Walmart Is Making Its Website a Little Less Like Walmart
17 April 2018 - 2:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah Nassauer
Walmart Inc. wants its website to look less like a Walmart
store.
The retailer plans to redesign the site next month by
decluttering the product listings, de-emphasizing the Walmart name
and using a lot less bright blue. Executives say the goal is to
make a site that appeals to higher-end brands and encourages
shoppers to browse for products.
Walmart has spent heavily to ramp up its e-commerce business,
which accounts for 3.6% of its U.S. sales. Its website has around
100 million unique monthly visitors, compared with 180 million at
rival Amazon.com Inc., according to comScore Inc.
Instead of stretching the Walmart name, logo and bright blue
color across the top of the website, the new home page will
highlight only a small yellow "spark," the internal name for
Walmart's star logo. Instead of seeing a hodgepodge of products,
shoppers will more often see which products are selling best in
their city or past purchases that can be reordered quickly, shown
with high-quality photos of people using products.
The redesign "is meant to be cleaner and more modern and more
appealing such that we are able to open up more relationships with
brands," and customers become more loyal, said Marc Lore, chief
executive of Walmart U.S. e-commerce. "It allows us to broaden the
assortment we are able to offer."
The new Walmart site will include a Lord & Taylor department
store landing page, where some of that chain's goods will be sold
as part of a partnership between the retailers announced last
year.
Walmart has worked over the past year to broaden its appeal and
reputation beyond its traditional budget-store roots. In February,
the retail behemoth took "Stores" out of its legal corporate name
to be "consistent with the idea that you can shop us however you
like," Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said at the time.
Walmart has invested heavily in e-commerce in recent years,
using its cavernous and profitable Supercenters and cost cutting to
fund the unprofitable business of shipping everyday goods to homes.
The redesign is part of Walmart's effort to make e-commerce more
profitable, Mr. McMillon told analysts earlier this year.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 17, 2018 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
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