Merchandizing

Improvements
(online)
Session 3 – Discussion Question
2
Examples –
• Amazon search results page
• YouTube Merch Shelf improvement
Amazon search relevance for
category defining products
The gap
Amazon search fails for category products and results includes noise

Case example
If I want to buy a cheap mobile phone, I would search for “mobile phone”
and then apply sort by “Price: low to high” but that always gives products
that are irrelevant to my search.

Improvement Suggestion
Amazon could include category defining keywords like “mobile phone” here
as “negative keywords” in case of category related items for example
Bluetooth mobile headset earphones, mobile phone charging cable and only
display in results if somebody searches for them explicitly, example
“mobile phone charging cable”

Another alternative is to use machine learning algorithms to filter out results

based on images of what doesn’t look like a mobile phone on results page.
 YouTube Merch Shelf for
creators and brands
Viewable area The gap
YouTube Merch shelf is currently not accessible in the default view
area when a video page loads, which leads to poor engagement, and
further is not even available on all devices for creators, advertisers and
google, the “landing page” value

Case example
Current merch In this case, the merch shelf is an important but ignored aspect of the platform
shelf location
(outside that might become very important as the social selling grows. At present, merch
viewable area) shelves are out of viewable area and are used by creators and brands but not as
much by google to do shopping carousel ads on YouTube since 2016.

Improvement Suggestion
As discussed in the class, you want the user to stay longer in the store, here
that equates to watch more videos, so there’s more opportunity to see more
ads which means we wouldn’t want to disturb the left video recommendation
panel or the little space on top of that as these elements in a responsive
design navigation would anyway move under the video, which is the only
thing that enjoys the maximum prime view.

continued on the next page…

 YouTube Merch Shelf for
creators and brands
Improvement Suggestion continued
Past google tries
to monetize the …continued from the previous page…
merch shelf
So, the suggestion for improvement is to move the carousel as a video
overlay skippable ad that is accessible on both desktop and mobile with
minimal additional investment from YouTube.

This overlay shelf could be made available for free as was the other one to
the creators while brands would pay for it. This would be skippable on
click/tap and the user wouldn’t have to wait around for 5-15 seconds as in the
case with other ads on the platform.
New design that
offers skippable
ad store across
mobile and
desktop for
creators and
brands

2021
Thank You