Low-intent Traffic on PDP
What happens when someone comes to you with a solution?
Working Team
Anni Yang, Sr UXD
Ray Alexander, Manager UX
Shop Group Product Manager
Raouf Solaiman, Director of Product
Developers
Chad Myers, Front-end
Joesph Kratz, Back-end
Data + Analytics
Troy Appracio, Analytics
Timeline
2020, Summer — Analytics
2020, Fall — Initial test
2021, Spring — Follow-up tests
Future — More Testing?
Our merchandising & marketing partners came to the UX team with a problem, a solution, and some data.
The Problem (as they stated it)
More traffic is entering the site directly on the Product Page. The conversion for that traffic is lagging behind other traffic.
The Solution (as they saw it)
Because this traffic doesn’t see the same promotional messaging as elsewhere on the site, we need to add promotional messaging to the Product Page.
Their Data
Conversion for visits that begin on the Homepage is 3.85%
Conversion for visits that start on the Product Page is 2.07%
Recent large increase of traffic starting on Product Pages
35%+ of traffic starts their session on the Homepage
So, where do we start?
Data presented out of context can often suggest a solution that conforms to a pre-existing bias. In other words, we worried the request was a solution looking for a problem to justify it. To prepare for a project kick-off, we decided to further explore the data provided within the request, in order to better understand the customer pain points and potential opportunities.
Our initial questions.
What is the breakdown of traffic by Entry Page Type?
What are the behavioral implications of Entry Page Type?
How does Offer Usage correlate to Entry Page Type?
What new questions will our research create?
What we found.
Traffic really is performing more poorly when starting on Product Pages
Entry Page Type does impact site behavior
Regardless of where people enter the site, they still want offers
What new questions did this initial research create?
If Product Pages are performing badly, where is that traffic coming from?
Here’s what Entry Page Type looks like with Paid Social traffic removed
Paid Social underperforms all referrers, regardless of Entry Page Type
And the majority of Paid Social visits begin on Product Page
With new data, we can craft a new hypothesis
Providing enhanced browsing pathways for customers who enter the site on a Product Page will create increased browsing behavior and increased conversion rates.
The problem isn’t that people aren’t finding offers. The problem is that people who are not seeking out a shopping experience are being enticed to view a specific product…but if that specific product isn’t the right thing for them, and they aren’t seeing any obvious alternatives in front of them, they leave.
So finally…Design
A simple patterning analysis showed us that other retailers likely encounter the same problem, and address it in two different ways.
Our MVP
The simpler of the two observed patterns to implement was adding a carousel of related products from the same category above the primary product area. We wanted to get real data from our customers as quickly as possible.
Although the test did see an increase to conversion, it did not lead to an increase in browsing behavior from Paid Social visits. As Personalization was an ongoing project at the time, we pushed to integrate some of our findings into their ongoing work.
Personalization Impacts
Some of the Personalization work that we contributed our research towards.
The 2nd iteration
An old boss of mine once told me that “the biggest lie in software development is Phase 2” — such was the case here. Shifting priorities meant that we never got the opportunity to build and test a more fully targeted experience for customers that begin their journeys on a Product Page.
What are the odds…
I put together this case-study on a Tuesday in early 2022. A full year since anyone has mentioned this line of inquiry. The very next day, I was in a meeting discussed PDP hierarchy and someone mentioned, off-hand, that we should consider the page experience for someone who is beginning their journey on the PDP. Who knows, we might pick this back up and find some value in 2022.
What did I learn?
It doesn’t matter how well-crafted a design solution is, if it isn’t addressing the root cause of the behavior thats creating a problem or an opportunity, it won’t be successful. A big part of our work is not only creating the design, but understanding that root cause.