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People tend to stick to their favorite stores, both online and offline. Like the ideal neighborhood store, your favorite online marketplace is easy to rely on.
That relationship between a customer and their favorite marketplace is a big part of why marketplaces are so good for sellers and why the tradeoffs — fees, compliance, and maintenance — are worth it.
It goes without saying, a great omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t complete without one or more online marketplaces.
But while marketplaces can be ranked in different ways, there are many different variables that influence the viability of a marketplace, especially at a personal level. No one marketplace is objectively “the best.”
That said, a platform like Walmart Marketplace might be exactly what your business needs.
Walmart.com has long been an extension of the company’s popular brick-and-mortar stores, but in 2009 they formally launched their online marketplace. The move opened up the site to select third-party sellers and quickly made Walmart a serious contender in the online marketplace space.
Today, after years of refining its online platform, Walmart is cemented as a leading online marketplace authority.
Now hosting thousands of sellers and still growing, Walmart Marketplace is seen as a reliable and effective sales channel for all sorts of businesses. The platform presents a big opportunity for sellers looking to give their business a boost.
Over 120 million unique users visit Walmart Marketplace on any given month. A large portion of those recurring visitors likely frequented the brand's physical locations long before they started buying from its online marketplace.
Walmart's been around since 1962. For many, Walmart is that “ideal neighborhood store.”
Being a part of Walmart Marketplace means being a part of Walmart's legacy — which means benefitting from their name recognition, dedicated userbase, audience trust, and more. Part of the reason why that legacy has remained consistent this long is because Walmart is picky about who they allow on their platform.
Selling on Walmart Marketplace means being part of a carefully curated community of sellers. To get approved, you need to offer high-quality products that add value to Walmart’s repertoire.
What this ultimately means is less competition and more visibility for qualifying sellers.
When you add Walmart to your multichannel strategy, you give your products a better chance at showing up at the right place at the right time.
Walmart Marketplace has several things going for it that make it an excellent investment for retailers.
Besides its loyal audience and growth trajectory, the Walmart Marketplace experience comes equipped with a suite of best-in-class services that help guide sellers of all sizes every step of the way.
Setting up and maintaining items are crucial pillars of any marketplace experience. Recently, Walmart introduced Item Spec 4.0, an product data initiative that overhauls item setup and maintenance.
Item Spec 4.0 simplifies and improves item listing and management, increases product discoverability, and enables multiple functions from a single spec sheet.
Key features of Item Spec 4.0
It’s not uncommon for sellers to be reactive with their product listing optimizations, as the extent to which they can be proactive depends on a number of factors — the main one being platform-specific performance insights. Although being reactive is not ineffective, the optimal alternative would be to optimize the inevitable sooner rather than later.
Walmart’s Listing Quality Dashboard empowers sellers to do just that.
Walmart looks at all the factors that can affect a customer’s purchase decision and, through its Listing Quality Dashboard, generates a holistic score coupled with tailored insights that serve as a guide to optimize your listings quicker and more effectively.
Optimized listings are more visible and drive more traffic, promote higher conversion rates, and minimize returns as well as gain repeat business.
Data-driven optimization suggestions can really push your products over the top, but you’ll be lucky to sell anything with poor shipping practices. Shipping can make or break your ecommerce success.
Walmart understands the importance of shipping, that’s why their Shipping Templates are designed to simplify shipping settings setup with multiple custom configurations, flexible transit times, granular delivery regions, and detailed reports.
Walmart’s Shipping Templates enable you to optimize your shipping settings and increase sales with ease.
Simply having access to sell on Walmart Marketplace is a special opportunity for your business, but sellers can maximize their potential on the platform by maintaining strong standards.
Sellers that maintain excellent standards get access to Walmart’s Two-day Delivery program. When enabled, the program includes "2-day delivery" tags on qualifying items — products with this tag rank higher in search results, attract a lot of attention, increase buy box wins and drive more sales.
Walmart+ members get free 2-day shipping on all eligible products, while all other buyers can also get free 2-day shipping on orders with over $35 of eligible products.
"Products on the Two-day Delivery program are 50% more likely to win the buy box on Walmart.com and often see a 50% lift in conversion." - Walmart
Two-day Delivery program requirements:
While all sellers should be aiming for similar metrics regardless, not many Walmart sellers have access to the program. Qualifying sellers have a special opportunity to make their products stand out on the platform.
The number one reason people shop online is free delivery. After all, the strength of ecommerce lies in its convenience.
Sellers who cannot personally meet two-day fulfillment or meet other requirements to ship themselves can still participate in the program by partnering with select Walmart fulfillment partners, like Deliverr.
For sellers looking to further automate their entire Walmart Marketplace experience, there’s Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS).
WFS is a program that allows sellers to store their inventory at Walmart fulfillment centers. When customers order products from a WFS seller, Walmart packs and ships the item(s) to the customer on the seller’s behalf. Walmart also handles all customer support and returns for these orders.
“Walmart Fulfillment Services is a competitive and cost-effective solution that offers a seamless end-to-end-fulfillment experience.” - Walmart
To participate, sellers must be live and in good standing on Walmart Marketplace.
Benefits include:
Product requirements:
WFS has a straightforward subscription-less cost structure that includes a fixed storage fee and simple fulfillment prices. Getting started is easy.
With its global name recognition and millions of active users, Walmart.com is a great avenue for businesses to promote and sell products.
Expanding your business to Walmart Marketplace is one of the best ways to increase your reach. Marketplace products tend to rank high on search results and do even better when accented by a program like Walmart's Two-day Delivery.
The challenge, however, is maintaining, optimizing, and keeping your data and inventory in sync.
That’s where a product feed solution like GoDataFeed can make managing and expanding your business so much easier.
Looking for more info? Drop us a line! Want to see GoDataFeed in action? Feel free to request a demo.
Gio is a marketing specialist with a passion for digital design. A particular gamer, dog enthusiast, meme connoisseur and science appreciator, he has too many interests to list. When he's not involved in GoDataFeed's marketing, he's usually focused on mysterious projects.
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