14 Proven Ways to Optimize Listings on Walmart.com

Walmart.com’s eCommerce marketplace is growing fast. In 2020, it’s projected to hit 5.3% of retail eCommerce sales share. This puts it right behind the Goliath of eCommerce, Amazon. For brands, there are advantages to competing in Walmart’s smaller, cozier marketplace. Selling on Walmart.com means less competition and more exposure for your brand… but only if you play your cards right.

To succeed on Walmart, there are ultimately two “wins” that you need to master: you need to “win the click” from the search results page, and you need to “win the sale” from your item page If you follow these 14 tips, you’ll be achieving your double win in no time!

Tips for Winning the Click

1. Incorporate SEO into Listings

Optimize your Walmart.com listings with high-purchase intent keywords to help shoppers find your product and to rank organically. Walmart’s search algorithm will show results based on the best match for whatever a user is searching.

Tip: Focusing on “popular” category search terms (razor, soap, etc.) isn’t always a winning strategy. A better approach is to choose keywords based on the combination of volume (number of searches per month) and competitiveness (number of brands competing for the term). Popular tools like SEMRush can help you with your analysis.

2. Use Clear and Complete Titles

Including details like features, size or quantity, and brand name helps shoppers get a more complete picture of the product at a glance. Searches that include specific features indicate a strong intent to purchase, so you don’t want to miss out on these opportunities.

3. Design a Package That Sells

More often than not, your product image will be the first thing that draws a customer’s eye. Your packaging needs to “pop” in a sea of beautiful, well-lit photos. Take time to look at the competition in your category and make sure your packaging doesn’t disappear among the rest.

4. Set Up Categories and Attributes

Selecting the right categories, subcategories, and attributes helps your item become more discoverable. The better you categorize your brand and apply relevant attributes, the better the algorithm is at recognizing your item as the correct result for a search.

5. Encourage Ratings and Reviews

Users rely on ratings and reviews when they’re choosing between products, making these a conversion driver. But that’s not the only reason you should encourage ratings and reviews. The Walmart.com algorithm uses rating and reviews to decide what gets placed in the buy box and also uses reviews to influence search results.

6. Invest in Media

The biggest challenge in eCommerce is the “cold start”. This is when you have a great product and great content but no customers have discovered you yet. On-platform pay per click (PPC) media is the best way to start your sales engine. In addition to “buying sales,” your media investments will benefit your organic ranking, and Walmart is very overt in calling it out. Considering that most sales happen on page one of a search, it’s important to take every  opportunity you can to increase your organic rank.

Tips for Winning the Sale

7. Tell Your Brand Story

Brands are as important as ever, but people want to buy from people. More and more, consumers are interested in understanding the human story and values behind a brand. Use your listing to create this human connection – reassure the shopper that when they have a problem, someone will be there to help them through it.

8. Communicate Claims and Points of Difference

Again, there are a lot of options these days. Your product claims and points of difference can help shoppers decide between you and the competition. This is a chance to make your brand stand out. For example, maybe your product has environmental badges or is specially formulated for a keto diet. Using quantifiable and comparative claims (e.g. two times cleaner, faster, more active ingredients) is a great way to communicate why your product is better.

9. Utilize Enhanced Content

Enhanced content like images, video or comparison tables, allows you to tell a more complete story about your brand, such as your points of difference. This gives you an opportunity to close the sale by answering questions shoppers may have, or addressing category pain points or barriers. There are best practices when it comes to rich content, and a partner like BOLD can help you get the most out of this space.

10. Use 2-Day Shipping Badge

In today’s world, people expect things to arrive fast, and they especially love free shipping. The 2-Day Shipping Badge adds credibility and can make your brand the preferred choice over a competitor that doesn’t offer it. According to Walmart, items with 2-day shipping are 36% more likely to win the buy box and get up to a 75% increase in impressions.

11. Make it Easy to Navigate to Variations of a Product

Taking the time to set up a parent-child organization for your products is well worth it. This makes it easy for shoppers to navigate to other sizes, colors, types, and flavors of whatever you’re selling. Keeping a shopper engaged with your listing rather than allowing them to navigate back to the search page makes it much more likely that you’ll close the sale.

Bonus Tips for Winning the Buy Box

80% of sales on Walmart.com happen through the buy box. These bonus tips address a few more best practices for winning the buy box and increasing sales.

12. Make Your Pricing Competitive

Everyday Low Prices are part of Walmart’s strategy, and Walmart customers expect these low prices. That includes the shipping cost. It should come as no surprise that competitive pricing helps you win the buy box.

13. Deliver on Time

Your delivery date is an important promise to keep. Walmart Marketplace measures quality of service based on a few factors, and this includes maintaining a 99% or greater on-time shipment rate.

14. Maintain Your Inventory

To win the buy box, your product always needs to be in sufficient stock. Having a solid inventory management plan in place is crucial to ensuring that you always have enough product to fulfill orders (and conversely, make sure you don’t have products sitting around for months on end). If you’re at risk of running out of stock, consider stopping your media and promotions or implementing temporary price adjustments.

Final Thoughts

Selling on Walmart.com means less competition, but that doesn’t mean success will come easily. There are still millions of products vying for space in search and for the high-converting buy box. Optimizing your listings will help your products rank organically and ultimately drive more sales.

We turned this blog into a handy checklist so you can make sure all your listings are performing at their best.