in this report are category pages, Ricardo raises another question: What metrics are we interested in monitoring? The answer is clear: the bounce rate.
What is bounce rate?
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The effective “80-20” or Pareto principle
Additionally, in these reports, we can add a secondary dimension within the same URL that allows us to see which specific sources and media brought that traffic to the destination page.
Specifically, in the example you present, we observe that the main media that make up the bulk of the traffic are organic and CPC .
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And when analyzing this type of data, Tayar recommends applying a very effective method that, curiously, is rarely used: the Pareto principle .
«20% of what comes in or is invested is responsible for 80% of what is obtained. That is, 80% of the consequences derive from 20% of the causes.»
Following this principle, instead of looking at a small percentage of the entire set of sessions that generate a high bounce rate, I am interested in analyzing the bulk of the traffic volume that I receive.
To do this, Tayar recommends isolating data segments that represent the most critical part of what we are analyzing, especially if these metrics are bad. This way, we will find the sources and media that are providing us with the truly critical traffic and that is what I am really interested in working on. For example: a high bounce rate on a landing page.
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Category Pages Objectives
Category pages can be defined as “bridge” pages and their purpose is purely transactional .
These pages serve to guide any user who accesses them towards a specific product or service , and if they do not do so, they would have failed in their purpose.
So, if we think about conversion in this way, we can understand it as a thread that can be cut into many parts. If I don't manage to have category pages or home pages that are able to efficiently lead me to a product, there will never be a conversion understood as a contract or final sale.
Therefore, it is important to think of this process in a linear way in which all points are correctly optimized.
[Tweet «»Category pages should direct the user to a specific product»»]
High bounce rates on category pages. What should I do?
When we encounter a high bounce rate on a category page, we are probably facing a design or information architecture problem.
This last point refers to the action of grouping elements within the site into different categories:
Objective categories : colors, size…
Subjective: of use.
Given this situation, Ricardo proposes locating those "bad" or inefficient metrics , a high bounce rate in this case, and proposing a good hypothesis.
For example: The user does not find what he is looking for because he is faced with too many options and becomes overwhelmed. Something that happens very often. And, once the hypothesis has been formulated, propose improvements to resolve it.
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In this particular case, to reduce the bounce rate and make it easier for users to find what they are looking for and make it more accessible, Tayar suggests opting for simple categories.
At a cognitive level, grouping works very well because the brain is not prepared to assimilate large amounts of information. That is why, in our daily lives, we unconsciously digest information in small groups (when memorizing an ID or a telephone number, for example).
If we transfer this to our landing pages , we should opt for simple structures and again apply the Pareto principle and propose few but very well concentrated options . It is not that there are no other categories, but that those that are not so important should not be so visible .