Walmart Connect is a retail media platform that allows businesses to showcase their brand and products to Walmart shoppers across various channels, including Walmart’s website, app, and third-party websites. Businesses of all sizes can use Walmart Connect’s solutions to simplify their advertising efforts, connect with their target customer, and find success.
Read on to learn the five pillars that will help increase your product visibility, conversions, and sales. We’ll also show you how to leverage Walmart Connect’s Sponsored Products ads to help reach ready-to-buy customers.
With Walmart’s 22% US eCommerce growth in FY241, Walmart Connect presents an opportunity for your business to expand its reach and achieve breakout growth. In fact, our strongest online emerging brands* grew an average of 151% GMV year-over-year2!
Their secret to success? Building a solid foundation of retail readiness.
Retail readiness refers to optimizing your product listings, inventory management, fulfillment, and customer service to ensure a seamless shopping experience for Walmart.com customers. When you’re retail-ready, you help position your products for greater visibility, higher conversion rates, and sales growth opportunities.
There are five key pillars of retail readiness that will help pave the way to success on Walmart’s site and app.
1
Content and Listing Quality
2
Pricing
3
Inventory and Fulfillment
4
Ratings and Reviews
5
Sponsored Products ad strategy
1 Create quality content for your item listings
This is essential to enhance the customer experience, foster trust, and reduce the chance of returns. Walmart uses a Listing Quality Score to rate product listings based on content, offer, and performance. A Listing Quality Score of 90% and above means your products are more likely to rank well in search results, leading to more opportunities for sales.
To earn a strong Listing Quality Score, you must provide comprehensive product details, including all required and recommended attributes. For best practices, refer to our Style Guides, which offer category-specific recommendations on enhancing your listings’ quality.
We also recommend regularly reviewing and optimizing your content in the Listing Quality dashboard.
2 Dial in your pricing strategy
To deliver the exceptional value Walmart customers expect and maximize sales, you need to offer competitive prices. The free Repricer tool automates this process, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Getting started is simple:
- Set your minimum and maximum prices for specific items
- Let the Repricer handle adjustments automatically
For more help optimizing your pricing strategy and other areas of your business, visit Success Hub for personalized suggestions.
3 Prioritize product availability and fast fulfillment
Fast delivery and free shipping are known conversion drivers that shoppers have come to expect. Keeping items in stock means they’ll always be available for customers when they search Walmart’s site and app.
To help you manage this aspect consider joining Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS). This way you can leverage our world-class supply chain to store and ship your items so you can focus on growing your business.
There are no hidden fees, or minimum or maximum inventory requirements to participate. Miko, a direct-to-consumer producer of holistic wellness products leveraged WFS and achieved +115% GMV growth.
You may also consider shipping programs like Walmart’s OneDay, TwoDay and ThreeDay delivery to offer free and quick shipping. Ship items yourself, get help from WFS, or offer free expedited shipping for any portion of your catalog.
50% GMV growth. For key items fulfilled by WFS, on average3
4 Earn your customers trust with product reviews
Product reviews are a goldmine for both Walmart customers and sellers. For sellers, reviews offer valuable insights into customer needs, helping you build trust and credibility and ultimately drive sales. For customers reviews empower them to:
- Make an informed purchase decision: Offering valuable insights from other buyers, helping them assess product quality and value.
- Provide feedback regarding their experience: Customers can voice their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a product.
- Provide feedback for improving products: Reviews can highlight areas for product development or improvement.
On Walmart.com, you’ll find different types of reviews:
- Native reviews: left by customers directly on the platform
- Syndicated reviews: shared from other websites to Walmart.com
- Incentivized reviews: given in exchange for compensation
5 Build a strong marketing strategy, starting with Sponsored Products ads
Once you’ve built your retail–ready foundation, take the next step and help increase your discoverability and drive sales with Sponsored Products. This powerful ad solution helps position your products in high-visibility placements, including within relevant search results and on item pages.
83% of leading* Marketplace sellers leverage Sponsored Product ads4.
New Marketplace sellers are automatically registered to Walmart Connect Ad Center, our self-serve ad platform. Our Small Business Hub provides step-by-step guidance to help make launching ad campaigns easy, even for first-time advertisers.
Contact us: Can’t find the information you need? We can connect you with the right resources. Simply fill out some basic information on our website, and a Walmart Connect representative will be in touch within 72 hours. There’s never been a better time to advertise with Walmart Connect. Let’s grow together!
Sources:
1Walmart Q4 earnings release, Feb 20, 2024, 2Walmart first-party data, FY24 (Feb. 2023–Jan. 2024), Emerging brands are defined by various factors including eCommerce GMV, account type including both new and established 1P/3P/hybrid accounts with growth potential through Walmart Connect advertising. *For strongest online emerging brands. Strongest defined as brands with 90%+ Listing Quality (LQ) score. 3Walmart first-party data, December 2023-March 2024. 4Walmart first-party data, Feb 1 to April 30, 2023. Seasonal data has not been factored into these results due to the given range of data; results may vary over a different period. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
