How will you improve Reddit's home page?

Reddit is a website where users are able to post on a variety of topics in relevant sub-reddit pages. Examples of these can be photography, product management, engineering, etc. Users of the site can then add comments and replies to posts, as well as up-vote or down-vote content. Other users can then filter and sort topics based on how they were voted. The home page is typically where a user gets a snapshot of a few different things like trending posts and topics, with the option to see these for overall subreddits, or for sub-reddits the user subscribes to, another being search, and another one being navigation to other areas of the site including their profile and settings, these beings some of the most important functions. The problem this site solves is giving users both a place to follow topics they are interested in, as well as contribute to topics they are interested in and vote on posts related to those topics. Is my understanding of the product and the problem it solves similar to your understanding? Yes

Okay, great. Since we are on the same page about the product and it's value prop, let's talk about the problem at hand. We want to improve reddits home page. Is the improvement we want to see an increase in page visits? reduction in bounce rate? how effective it is at showing user relevant content? I am not sure how reddit makes money, but is the goal revenue related? We want to decrease the bounce rate, when a user comes to the home page, we want users to continue to other areas of the site instead of leaving. Do we want to focus on web, mobile web or mobile app? Web. Do we want to focus on a particular type of user? You tell me.

Our goal is to reduce the bounce rate on web. We have a few different type of users that might come to the reddit home page. 1. Someone who was looking for a specific answer or information, landed on a reddit post from search results and then came to the reddit home page to learn more about what the site is. 2. Users who regularly use reddit, but have specific subreddits they are interested in and are only interested in those. 3. Users who like to use reddit to discover new topics via new subreddits that are popular with other people.

Because we are trying to improve bounce rate, I would focus on the first group, users who have found reddit through a search engine, and have landed on the home page. My rationale is that a large portion of the bounce rate is made up of these types of users, because currently the home page is highly geared towards the other two types of users, especially if they are registered and logged in. This type of users primary use case is to find information about a topic they were in the middle of searching for and they are highly motivated to continue finding information related to it. If they continue to find information about this topic and learn more adout reddit, they are more likely to also become active reddit users. Additional use cases can be:

- to learn more about reddit and whether it's a reliable source of information: not high impact because the home page already accomplishes this and someone not familiar with the brand may not trust the home page of the brand anyway

- figure out how to use reddit: this is probably a secondary use case at best and reddit is pretty intuitive to use already

- register for reddit to be able to add comments and ask questions: the home page already allows for a user to register and this is easy to do

- see what else is available on reddit: the home page already accomplishes solving this really well and is primarly geared toward this

I would focus for the primary use case, with a potential pain point being that a user coming from a search engine (User type 1) is going to the home page while they are still motivated to find information about a specific topic, and are unable to find this information because of the current home page. This is also a valuable painpoint for the business to solve because if we find a way to alleviate the pain point it would keep the user on reddit and reduce the bounce rate. I think there are some low effort ways to accomplish this.

Let me take a couple of minutes to think of some ways we could address this pain point. Some potential solutions for this problem could be:

1. Re-build the home page for this specific user type to be completely focused on the topic they are searching for

2. Create a nav item to a feature that would be specifically geared toward finding the most relevant and high quality information for a topic

3. Create a section on the home page that would only show for users that are not logged in, and would only display topics related to their recent searches or browsing activity on reddit

4. Create a feature that lists most active users for a particular topic and the option to private/direct message them with a question and a link to it from the home page

5. Set up a separate area of the home page called "Best of Reddit" which only has vetted content that was upvoted, is current and can be used specifically as an information source

Evaluating each solution:

Based on an evaluation of impact and effort of each solution, the solution I would prioritize would be creating a section geared toward these new users of reddit that would show them relevant content based on their recent activity. We already have a way to filter content based on meta-data so cross-referencing that with activity data from these users would be pretty easy, and we would be able to track activity data by using cookies for these users to generate this relevant information for them. This feature would also not go against reddits main mission of being a community where people can connect on topics they share an interest in. This could also be a useful feature for other types of users, or we could hide it for users who are logged in.

Since this is low build effort, I would build an mvp of the feature, and test it on a small percentage of the new user traffic. I would measure whether users a) engage with the feature, do they click on links presented, and b) whether the bounce rate is reduced for this segment. I would also make sure that more generally reddit's metrics weren't impacted, like the conversion of new users to registered users, active users, and any revenue related to advertising on the home page.

In summary, the goal of improving the reddit home page was to reduce the bounce rate, or the people that leave the site after landing on the home page. The most relevant user group to impact this goal would be new users who are not familiar with reddit and have a motivation that is not clearly aligned with what reddit provides. I would target the pain point that these users are searching for specific information by surfacing that information to them based on their recent activity, and track bounce rates to measure success, as well as some additional general metrics to make sure there aren't any unintended effects.