Walmart has added new digital features to help shoppers navigate holiday savings and sales events while launching an initiative to help out small retailers.
Walmart has struck a deal with Popable, a pop-up shop marketplace platform that connects brands and companies with retail spaces for short-term leasing.
In a blog post, Brock McKeel, senior vice president, site experience, Walmart E-commerce, pointed out that new digital features include the following:
- We’ll Hold Your Place. A virtual queuing experience developed by Walmart Global Tech and E-commerce Product teams will hold a customer’s places in line for the highest demand limited-time items during Black Friday events while they continue shopping walmart.com for other gifts or weekly essentials. The digital feature ensures customers know when they’re in line, their estimated wait time and how long they have to checkout to guarantee an item. Customers, if they chose, can hold their spots in multiple queues at once if they’re looking to purchase multiple different high-demand items.
- Skip the Checkout. Customers who need to purchase a last-minute gift or do a quick repurchase of a favorite product can choose a Buy Now checkout option on most items, allowing them to purchase items directly from item pages for faster shopping.
- Don’t Miss Out. Customers can see the most viewed and purchased items in their search results, helping them quickly locate popular items or discover new favorites, while, at the same time, they can monitor how many people are viewing an item and how many people have the item in their carts so they can purchase before it is out of stock.
McKeel reported that 78% of customers in a recent survey said inflation would have some or a great deal of impact on their holiday shopping. Given the economic stress, Walmart wanted to make using its website easy so shoppers could find deals, the company said,
To help shoppers quickly spot items on sale, Walmart has created an identifying green price tag while simultaneously developing multiple touch points throughout the customer shopping journey from the homepage through the order confirmation page.
Walmart also pointed out that it recently expanded the company’s augmented reality feature, View in Your Home, as it appears on the iOS app to include more than 200 televisions for trial. With this feature expansion, customers can see a scaled simulation of how a TV would fit in their particular space before purchase.
The Popable partnership, meanwhile, gives small businesses the opportunity to rent temporary space in designated Walmart stores without committing to a long-term lease, the company stated. Small businesses can list on Popable’s online website, popable.com. They can then negotiate for spaces based on a suitable temporary leasing agreement that can range in time from a month to a year, and could expand to a longer-term agreement.
Walmart’s Darryl Spinks, senior director of retail services, said, “Supporting small businesses has always been a priority for Walmart. We are proud to work with Popable to offer local brands an opportunity to grow inside our stores. This is a great example of our focus on offering services unique to the neighborhoods we serve through our store of the community initiative.”
