Homepage Essentials
Deep-diving into some of the critical and underrated elements of a homepage, analysing Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm, and more.
Welcome back! Today in Understanding Nuances, we bring you some exciting stuff around the homepage. We'll talk about how the landing page of applications is hugely crucial and diving into its multiple sections. We also compare three of India's largest apps in the payment ecosystem - Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe. So, let's get started.
If we analytically measure - What is the most visited page of a website? For most of the time and cases, the answer to this question would be the homepage of an App/Website. Numbers would say the homepage should be at the top of the prioritisation funnel, but should it be? The homepage is never the final destination; it's just like a roadmap on which we expect users to fulfil certain goals. Homepage optimisation is vital so that the goals are achieved for other sections and pages. Homepage optimisation can be another article if we start unbundling that, but today we will look and compare some important elements and their use cases.
Let's deep dive into the five key elements of the homepage section (Not an industry standard, but just an observation and research).
Logo - Logo, at first, might seem pretty obvious and a basic thing to include in the home page section of the app. We can even skip this part, but the logo has one exceptional use case that proves super useful when using apps with convoluted paths and flow. Have you taken a guess on what exactly is the utility for a logo?
The logo is a tangible representation that encompasses your products or services and is a key piece for clients to recognise and connect with your brand. But most importantly, the logo on a website often doubles in functionality as a link to the homepage. Often when stuck deep inside the pages of an application, we tend to look for the supreme "back option" that's where the logo comes into play.
Navigation - Gone are the days for navigation. The 'Navigation Bar' is now replaced by scroll. Navigation is just not compatible with Gen Z scrolling habit. Today, everything should be available on a scroll rather than spanning horizontally. Let's see how three out of two of India's most popular fintech apps have adopted this trend.Â
You can refer to the screenshots below while going through the points mentioned.
Google Pay -
Paytm -
PhonePe -
As you can see - Paytm and Google Pay have adopted this scroll view for navigation and displaying sub-section while PhonePe is still stuck on the conventional navigation bar. I will also discuss further how PhonePe UI sucks :P
Call to Action -Â CTA prompts visitors into the deep sections of the app where the transaction cycle begins. It is imperative to have very intuitive CTA buttons on the home page of the app. Better CTAs will improve high-level metrics like - Time spent on the app, More conversions, etc.
Talking about the CTAs for the above three apps (Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm), Paytm wins. Here's how.
PhonePe has way too many options available at first glance itself. All icons are similar, lacking any differentiation, and it takes the user a couple of seconds to figure the screen out. The app aims to divert the user's attention to insurance (the bottom tab) with a moving downward arrow, but it gets mixed with the other elements and fails to deliver its purpose.
Google Pay's landing screen has all your recent transactions (people) at the forefront. The '+ New Payment' option, raised above the screen and available on the bottom, is the primary CTA designed to catch the user's attention. And it does so. More often than not, you open GPay to make a transaction, and this element serves its purpose. Though, with so many elements not having a specific colour scheme (People icons, Business & bills icons), the button is sometimes tough to distinguish.
Paytm is an app that almost hits the bull's eye with its landing screen. Their newest design update (update your app if you haven't already) is neat and serves its purpose. The icons are systematically arranged and are easy and quick to understand. The 'Scan Any QR' button is the essential CTA, and in my view, is based on the fact that Paytm is the app primarily used for merchant transactions. The 'Send Money' has multiple options permitting each and every kind of transaction.
Search - Search is a must-have feature for any social app or, in fact, for any app; even if your search is useless, it's worth keeping on the home page. Search is the shortest reward cycle, and its consumption is insane. Any user would use the search function only when trying to engage with the app, and if the user gets disappointed at this step, then the app's acquisition efforts and cost are literally wasted. We have written an entire article on Search functionality on the homepage. Find it here for deep-dive.
Interaction - This is the latest entry into the homepage, which must-have widgets and sub-sections. The attention span of consumers has reduced considerably, and you can't risk making your app into a blog page. Instead, grab your audience with interactive widgets, nudge them to roll the dice, spin the value, and create an interaction. Remember, interaction is a two-way communication - give and take instantaneous, like a game.
With this, we covered some of the critical and underrated elements of a homepage. We'll be seeing you again with another app and another teardown. Until then, if you liked today's article and found it helpful, do share 'Understanding Nuances' among your friends and peers!