As many of us start preparing to welcome friends and family members into our homes for the holidays, Walmart is taking the same actions to get our “house” ready for holiday shopping. We’re pulling out all the stops for our customers on Walmart.com, ensuring that they have fast, frictionless, engaging and personalized shopping experiences that save them time, save them money and make shopping on our site just as easy as shopping in one of our stores.
We’ve been hard at work over the past year to enhance our site and add new features that improve and personalize the shopping experience on Walmart.com and on our app. Today, we’re excited to announce even more enhancements, just in time for the most wonderful time of the year.
Making Time for What Matters
During the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, we know that time is incredibly valuable and we want to simplify the shopping process as much as possible, so our customers can spend their time where it really matters.
- We’ll hold your place: Our virtual queuing experience developed by our Walmart Global Tech and eCommerce Product teams will keep customers’ places in line for the highest demand items during Black Friday events while they continue shopping our site for other gifts or weekly essentials, making sure they know when they’re in line, their estimated wait time and how long they have to checkout to guarantee an item. We'll even hold their spot in multiple queues at once just in case they’re looking to purchase multiple different high demand items.
- Skip the checkout: Just need to purchase a last-minute gift or do a quick repurchase of your favorite cereal? Customers can now choose to “buy now” on most items, allowing them to purchase items directly from item pages for even faster, easier shopping.
- Don’t miss out: Customers will now be able to see the most viewed and purchased items in their search results, helping them quickly locate popular items or discover new favorites. On item pages, they’ll even be able to see how many people are viewing the item now and how many people have the item in their carts – so they can be sure to purchase it before that dreaded out-of-stock.
Helping Customers Find Value
We know our customers come to us for value and that it’s more important than ever during the holiday season. In a recent survey, seventy-eight percent of customers said inflation will have some or a great deal of impact on their holiday shopping. And with customers shopping for the holidays earlier than ever this year, we’ve been working hard to make sure the site experience makes it easy for them to find great deals, whether they’re checking items off their holiday or grocery lists.
So that customers can easily and quickly identify which items are on sale and what the discounted price is, we’re marking savings throughout our site with a green price tag. And this is only the beginning! As we begin to showcase the amazing deals our customer can find at Walmart this holiday season, we will maximize customer exposure to those deals throughout multiple touchpoints in the customer journey from the homepage all the way through the order confirmation page.
Personalized Experiences that Help Customers Gift with Confidence
Finding the perfect gift can be stressful and we want to make sure customers can gift with confidence. From introducing a new technology that enables customers to virtually view items in their homes to offering recommendations for the perfect top to go with a pair of pants, we’re taking the guesswork out of gifting.
- View a big screen on your small screen: We recently expanded our new augmented reality feature, “View in Your Home,” to over 200 televisions on our iOS app, knowing that this is an extremely popular category for customers during this time of year. With this feature expansion, customers can now virtually see how a TV would fit in their space before they purchase, ensuring a fool-proof holiday movie marathon.
- Complete the outfit: We recently announced a new online feature powered by visual outfitting and styling solution Stylitics that suggests complementary apparel and accessories, allowing customers to build a full outfit. We’re thrilled to announce Stylitics is now available in men’s, baby and kids’ apparel for select brands including No Boundaries, Free Assembly, Wonder Nation, Justice and more. Available for 8,000 items spanning seven categories and including 16,000 outfit variations, we’re making it easy for customers to discover new items and maybe a new personal style this season. Soon we’ll also be expanding this feature to Home, so customers can shop for their homes with just as much confidence as they shop for their closets!
Every improvement to the site experience helps us create a faster, more engaging and more personalized experience for our customers, and we’re just getting started. The closest store to our customer is in their pocket, and they can trust us to make it easy for them to save time, save money, and, ultimately, live better this holiday season.
