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.
“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.
For instance, the mobile app has been designed to make it possible for shoppers to be able to browse a map of the store in which they are currently standing, in order to be able to discover where the Black Friday sales are situated in relation to their current physical location. The hope is that this will help to reduce some of the confusion that consumers face in trying to navigate the stores to find the sales, particularly on the busiest shopping days of the year.