The competition between retail giants like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart continues to heat up. At the same time, sellers on each of those marketplaces also face increasing competition. Walmart has over 110 million unique visitors per month, and that number continues to rise as Walmart marches towards Amazon levels. Walmart’s growing marketplace presents a huge opportunity for retailers. However, as more and more retailers seize that opportunity, staying top of mind to those 110 million visitors is easier said than done.

Whether you’re new to selling on the Walmart marketplace or a veteran, consider these tips on how to optimize your listings in order to compete with other sellers and increase sales.

Currently, Walmart offers 11 million different items on its marketplace. This number will grow significantly as vendors join and customer demand increases. Walmart CEO Doug McMillion discusses the need for item expansion in saying, “It’s important that customers, when they come to walmart.com or use our app, find what they’re looking for, so we need to have a broader assortment.”

Therefore, whether you are selling apparel and accessories, home and utility products, groceries, or electronics, Walmart is open to a variety of merchandise and retailers in order to satisfy customer demands. This demonstrates that it’s not so much about what you sell, but how you sell it.

Product Title
Walmart allows you to use up to 200 characters for product title. Use up as much real estate as possible when it comes to your product title, and make sure to include as many key product attributes to ensure visibility such as brand name, style, color, quantity, etc. It is also beneficial to be consistent with your product titles on other channels (like Amazon or eBay) to maintain a seamless brand image, helping customers recognize your products when shopping on other sales channels.

Product Variations
To stand out from the competition, it may be a good idea for retailers to offer product variations, such as color or size. When listing product variations, it is extremely helpful for retailers to group these products within the same listing. This substantially improves the customer shopping experience as it limits the number of pages they must search through for a particular product. Grouping product variations also reduces the likelihood that a shopper leaves your listing page, thus increasing conversion rate.

Product Categories & Attributes
Walmart provides 24 different categories to describe specific product attributes. Be sure to select the best category (and subcategory if appropriate) for your items. Try to avoid selecting the ‘other’ category, if you find that no category applies to your item, this decreases the visibility of your product, thus limiting sales. The more attributes you supply and the more accurate you are when assigning your product to a category, the higher your product will be ranked on a product search page.

Product Images
It always helps to provide your own unique picture of your product to help you stand out from your competitors. That being said, however, it’s of utmost importance to provide a quality picture – one that is clear and appropriately sized. The more images you provide, the better your conversion rate. Especially, when you consider that 66% of customers say they want to see at least three images of a product while shopping.

Pricing
Walmart.com shoppers are more likely to be in a higher income bracket than Walmart’s in-store customers, meaning that they tend to seek higher-quality products over low priced items. According to Walmart’s Senior Vice President of the global marketplace, Seth Beal, “It doesn’t matter if it’s $5 or $5,000—value is what they’re looking for.”

However, offering competitively priced products certainly doesn’t hurt. Your landed price (item value + shipping costs) is a major factor in winning the Buy Box. As a retailer, you have the ability to review Buy Box prices when previewing items, allowing you to adjust your prices as necessary to remain competitive.

Customer Reviews
Positive customer reviews can make a huge impact when it comes to improving your ranking. Encourage loyal or satisfied customers to leave reviews, while also being sure to monitor negative reviews and reach out to unsatisfied customers to address their concerns.

Ensure customer satisfaction by meeting delivery estimates or providing shorter delivery times. Walmart requires retailers to confirm order shipments on or before the expected shipping date. Late shipping not only increases the chance of poor reviews, but it also has a negative impact on your on-time shipment rate, which effects your ranking as well.

Order Management and Integrations
Last but not least, managing orders and inventory across multiple marketplaces (like Walmart, Amazon, eBay, and your website) requires formal processes and established procedures. Search out automated solutions that integrate your business processes associated with selling on multiple marketplaces such as Walmart. Vendors that provide integrations are crucial to managing your orders, inventory, delivery processes, and product listings on multiple channels.

Specifically, when it comes to managing product descriptions, attributes, categories, images, pricing and more, make sure you have a product information management (PIM) system in place. Order management systems like SalesWarp have robust PIM systems which allow retailers to store and manage an unlimited number of attributes, images, etc., and push out any product changes, such as price, to all your marketplaces automatically, in real-time.

Using a PIM system not only automates the product listing process, but it also ensures consistency with all your product listings, creating a seamless brand image and a more convenient shopping experience for your customers, regardless of channel. Additionally, an order management system can help ensure timely deliveries by automating the order fulfillment process, ultimately having a positive effect on customer reviews and on-time shipping rate, in turn improving your product rankings, resulting in higher sales.

Want to know more about selling on online marketplaces or need help setting up your Walmart store? Schedule a call with a member of the SalesWarp team to learn more.