The complexity behind bidding on search positions
Our app and website allow our suppliers to bring their product to the attention of our customers. They can bid on positions in our search results. The higher their bid is compared to that of their competitors, the higher their on-screen positions will be. This may sound simple, but the system needed to administer It all was anything but. It required planning and quite a lot of involvement from the people in our business.
And even after recent upgrades, there was still room for improvement. Hannek Toebast is one of our Senior Java Developers and part of a team that took on the task of creating a fully automated system. Because our philosophy will always be “the less time we spend on recurring tasks, the more time we can invest in optimizing our customers experiences.”
Too complex for too many colleagues
Hannek: “We created a new integration with the Streaem platform. That’s the new system that manages promotions and advertising on our online platforms. The platform makes bidding and the subsequent advertising actions much easier to manage. Before we implemented it, suppliers would bid and hold their positions for a long time. For example: the third search result in soymilk product searches would be product X, for a whole month.” And every time the bidding on the positions ended, the business and the people coding the website would have to take various actions to implement and administer the results.
Who you’re gonna call?
Now it’s all done in real-time, Hannek explains. “Every time a page loads, the system sends out a quick call to the streaem platform to check the current positions. The results are returned straightaway and injected directly into the site.” The system is so dynamic, it could show different results to two different visitors that look at the same page with only seconds between them. “Should the platform not respond, we simply show the last results known to us. So, our customers will never have to deal with incomplete results.”
Make It Jumbo
At Jumbo Tech Campus we have a history of adapting solutions to make them, as we call it, yellow. That means that however great they are, we always need or simply want to adapt them to our business. Very often we are the first users of solutions to work with suppliers in customizing their product or service. With the Streaem platform, it was no different. Hannek: “We were the first to cooperate with them to get this to work the way we wanted it.” Working with Jumbo, these suppliers learn a lot, including ways to improve their own code and products. “In the process, Streaem optimized their system as well.” Hannek confirms, “It’s really fast and responsive now.”
It’s all about the information
The new system provides a wealth of information, such as insights into the bidding process and a lot of statistical data. It also shows the differences between what happens in the app and on the Jumbo.com site. Early on, Hannek and his team noticed calls to the streaem platform, coming from the app, in the middle of the night. Hannek: “We were tempted to attribute it to people that woke up hungry and decided to stock up at that moment. But the reality was less amusing: inactive apps on devices come to life every now and then and refresh their content, making calls to our system in the process.” With a smile he adds: “No humans were involved in this process.”.
A complex job done right
Hannek describes the implementation as an example of how a project should be handled: “It was a complex job to do, but we had the right support, access to the right services and he right people working on it.” He contributes a large part of that success to the open communication between all parties involved. He and his team visited the Streaem team in Amsterdam. Hannek: “That wasn’t really necessary for this project, but we believed that getting to know each other and synchronizing our views on the job ahead would greatly help. And it did.”. A kickoff with everybody involved present also gave this project a flying start. Hannek: “The presence of people that would only get involved later, wasn’t required. But they came anyway and that helped. They learned why and how we were going to do this. That helped them prepare for their part.”.
“This was a job for experienced, senior specialists”, he adds, “We always welcome and train less experienced colleagues, but in this case, we needed to move fast and stay focused. That’s why the team consisted of some of our most senior people.”. It also helped a lot that the team was made up of people that liked to learn new things and get creative when needed.
Fresh perspectives
The team tasked with this project has changed completely since January 1st of this year. The foundation was laid by a different group from a different domain. Hannek: “We used a lot of their code, but also added and changed quite a bit. Our fresh perspective helped make some improvement. That’s not a rare occurrence. Fresh pairs of eyes see new opportunities to improve things.”
Joining a project that has already started is nothing new for Hannek. For years he was employed by different companies and a few years ago he became a freelancer. But at the Jumbo Tech Campus, he feels far from an outsider: “I’ve been here since 2021 and the people I work with treat me like a colleague. And the other way around. That feels good. I’m not saying I’m giving up my freelance career, but if there’s one organization I would seriously consider working for, it’s definitely Jumbo.
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