Tag: walmart

Black Friday mobile commerce war starts early at Walmart

| November 23, 2016

The retail giant has moved its Cyber Monday sale to the day after Thanksgiving to keep competitive.

Walmart has announced that its Black Friday mobile commerce will be the new Cyber Monday this year. The move was taken to help to avoid a detrimental shopping lull over the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Instead of making people wait for online sales, Walmart is evening out the in-store and mobile experience.

Many have speculated that dragging out Black Friday mobile commerce is a move to compete with Amazon. That online marketplace has offered stiff competition to Walmart. As Amazon operates exclusively online, it has had a considerable advantage over this vital holiday shopping long weekend.

Black Friday Mobile Commerce Shoppers are now eyeing the retailer to find out precisely what the deals will be. This isn’t the first time Walmart moved online and mobile commerce ahead from Cyber Monday. Last year, its online sales were launched on a Cyber Sunday instead. Promotions began at 6pm that evening and carried over into the next day.

This Black Friday mobile commerce sale will also reveal a range of new Walmart online shopping features.

This holiday shopping season will also represent the first real test to Walmart’s massive online overhaul. It has made widespread changes to its standard website as well as its mobile shopping experience and app. Moreover, it has a considerably larger number of items available for sale online. Reportedly, this includes approximately 23 million items. Last year at this time, that figure was 8 million items.

A sizeable portion of that increase is due to the rising number of marketplace sellers. There are around 3,000 marketplace sellers on Walmart.com at the moment. This means that shoppers will be able to purchase items on the website beyond what they’d even find in stores.

Recently, Walmart reported that its online and mobile commerce sales had increased by 20.6 percent. It would be safe to say that its website overhaul played a notable role in that growth. This is particularly true as this year’s first fiscal quarter saw only 7 percent growth.

Now, Walmart is looking to Black Friday mobile commerce to up the ante from last year’s holiday season price war.

Walmart mobile shopping app launches in Canada

| July 27, 2016

As the world’s biggest retailer discovers smartphones are a top traffic driver, it has changed directions.

The Walmart mobile shopping app is rolling out in Canada where smartphone users are a prime driver of traffic. The retailer’s new application provides shoppers with a spectrum of different features including a favorites list.

The beta tests were critical to the development of this app, which started off quite complicated.

According to Walmart Canada executive vice president of technology and ecommerce, Rick Neuman, the application was greatly simplified. At first it was overly complicated, but Neuman said the experience has been sculpted into something much more appealing. To him, the favorites list was his preferred feature on the Walmart mobile shopping app.

Walmart Mobile Shopping App - Walmart Store in Canada“The other day I made a favourites list, handed it to my wife and she was able to get a $120 basket together in four minutes for a great camping weekend with my girls,” he stated.

The Walmart mobile shopping app was created through a Razorfish Canada collaboration.

This mobile commerce app was developed specifically for the Canadian market. It was based on a survey conducted across that country. The survey sought to determine what people wanted most from Walmart. This was followed by beta testing by customers the retailer hand-picked for the purpose. Later, the retailer’s employee base were able to take part in testing the final version.

The release of this m-commerce application is a direct reflection of the growing importance of the role of mobile in Walmart shopping. June 2016 represented the first time more traffic came from smartphones and tablets than from desktops and laptops.

“That’s a huge shift for us,” said Neuman. He pointed out that the company is seeing “massive potential.”

Walmart currently boasts more than 400 store locations across the nation. This is especially significant as the Canadian marketplace has always been a challenging one for department store retailers. The majority of sales still occur at bricks-and-mortar stores. However, the company has acknowledged that offering digital solutions is an integral component of doing business in the current ecosystem. The launch of the Walmart mobile shopping app is a major move for the company within that environment.