60-second takeaway

  1. Problem statement: 8% of our first-time users dropped off without exploring beyond the homepage. We needed to convert these users into explorative users and, subsequently, transacting users.
  2. Through user testing and user calling, we identified that these users were not able to narrow down their discovery and ended up scrolling endlessly. Some were oblivious of the different product portfolios and catalogues available on Meesho.

We devised approaches to capture the user’s intent using Homescreen Widget and helped them reach their desired product.

  1. We deployed these approaches through intuitive, uncluttered and communicative designs.
  2. Impact:
  • An additional ~1.6% users placed their first order within the first 9 days of installing the app
  • An additional ~1.74% users placed their second order within 30 days of installing the app.

There are two situations you face while shopping online:

  1. You know exactly what you want to order (high intent, low cognitive load).
  2. You are looking for options and aren’t sure what your next purchase would be (low intent, high cognitive load).

While the first situation is ideal, the second scenario brings with it uncertainty due to a long tail of choices available on e-commerce platforms. This uncertainty compounds when you are a first-time user exploring an app.

A user is prone to drop off when their first interaction is not familiar, or if they don’t understand the navigational scheme of the app. To solve this, the home page layout, category demarcation and navigation become critical.

And since a significant number of our users are new-to-ecommerce, making the app intuitive from the get-go becomes necessary.

This article details out how we solved this problem at Meesho.


The Problem Statement

About 8% of our first-time shoppers were leaving the app without exploring beyond the home page. The challenge was to turn these users into explorative users, thereby increasing the chances that they will make a purchase. And the only way of doing this was to make Meesho’s homepage easy to navigate, intuitive, and uncluttered.

The Research
We had two questions to answer:

  1. How do we pinpoint what the user is looking for?
  2. How do we take the user to the right product in the category they have shown interest in?

The first question has two methods of approach:

  1. Either explicitly ask the user about their product preference (what they are looking for, what their price range is, what their preference is, etc.)
  2. Use implicit methods to detect their product preference (signals that the user exhibits while using our app or outside behaviour like gender, order history, ads, etc.)

Given that we are solving for first-time users, the second approach is ruled out as previous user history is a prerequisite for drawing up user preference. So we moved with the first approach.

Capturing the intent of new users via the explicit method is further bifurcated into two parts:

  1. While onboarding
  2. Via the home page

Here are the pros and cons of each method:

In the face-off, intent capture through the home page widget came out on top!

Now that we’ve answered the first basic question: “How do we pin-point what the user is looking for?”we move onto the next question. How do we take the user to the right product in the category they have shown interest in?

From quantitative signals obtained from our backend, we know 70% of our new users place an order from the first catalogue they explore. And 40% of new users in our qualitative testing exhibited difficulty in narrowing down their discovery to relevant products.

We deliberated on a few approaches to guide the user in their journey. For instance:

  • Personalisation of discovery feed and homepage widgets
  • Usage of implicit signals (gender, language preference, etc.)

Following multiple brainstorming sessions, we converged upon a guided discovery construct. Here, once the user expresses the intent, we shall open a focused category page with the ability to switch among categories through tabs.

We explored different layouts, leveraging different forms of visual and text communication:

After assessing which design satisfies the criterion of capturing intent through home page widgets and helps pinpoint user intent, we narrowed in on the final design:

Where the Winning Variant had an Edge

For the second session, the landing experience was the last product catalogue page that the user had clicked, as opposed to the homepage.

For example, say a user clicks the electronics tile in the first session, browses and drops off. When he or she returns, the app directly opens the electronics category page. This redirection experience yielded higher conversions.

The Flow

Whenever a new user installs Meesho, the first thing they are required to do is to choose a language. After that, the user lands on the homepage, where all the eyeballs go straight to our brand new EXPLICIT INTENT CAPTURE WIDGET.

Should the user choose any of the catalogues they are guided to a curated listing of that particular catalogue.

Design Interaction

The design has two states:

  1. If the user hasn’t clicked any tile (of the intent widget) during the initial stages, we clearly show the widgets upfront following the app install.
  2. But once the user has clicked a tab or placed the first order, we use a morph transition from widget → tabs to educate the user of the paradigm, which is also the steady state design as shown in this link

The Impact

  1. Adoption for the explicit intent widget was ~30%+ overall.
  2. An additional ~1.6% users placed their first order within the first 9 days of installing the app
  3. An additional ~1.74% users placed their second order within 30 days of installing the app.

While these numbers continue to mature, we are working consistently towards creating more intuitive and interactive homepage layouts to handhold first-time users in their e-commerce journey. Stay tuned!

Special Thanks! 👏🏻

A great feature cannot be made without some spectacular product thinkers like Kanad Dagaonkar, Surmai Somya and Narayan Tendulkar. And also a gorgeous functional design cannot be made without maestros like Atul Kaushal, Varun Nagpal, Sanira Mediratta, Kopai Banerjee, Pranav Mishal and Himanshu Arora. Super-thanks to all the co-contributors.

Also, big cheers to Usman Zafar for helping put this blog together.

Gracias ✨