Walmart Inc. is putting the finishing touches on an updated Walmart.com, promising a website redesign that will be more contemporary, easier to navigate and personalized for customers.
The Bentonville retailer offered a first glimpse at the overhaul this week and said the reworked website will begin rolling out in early May. The project has been in the works for several months, and Walmart U.S. e-commerce chief Marc Lore believes the results will provide a "cleaner and more modern digital shopping experience" as Walmart's efforts to increase online sales continues.
"It is a dramatic step change for us," Lore said in a blog post.
Walmart highlighted three notable changes, beginning with an updated design featuring new photos, colors and fonts. Lore -- who first publicly revealed Walmart's redesign plans during the company's annual meeting with the investment community in October -- said in his blog post the goal is to make shopping at Walmart.com "compelling for customers" no matter what they're looking for online, whether it's diapers, laundry detergent or a dining room table.
The new Walmart.com will emphasize what the retailer described as a more "personalized" experience with a section highlighting the top-selling items in a specific location. A local store profile will include the availability of services like online grocery and the status of online orders. It will also feature easy reorder, allowing shoppers to repurchase items they order frequently.
Walmart also has set up specific online destinations for customers to shop categories like home decor and fashion. The company offered a glimpse earlier this year, when it introduced a revamped home section to better reflect the way customers shop for those items. The space includes curated collections, design tips and nine style options.
Walmart will establish a similar destination for fashion, which will include dedicated space for a Lord & Taylor store.
"Customers shopping for groceries and household essentials want to quickly re-buy what they always purchase, while those looking for a new couch want to be inspired while browsing the different options," said Lore, who added additional "specialty experiences" will be built out on the new website later this year.
The website redesign comes as Walmart continues to invest heavily in efforts to improve its U.S. e-commerce business to better compete with Amazon.com.
The company acquired e-commerce retailers like Bonobos and ModCloth last year and is rapidly expanding services such as online grocery pickup and grocery delivery. Walmart is also in the process of installing automated pickup towers to several hundred stores to improve the convenience for customers.
Neil Stern, a senior partner with retail consultant firm McMillan-Doolittle, said earlier this year it was "incredibly important" for Walmart to improve the functionality of its website as well to remove any barriers that could drive customers to rivals like Amazon.com.
"For all the money that Walmart has spent, they don't have a great website," Stern said. "They need one. Can you quantify the impact of an improved website? Yes ... There's a lot of opportunity to optimize what they're doing."
Keith Anderson, a senior vice president of strategy and insight for e-commerce analytics firm Profitero, said one of Amazon's e-commerce successes has been its ability to identify points of friction and then eliminate them. He pointed to the online giant's one-click transactions as an example and said there is pressure on Walmart to deliver a unique website experience that is attractive to customers as well.
"Site experience and how quickly things load, how findable they are, how much friction there is as users try to search, browse, add to cart and checkout, is a big deal," Anderson said in February.
A Walmart spokesman said it's not clear when Walmart.com underwent its last major redesign. But Jordan Sweetnam, Walmart's senior vice president for customer experience and product, said the retailer understood the need for changes after getting feedback from customers as well as current and prospective brands.
He said he believes the new Walmart.com, when fully unveiled, will reflect the feedback.
"One of the things we started to hear from our customers was, functionally, the website allowed them to complete the missions they needed to do like buy diapers and paper towels and Cheerios," Sweetnam said. "But the site wasn't clean and simple. It wasn't driving inspiration. So we're excited to revamp that look and create a deeper, personal connection."
Business on 04/17/2018