Dynamic Page Floor Sorting for Intelligent Marketing in NetEase Yanxuan

Fine‑grained marketing based on massive data has become a common growth driver across the Internet. NetEase Yanxuan, an emerging e‑commerce brand, leverages this approach through its core marketing product Olympus, which aims to boost business by combining internal technical drive with technical innovation.

The 2021 intelligent version of Olympus introduces “dynamic page‑floor sorting” as a representative example of smart construction. The concept is illustrated by comparing a conventional activity page to a physical shopping mall: each floor represents a product category (e.g., cosmetics, women’s wear, sports), and each floor contains multiple stalls. Merchants bid for premium stall positions based on traffic and revenue, while mall operators adjust floor layouts according to category performance. In the online scenario, the “mall‑floor‑stall‑product” hierarchy maps to “page‑function area‑module‑product”, eliminating physical constraints and amplifying gains.

From a business perspective, Yanxuan’s marketing pages need to understand users better and accelerate purchase decisions. Static product‑slot ordering no longer satisfies fine‑grained marketing needs, prompting the need for higher‑dimensional optimization.

From a traffic‑distribution viewpoint, static pages cause uneven exposure, especially in lower sections, and a high number of exposures does not guarantee ROI. Dynamic sorting seeks to maximize the value of each 1‑UV exposure.

From a functional‑development angle, manual operations are time‑consuming and reduce ROI. Automating decisions improves speed, accuracy, and enables higher‑level product‑operation functions.

Technically, dynamic floor sorting poses challenges such as real‑time high‑performance rendering, modular abstraction, real‑time data reporting and processing, graceful degradation, and weight‑algorithm design.

Key milestones include:

2020 H1 – Completed full‑link data‑tracking system for real‑time module data cleaning.

2020 H2 – Standardized module governance to increase per‑module business value.

2021 H1 – Launched the intelligent construction platform.

2021 H2 – Delivered high‑quality templates, regular intelligent construction, and production deployment.

The architecture features the Hephaestus engine, enabling real‑time, personalized marketing at scale.

Business benefit principles focus on three aspects: speed, accuracy, and stability.

Speed: Frequent promotional changes require near‑real‑time data reporting, cleaning, decision‑making, and dynamic sorting. A five‑step transmission and three‑step attribution strategy ensures precise tracking of exposures, clicks, and purchases.

Node‑based SSR provides high‑performance rendering with RT < 40 ms, ensuring “what you see is what you get”.

Accuracy: The core algorithm is a “race” (multi‑armed bandit) model that quickly discards underperforming versions and allocates traffic to higher‑quality ones, delivering measurable ROI gains.

Small‑step rapid‑iteration strategies, combined with AB‑testing at both algorithm and page levels, enable fast experimentation and maximal gain.

Stability: The system reserves 10× the 618 peak TPS to handle traffic spikes, implements graceful degradation (Node service monitoring, Redis memory fallback, static page fallback), and maintains a 99.99 % SLA.

Future outlook: Olympus will continue to deepen technical empowerment of business, pursuing further automation to enhance NetEase Yanxuan’s growth.