This month Walmart launched a new omni-platform on Walmart.com that is now live with 100% of their customers. The new experience merges traffic shopping the grocery and general merchandise assortments into one shoppable experience, eliminated customers’ need to switch between two sides of the app or website. The update comes as part of Walmart’s initiative to create a seamless omnichannel experience for shoppers. The update does present several changes that Suppliers will have to adapt to. At Harvest Group, we’ve been exploring the new experience on walmart.com in order to offer guidance to our clients. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what has changed and how your teams can start to approach the updates.

Written Content Changes

Content formatting on the new site shows a bit differently from the original website. The Description section is all bolded, even if it was formatted as normal text in Item 360. Both Description and Key Features are capable of including headers and general HTML formatting, such as bullets, italics, and underline.

Rich Media Changes

Rich Media content is temporarily unavailable on the new site but will return sometime early next year, according to Walmart. As of now, there are no videos in the image carousel (unless the brand has partnered with Eko). Marketing modules, comparison charts, PDFs, or other assets below the fold are also temporarily unavailable.

What it means for Suppliers:

While product pages will be less visual, it is still imperative for suppliers to have optimized content and keywords as that is how products rank within the site. If your content is not optimized for Search, now is the time to focus on copy updates.

There is one option for video creation and placement on a product page. Eko has developed software to create interactive videos, and they have partnered with Walmart to place the interactive videos beneath the main image by the image carousel (where videos used to reside). For more information on Eko, visit eko.com

Advertising Changes

We anticipate a number of implications the site convergence will have on advertisers, including changes to Sponsored Products and Display. With changes in available ad inventory and enhancements to existing modules, it will be important for brands to re-look at their digital advertising strategy to ensure it aligns with the new site experience.

What it means for Suppliers:

Many sponsored products placements are seeing inventory added, such as Search In Grid, which now is allowing up to 8 ad placements. It should also be noted that items eligible for Pickup and Delivery are now serving ads in the carousel placements, as well as the buy box banner placement – ad placements that were previously unavailable to items on OPD.

Pickup and Delivery items will also no longer be limited to just two in grid placements and will now have access to the 8 total in grid placements. Many brands are seeing their Pickup and Delivery items have a surge in impressions due to the unlocking of this previously dotcom-only inventory, which may have negative implications on their reported Click Through Rates, but this should not be interpreted as a negative thing overall – more places to showcase your items is a good thing! Likewise, some suppliers with Ship to Home items may find themselves serving ads on the Homepage, a placement previously only available on the old OPD site, which could cause sporadic spikes in impressions.

With Ship to Home and Pickup and Delivery items now going head-to-head for the same ad placements, some brands could see increased fluctuations in their cost per click.

We have also seen enhancements to the Search Brand Amplifier activation including improved shoppability with the addition of the 1-click add-to-cart button on each item, not to mention there are now up to 4 items showcased at a time (previously three).

Closing Thoughts

While these are big changes, the new Walmart.com site merge presents many opportunities for Suppliers to focus on optimizing content and advertising efforts to win Share of Search and stay competitive. Staying up to date and ahead of these changes will allow you to feel more prepared.

Need help making sure your digital item listings are ready for the merger? Reach out to our VP of Business Development, Mike Harvey at mharvey@harvestgroup.com to set up a meeting.

Old Home Page (left) vs. New Home Page (right) – Walmart.com