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Section C: List Your Product(s)
4. How To List on WalMart
How To List on WalMart
Walmart describes itself as the largest multi-channel retailer and provides sellers with an opportunity to get their products in front of millions of customers. And the landscape for what Walmart sells online has changed in recent years.
With Marc Lore convincing the Walmart board to shift their focus from books, electronics, and toys to product areas that are becoming popular now: apparel, fresh food and “everyday essentials” like drugstore items, the turn around for Walmart ecommerce marketplace began.
Currently, Walmart allows third-party sellers in 35+ product categories to offer their products on its Marketplace.
From apparel and accessories to gourmet food and from health and personal care products to jewelry and computers and sporting goods, almost everything can be found on the ecommerce Walmart Marketplace.
The change of guard at the top triggered several changes which have started to yield the desired results.
Walmart’s ecommerce sales grew at 43% in Q3, 2018 which is the sign of all things positive happening for Walmart.
Millennials are the drivers of legacy brand change (including Walmart)
There are 83.1 million millennials which forms a quarter of U.S. population. 88% of the millennials live in metropolitan areas.
Over 40% of them are parents, therefore, invariably they end up spending more on everyday essentials.
Together they spent $600 billion each year and make 54% of their purchases online.
Combining all the aforementioned factors, Walmart adopted a new strategy by opening its doors to third-party sellers with excellent products, great customer service and a history of quick delivery. Walmart also started to acquire excellent brands within their product categories.
All the effort put in by the Walmart team has started to show positive results. Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce sales grew 40% in the 2nd quarter of 2018, up from 33% growth in Q1.
At the end of 2018, Walmart overtook Apple.com as the third largest online retailer. Their total revenue stood at $128.03 billion.
Given the brand’s rise over the last couple of years, now is the best time to begin to invest in getting your products on the Walmart Marketplace. So let’s gets started with all you need to know to get started and succeed at Walmart in 2019.
Pros of selling on the Walmart Marketplace
1. No monthly or initial setup fees.
Different marketplaces charge several types of fees ranging from monthly account fees (by Sears and Amazon) to listing individual items (Etsy) in addition to the category wise commission fee, or the combination of all of the fees mentioned.
2. A wider customer base.
This State of the Inbound 2018 study found out that 61% of marketers consider attracting relevant audiences to their websites to still be the biggest challenge.
Therefore, getting access to the 440 million+ customers who visit Walmart, gives your products an unprecedented exposure which otherwise is difficult to achieve.
3. Lower competition.
The Walmart Marketplace, though burgeoning, still lags behind Amazon’s marketplace which has well over 2 million sellers.
Therefore, competing at Walmart for a product space is still easier than Amazon or eBay.
4. List on Walmart affiliate websites.
Not only does Walmart provide you with an opportunity to list your products on their ecommerce marketplace — you also gain access to their affiliate websites:
Jet.com
Shoes.com
Moosejaw.com
and others.
5. Authoritative and credible.
A combined study by USPS and comScore found that 97% of customers first browse products on a marketplace before making an end purchase.
New customers are more comfortable buying from an established name like Walmart, rather than visiting a new website.
6. Effortless transactions.
25% of US customers abandon their carts because their preferred payment option was not present.
Walmart ensures visitors experience faster page checkouts and have all their preferred payment options such as credit cards, gift cards, Paypal, Visa Checkout, Cash, Chase Pay, Amex Pay and more.
Furthermore, Walmart extends the same comfort to online sellers as well.
They’ve partnered with Payoneer to offer weekly paychecks to their Marketplace merchants.
7. Mobile presence.
Since Walmart has a great mobile app with an optimized buying journey, your potential customers can find your products when searching from their mobile/tablet.
Apart from the aforementioned reasons, some of the sellers reported a hike in their website traffic by virtue of their brand name appearing along with their products.
Cons of selling on the Walmart Marketplace
1. Lower profit margins.
Walmart’s entire philosophy revolves around customers saving more.
With several merchants competing for similar products as well as category wise commission fees, your margins may take a hit.
2. Shipment and support.
Walmart.com expects sellers to provide all the post-sales operations, from shipping and handling to customer service, exchanges, and returns.
Tracking information, if available, can be accessed through your Walmart.com “Your Account”.
Walmart explicitly denies its sellers from using FBA for fulfillment.
Add to this, it expects merchants to deliver the product in non-branded packaging and prevents them from putting any brand related promotional material in the package.
3. Potential listing issues.
When more than one seller offers the same product at the same price, Walmart automatically promotes the item that was listed first.
Consider the example of Nike Air Huarache Men’s Shoes Black/White shoes and assume that JMS listed the product first before anyone else, (for the time being forget about the product prices).
Now that this product will have the same UPC/GTIN, JMS will be given preference first on the first-come-first-serve basis and all the other sellers will be in the lower-visibility list below.
The only way to beat the first seller’s item is by lowering the cost of your item.
4. Strict pricing rules.
Walmart expects its sellers to offer the same products at the lowest point on its ecommerce marketplace.
If it finds out that a particular seller is offering the same product at a lower price point somewhere else, (even if another seller is doing it), it will de-list your item.
How to sell on Walmart Marketplace?
Once you’re approved to sell on Walmart, you’ll receive an email that contains the link to register your business.
Here, you need to register by following the link provided to you in this email.
The entire process of registration is categorized in 5 steps:
Account creation.
Company registration.
Taxes (W-9).
Payment info.
Shipping info.
1. Account creation.
This step requires you to provide the username and password for your account.
The username profile is auto-filled (taken from your application).
2. Company registration.
This step requires filling out all of the information required regarding your business.
Walmart uses this information to create a partner account.
Display Name: The name you want customers to see on Walmart.com.
Corporate Address: The complete address of your company including the ZIP Code and phone number.
After filling out the details, click “Save and Continue.” With the completion of this step, your Partner Account is officially created.
3. Taxes (W-9).
This step consists of filling out a W-9 form for tax purposes.
The required fields include your name, address, and TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number).
4. Payment Info.
Walmart has partnered with Payoneer.com to process the payments of Marketplace partners. To receive your payments from Walmart, you must register with Payoneer.
PRO TIP: To avoid any additional withdrawal fees by Payoneer on every transaction, avoid registering on Payoneer directly. Instead set up your account from your Walmart Seller Center.
Upon finishing with this step, click “Continue to Next Step.”
5. Shipping info.
This section represents your default shipping price models for all of your items on Walmart.com.Select Your Pricing Model
Select Your Shipping Methods and Regions
Once you have set up your shipping settings, review your selections and then click on “Submit.”
These settings can be changed later on if needed.
With this step, you’ll be logged in to your Seller Center, wherein you will need to complete the Launch Checklist items.
This completes your Registration for Partner panel on Walmart.
Now you’re done with the initial registration steps, and it’s time to launch your account using the “Launch Checklist.”
Launch Checklist
These steps are necessary to complete in order to make your product appear on Walmart Marketplace. It is highly recommended to complete these steps early, so you can get started with a healthy revenue stream.
1. Complete your partner profile. This includes the Signup Wizard and Seller profile. The aim is to make consumers familiar with your business.
The main steps of this checklist are:
- • Company Info.
- • Customer Service.
- • Shipping.
- • Return Policy.
- • Privacy Policy.
- • Tax Info.
Once you complete all steps, the checklist items will be marked as complete.
2. Verify bank deposit.
Log in to the bank account that you used during your Walmart registration. Check your transactions for a deposit of $0.01 from Walmart.com with the description “WM Marketplace Penny Test.”
To confirm your Penny Testing as complete, click on “Mark as Done” in the Launch Checklist.
Note: The penny deposit typically takes 1-2 business days to appear in your account, but sometimes it may take up to 4 days. If you still don’t see the deposit after 4 days, go back and double check that your account information, business name, etc. were entered correctly.
3. Complete item & order testing.
This is the most important part of your Walmart account creation and onboarding process.
This is where you put in the item information such as images, title, long and short descriptions, attributes, etc.
Steps to Complete Item Setup:
Identify the right category and subcategory for your items.
Have your image URLs or files ready.
Prepare the Item Setup Feed with all of the item details.
Ingest/upload your Item Feed files.
Preview your items on Walmart.com and Complete Item & Order Testing.
Once you upload your Item Feed into the Walmart Seller Center, it will be moved to Staged Status.
You need to perform item and order testing before your products become live on Walmart Marketplace.
Here’s how to do that.
In the Seller Center, select “Preview Item” to verify the item information and pricing in Staged Status.
The same info is shown to your customers once the account is live. This is the page that appears:
To perform a Test Order, update your item inventory status as 1.