Walmart is in a position to have an advantage over Amazon as they continue to develop their online marketplace.
Last month when Walmart announced their partnership with Shopify, they shared plans to onboard 1,200 new sellers before the end of 2020.
The partnership comes as part of Walmart’s strategic priority to grow the number of sellers on the platform.
While Amazon may be the most-talked-about online marketplace, there are still many challenges that consumers and businesses face when buying and selling on Amazon. As in any competitive market, Walmart’s upper hand will be in learning from Amazon’s mistakes — and fixing them on their own platform.
A key difference we noticed immediately with Walmart was the way they will rank listings based on seller performance, rather than size and volume, which is traditional to Amazon. By integrating directly with your Shopify store, this may make the addition of Walmart as a channel arguably easier than it is to bring your brand to Amazon, where listing age, sales velocity, and competition dictate a lot of your ability to become successful.
As one of the most widely used e-Commerce platforms for brand-owned websites, the partnership with Shopify makes perfect sense. Shopify is known for its simple-to-use platform, which easily integrates your catalog with additional selling platforms — including Walmart Marketplace.
Key Takeaway:
New brands should consider integrating their Shopify store with Walmart Marketplace for a quicker ROI. Its ranking algorithm might just nab your listings a better position, and a wider audience, than Amazon’s out of the gate.