Walmart Marketplace is a growing ecommerce opportunity for many brands. They are the second largest selling platform and sellers benefit from loyal Walmart shoppers. According to Comscore Media Metrix, Walmart.com has 120 million unique monthly visitors.
Awesome Dynamic unveils what you need to get started reaping the benefits of selling on Walmart’s Marketplace from the cost, what you need to have ready to apply, how to build out your listing for success and shipping.
Pros of Selling on Walmart Marketplace
Before we get started on the ins and outs of selling on Walmart’s Marketplace, let’s review a few of the pros to expanding your business to Walmart.
1. Expand Your Reach: Walmart is a household name and a familiar shopping option for many consumers. Adding your product catalog to Walmart.com will give you an Advantage.
For one, there is no membership fee to shop on Walmart.com. Consumers do need to spend $35 for free shipping and have the choice to joining Walmart+, but that isn’t mandatory. This allows you to target those who want to pay for a membership and those who don’t.
2. Less Competition: Since Walmart.com requires an application and approval process, many inadequate sellers get weeded out. This has allowed Walmart to establish a carefully curated community filled with quality online sellers.
Walmart is looking for high-quality products that are priced competitively. If you can supply these types of products from your catalog, you will get more eyes on your products and have less competition. According to Walmart, sellers get 13x more visitors per month compared to sellers on Amazon.
3. No Monthly or Setup Fees: Pay for only what you sell. Walmart Marketplace offers a simple pricing structure (we go into more detail about that in the next section). The basic gist is, you pay a commission rate, which ranges from 6-15%.
How Much Does it Cost to Sell on Walmart?
There is no setup or monthly fee to sell on Walmart Marketplace. The commission rates vary by category and total sales prices. Those rates range from 6-15%.
What Do I Need to Apply?
In order to sell on Walmart Marketplace you need to first submit an application with the following Information.
- US Business Tax ID
- W9 or W8 AND EIN Verification Letter from the Department of Treasury to verify your US business address
- Address of physical operations
- US business address
- Planned integration method for your product catalog (bulk upload, API or solution provider)
- Primary product categories, catalog size and related information
Why Optimize Your Listing?
Yes, Walmart has less competition, but that doesn’t mean there is none. Plus, it’s important to appeal to shoppers. This is your opportunity to ‘sell’ them on what your product is and does, and
why they need to add it to their cart today. In order to do that you need to make sure your listing is fully optimized and looks professional.
How to Optimize Your Walmart Marketplace Listing
You’ve made it through Walmart’s approval process. Hooray. Now it’s time to make sure your listings shine.
Keywords are the backbone of your product listings. Start with a list of relevant keywords. Next, without keyword stuffing, add those keywords throughout your title, description, and product features. The idea is to add words that relate to consumers’ search terms. Make sure as you write your copy it remains easy-to-read – don’t start adding keywords for the sake of adding Keywords.
Next, make sure you’ve selected the right category for your products. This will help to improve search performance and connect the right shoppers with your products.
It’s no secret that people are visual. Make sure you utilize all your image slots to share more information about your product. Your product images should be high-resolution. The first image slot should focus on the product alone with a white background. The subsequent image slots can show product packaging, additional sides of the product, lifestyle photos, or infographics that call out important details about the product.
Getting reviews is not always an easy task, but it is worthwhile. Not only will it help solidify shoppers’ decisions to purchase, but it will help your Listing Quality Score with Walmart. Enlist in a review program to like Spark Reviewer or Review Syndication to help generate quality, honest Reviews.
Building out a quality product listing is an essential part of your business plan and success selling on Walmart. See for yourself how our team optimized a men’s grooming product company for Walmart and saw an increase in sales of 28.05%.
Wrapping Up
While Walmart Marketplace is more strict on who they let in the virtual door to sell – it does mean that they only let in the best. Is that you? Are you ready to expand your selling network into Walmart while the competition is low and the views are high? Talk with our team if you are interested in learning more or have questions.
Awesome Dynamic is a full service ecommerce consulting agency helping sellers navigate selling on Amazon and Walmart.