How Redesigning Category Pages Tripled Conversions on 58.com

01. What Are Category Pages For?

58.com is a comprehensive information service platform. All its businesses share a core “golden link” that connects users who need information with providers. The user flow is: C‑end user → homepage → category page → sub‑service → detail page → contact B‑end (call, chat, order). The category page acts as a portal, passing users down to the most suitable sub‑service, increasing the chance of achieving the goal of finding the needed information.

02. How to Measure a Good Category Page?

Good design requires measurable criteria. Relying only on intuition or vague principles leads to endless debates and high decision costs. By translating design goals into quantifiable indicators, teams can evaluate value more objectively.

Richness (more sub‑services) is not necessarily beneficial, and click‑through rate alone is insufficient because it ignores whether users reach the final information. The new metric “connection conversion rate” measures the proportion of users entering a category page who eventually perform a connection action (e.g., find a useful post), reflecting the page’s distribution quality.

03. Case Study: “到家精选” Category Page Redesign

Metric: order conversion rate – the percentage of users who place an order after visiting the category page.

Current situation: 110 service categories (SPUs) organized in a tree structure, but 90% of orders concentrate in the top 8 “hot” SPUs. Users usually have a clear goal (e.g., cleaning, moving).

Design strategy: replace the pure tree with a hybrid “hot SPU + tree” layout. Expose the top SPUs prominently to shorten the path for 90% of users, while retaining the tree for long‑tail services.

Result: after launch, the order conversion rate increased by more than three times.

04. Case Study: “58租房” Category Page Redesign

Metric: connection conversion rate – the percentage of users who contact a landlord or agent after visiting the category page.

Current situation: many sub‑services with mismatched traffic distribution; high‑value “double‑high” services were buried, while low‑value services received excessive exposure.

Design strategy: shift from “equal distribution” to “who performs best gets priority.” Specifically, (1) give high‑value services (e.g., featured listings) first‑screen exposure; (2) improve efficiency of mid‑value services by reducing entry area; (3) remove low‑value services.

Result: the redesign reallocated traffic to high‑value services, significantly boosting the overall connection conversion rate and related metrics.

In summary, defining clear, outcome‑oriented metrics and aligning design strategies with those metrics can dramatically improve the effectiveness of category pages.