Chapter 051: Divergence

As the afternoon shift was about to begin, Lin Luyou finally put down her phone and hurried back. When she returned to her workstation, she saw her teammates gathered in a circle, fiercely debating something.

She had a feeling she’d missed out on a fortune.

Arriving late, Lin Luyou quietly slipped into her seat, listening in on their heated discussion, but she couldn’t find an opening to join in.

“This product shouldn’t be chosen like that. If we follow your logic, all the niche items end up at the top, don’t they?”

“But these products have the highest ratings, don’t they? Isn’t our job to push those with high scores to the front and increase their exposure?”

“But what’s the point of exposure alone? Niche items are still niche—the public’s acceptance of them is unpredictable! In the end, what we want is conversion, and conversion into revenue!”

After listening for a few minutes, Lin Luyou gradually pieced together what they were arguing about.

But wasn’t the order in which products were displayed supposed to be handled by the personalization team? Why was the product operations team concerning themselves with these matters?

Lin Luyou was never one to keep questions bottled up; if something puzzled her, she had to resolve it immediately, otherwise it would nag at her endlessly.

Tentatively, she raised her right hand, interrupting their debate, and timidly voiced her question.

“Hey, haven’t you checked out the internal resources recommended by Sister Xu Jia?” Chen Li, seated across from her, asked in some surprise as soon as Lin Luyou spoke up.

“I… I have been looking at them,” Lin Luyou replied, her confidence clearly lacking. In truth, she had been browsing the internal resources, but they were all programming-related, with little to do with operations.

Tang Xiao, who seemed to have extra patience for the new girl beside her, scooted her chair closer and leaned in to explain in a low voice:

“In e-commerce operations, we always talk about the three key elements: ‘people, products, and scenarios.’ The personalization department mainly handles what’s shown to customers on the front-end. Our operations, on the other hand, work behind the scenes managing the pool of products—curating a pre-selection for personalization to choose from…”

Tang Xiao truly lived up to her reputation as the team’s most articulate member. Her clarity in debate was matched by her talent for explanation.

With Tang Xiao’s guidance, Lin Luyou finally understood what the heated argument was about.

Seeing that Lin Luyou had caught up, Tang Xiao left her for the moment and dove back into the discussion.

With Singles’ Day approaching, the first wave of promotions was about to launch, but they were stuck choosing which products to place in the pool.

According to their usual evaluation criteria—“customer reviews as the main factor, product attributes as a supplement”—the highest-rated items were all from niche sellers.

Well-known brands and popular products, meanwhile, tended to have lower average scores.

“So what are we supposed to do? You can’t expect every single customer to leave a review, can you?” Yang Tianqi said.

It was true: those niche sellers paid meticulous attention to customer care. Buyers were more likely to leave five-star reviews and return for repeat purchases.

But this approach didn’t work for stores with heavy traffic. They were already exhausted just dealing with the daily influx of potential buyers, leaving little energy for customer maintenance.

No matter how good their products were, without that extra customer care, the volume of buyers was too high, and positive reviews were too few—driving down their average scores.

By their current selection logic, these popular products were at high risk of being excluded by the system, resulting in losses for both the company and the merchants.

“Then… what if we changed the logic?” Lin Luyou couldn’t help but interject again.

At that moment, a thought was taking shape in her mind—one not entirely mature, but bold nonetheless.