Walmart has become one of the favored digital marketplaces by both shoppers and sellers.
According to Comscore, Walmart.com receives more than 150 million unique monthly visitors. And, Statista records show that they had reached 150 000 third-party sellers by May last year, which is a 66% increase compared to the number registered the year before.
While these numbers will continue to grow since Walmart relaxed its processes to join the marketplace, the competition is still not as fierce as in other marketplaces like Amazon, for example. This means you can get your share of that visitor traffic and make significant sales. But your product listings must be high-quality to gain better visibility and stand out against your competitors.
That’s where product listing optimization (PLO) comes in. Let’s talk more about what PLO for Walmart is, why it’s important, and how to get started with it.
Understanding PLO for Walmart
Similar to other marketplaces, Walmart has its own algorithm that decides which products will be ranked at the top and which ones go to the bottom. While only Walmart knows exactly how its algorithm works, ranking is, by design, based on whether your product listing accurately matches customers’ search intent. This depends on how relevant the keywords you’ve included in your product information are to the search query.
For example, if a customer searches for a “red chair” in Walmart.com’s search bar, will the results show your red chair listing at all? Or will it show up as another color chair you have listed on the platform?
If your product doesn’t show up at all, it means your listing is missing key information. If it’s irrelevant to the search query, it means there’s inaccurate information added to the listing.
Take a look at the below screenshots, one listing accurately matches the customer’s search intent, and the other doesn’t. Not only is the white chair irrelevant, but it also has inaccurate information, which can be confusing and frustrating to the customer.
However, you can’t simply throw in a few keywords and hope that your products will show up in front of customers. In fact, Walmart uses a quality score to rate product listings. It considers three specific factors when deciding on what an optimal product listing is:
==> Content
==> Offer
==> Performance
We’ll talk more about these factors when we discuss how to get started with the optimization of your Walmart listings. But what’s important to take note of right now is that PLO is a tactic that gives you the elements you need to match the search intent. That way, when a customer searches for products you sell on Walmart.com, your accurate listings can show up at the top of the results.
On top of gaining product visibility in search results, meeting Walmart’s listing quality requirements can help you get priority marketing opportunities, win the Buy Box to sell more, improve your conversion rate, and minimize product returns.
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