Shopping from
the Oasis
Redesigning the homepage to drive traffic and engagement
TL:DR
Redesigned Intu’s global homepage to increase traffic to their ecommerce platform. Used data insights, user research, and competitive analysis to improve usability, boost conversion rates, and enhance user engagement while aligning with business goals.
Intu
Oct 2012
2 months
Medium
Design lead
Discovery
User research
UX design
UI design
Prototyping
User testing
Created for
Date
Duration
Effort
Role
Deliverables
Brief
We want to more effective utilise intu’s global homepage so as to drive more traffic into the online store. We want the page to be seen as a landing page for the online store so that receives its own traffic, seperate from the local centre pages.
We have seen from GA analytics that the page is prominent landing page for users arriving from organic search but they quickly bounce, we have also seen that the page has a high exit rate also. If we continue to ignore this we will continue to see users exit the site and see a reduction in returning users.
By improving this page we can increase the usability of the site and from that increase conversion within the shop.
We know that the page is important to the business due to the advertising spaces that are rented out.
Insights
We have seen through data within GA that a high portion of traffic comes to the page from one internal link, the intu logo. The logo sits within the header on every page and links to the global homepage.
We have also observed through session recordings that users entering the page through organic search will land on the page, scroll up and down and then bounce with interacting with anything.
We have observed through session recording and heatmaps that users don’t engage with the advertising on the page.
Through competitor analysis and benchmarking we were able to identify many common design patterns and practices that could be used to improve the usability and user perception of the page.
Hypothesis
We believe that by adding introductory copy to the top of the page, users landing on the page will get a better understanding of the page and the content and be less likely to leave.
We believe that by providing deep links into the online store, we will be able to get more users into the store and increase conversion through the store.
We believe that users are clicking the intu logo within the header trying to navigate back to their local centre homepage by altering the link of the logo to send users to the correct homepage they will be less likely to leave the site.
We believe that by creating more engaging content within the page and making it look less like a dumping ground for adverts, users will spend more time and engage with elements on the page reducing the bounce / exit rate and leading to users travelling deeper into the site.
Process
From the user stories we had created using the personas we were able to identify user flows which allowed me to create paper prototypes so we could begin to quickly begin to test the design, once we had begun this process after many iterations through wireframing and high fidelity designs we ended with a fully functioning prototype.
I began usability testing with participants who were a mix of intu and non-intu users so as to capture the full understand of what the page is. I asked for the participants opinion on the page and asked them to perform a series of findability tasks which I observed. Moving forward with some tweaks to the design based on the feedback I was able to spec the designs and hand over to the engineering team to go into production.
Outcome
The design we finally ended up with features a large carousel at the top of the page to promote advertising campaigns, this was a component I had observed on many competitors and online stores. Using this component we were able to satisfy the needs of the stakeholders for a space to sell advertising slots and with the prominence and positioning of the component we also increase the perceived value of the page from advertisers and we were able to increase the value of the advertising slots. I also added below the carousel a heading and strapline to provide a brief outline of the business and the USPs to help new users to the page get a outline of what can be accomplished on the page. Below that I added a block of category images to provide links into the online store and by using imagery to reduce cognitive load. This I believed would help send users into the shop and increase conversion within the online shop itself.
A large offers block was added below the category images to promote the the offers hub, we had previously had success with the new design for the offers hub. By placing the top offers on the global homepage we could increase the value of the these slots and the perceived value to advertisers. Below that I added another potential area for advertising slots that also links deeper into the online store, I did this by creating similar blocks to the category links but instead using the logos of popular brands that would link to the store filtered by the brand. This was done due to a behaviour we had observed on the category pages of the stores, we found that the most popular filter used was the brand filter, so by providing this we believed that we could drive more traffic into the store from this page. We could also advertise these slots for brands to pay to be displayed here.
Finishing off the page, I created a series of blocks to highlight the USPs of the business for new users based around the digital business core messages, discover, compare and save and then finally a link to local centre pages, this was a need from the stakeholders and also we found some organic traffic was landing on this page when actually looking for a centre.
