cs.LGAug 30, 2026

Designing for the Next Click: Bandits for Real-Time Page Layout

Authors: Bhavtosh Rath, Harshith Narasimhamurthy, Bob Eisinger, Cole Stiegler, Adnan Awow, Amit Pande

Organizations: Target Corporation Minneapolis, MN, USA · Target Corporation Minneapolis, MN USA

Abstract

E-commerce platforms increasingly personalize user experiences through machine learning, yet page layout decisions remain dominated by static rules and manual curation. We present a scalable bandit-based system that optimizes product page layouts in real time while preserving human control over design intent. A contextual bandit model dynamically selects the most effective layout for each session using user, item, and category-level features. The system leverages a LinUCB-based policy to balance exploration and exploitation as it learns from live user interactions. The architecture is designed for seamless integration into large-scale web serving stacks, supporting low-latency inference and continuous model updates. The system was first tested on entry product pages. In online A/B deployments on a major retail platform, our approach achieved positive lifts in session-level performance metrics over a strong heuristic baseline. Our results demonstrate that contextual bandits can effectively optimize visual and structural aspects of product discovery for user engagement, providing a scalable path toward learning-to-design the web.

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Multi-channel Uplift Policy Learning

    Jul 30, 2026Changjian Liu, Tianyu Wang, Xiaoxuan Deng +7Funnel EfficiencyLearning-Augmented Algorithms