understanding how people shop - gopal krishnan, walmart labs

Understanding how people shop - Topics & Themes

Gopal Krishnan@WalmartLabs, Oct 2015

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Agenda

Topics, Themes and Hub Pages

• Product Discovery & its challenges

• Novel approaches @WalmartLabs

• Q & A

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Discovering products


• Search

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• Autocomplete – suggestions for alternate / related intent

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• Guided experiences – fitment based, very specific intent

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• Browse – Navigational, Taxonomy based

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• Category pages – Inspirational, Exploratory

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Challenge #1


• Query: party supplies => Category page• Query: party favors => Browse page

• Query: disney frozen scene setter kit => Product page

• Query: disney frozen party supplies => ???

9 Topics, Themes and Hub Pages

• What should I buy to decorate my baby’s nursery room?

• What are the different themes for my daughter’s birthday party and what

are the products?

• What are the latest trends in Shabby Chic Home Décor?

• What gifts should I buy for my 11 year old nephew?

• What new product that I don’t know about will be useful for me?

Challenge #1 ( contd. )

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Challenge #2 - SKU Growth

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Possible solutions


• Expand Taxonomy & Auto classify products – Explosion of taxonomy nodes – how to navigate ?

• Editorial / Curation – Cannot scale

• Use community to surface quality – E.g: Pinterest, ProductHunt

• Enter Topics & Themes

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Topics & Themes


• Demand driven

• Algorithmically generate Cross Category Interest Pages

• Not limited by site taxonomy

• Item-to-Topic recommendations

• Goal: Facilitate discovery at a higher level– Refining / Narrowing paradigm of Search & Browse

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Themes


• http://www.walmart.com/c/theme/nursery-themes

http://www.walmart.com/c/theme/nursery-themes

http://www.walmart.com/c/theme/nursery-themes

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Themes ( contd. )


• http://www.walmart.com/c/theme/gift-guide

http://www.walmart.com/c/theme/gift-guide

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Questions?


understanding how people shop - gopal krishnan, walmart labs

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