How To Set Up And Sell Your Products On Walmart Ecommerce Marketplace

By Author: Sudeesh Dodda
Total Articles: 61
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Thinking about venturing out on Walmart eCommerce marketplace. So, let’s start with some basic idea about this marketplace and then we will provide you the detailed description of “How to do the setup and sell your products on Walmart eCommerce marketplace”.

How does products on Walmart eCommerce marketplace Work?
Walmart works somewhat as of Amazon. It acts as a digital meeting point for wholesaler and third-party sellers to list their wide-ranging products in front of millions of active shoppers. Being one of the successful retail chains it has an annual revenue of more than $500 billion. Walmart sellers get the opportunity to showcase their products to more than 127 million monthly visitors. Shoppers in Walmart can buy both, third party listed and Walmart sold products.

Walmart is the E-commerce powerhouse and it’s a channel worth investing in!!!!
Key Benefits for Walmart eCommerce marketplace sellers
No Listing, monthly or any setup fees
Various online marketplaces charge the sellers with a range of monthly account fees (like on Amazon and Sears), then listing fees (like ...
... what is charged in Etsy), categorized commission fees, or the combination of all the fees. Walmart only charges category wise commission.

Refer to the link for complete commission fees as per the category.

Product visibility due to a wider customer base
Walmart is the third most popular eCommerce platform in the US after Amazon and eBay. As per the statistics, the platform has more than 100 million visitors per month. The channel provides a lucrative opportunity for sellers as their products can be viewed by a number of active shoppers.

Lower Competition
Walmart at some point still lags behind the eCommerce giant Amazon marketplace which has approximately two million sellers. So, competing for product space at Walmart is much easier than Amazon and eBay.

List on Walmart Affiliate websites
You not only get the opportunity to list on its parent website “Walmart.com” but you also get the opportunity to list on its affiliate websites below:

Jet.com
Moosejaw.com
Shoes.com
Others
Easy Transaction Options
Walmart offers its visitors with faster page checkouts and provides all the preferred payment options like Debit cards, credit cards, Cash, Visa Checkout, Amex Pay, Chase Pay and others. Similar comfortable options are also provided to online sellers. So, there is no option left for the customers to abandon the cart due to non-availability of preferred payment options.

Google ads
Selling Products on Walmart gives you access to detailed analytics
Compared to other ecommerce websites understanding your audience on Walmart is much easier. The website offers loads of diverse performance reports so that third-party sellers can get their in-depth selling analytics.

Seller Scorecard:
Provides an overview of various issues like some customer complaint, late shipping, etc. thus allowing the sellers to quickly look on the problems that need instant attention.

Trust and safety Dashboard:
Provide detailed reports of the products removed by the Walmart due to defiance with the Walmart’s Barred products policy.

Fulfillment Insights:
Gives you the privilege to monitor your key shipping metrics. It also allows you to compare the shipping standards with the top Walmart sellers to give you a better understanding.

Summary Reports:
Gives you a detailed report on your catalog’s overall performance that includes your conversions, key performers, your payment history reports and so on.

How to Sell on Walmart eCommerce marketplace?
Like any other eCommerce platform, Walmart also follows a standard procedure for setting up the seller account and listing the products on Walmart.com. Let’s have a quick walk through each step of registration:

Complete application and registration process
You first need to fill up the application form in order to be considered. The process of filling the form would take only 10-15 minutes. It requires only basic information. The approval process takes some days, as Walmart minutely examines the application and then approves. They will analyze if your business holds unique products, has a reliable reputation, promising sales potential and has positive service track records. Once you are approved by Walmart you will receive a mail that would contain the link to register your business.

registration process

Click the link to complete your registration. The registration process includes the following steps:

Creation of Account
Company registration
Submission of Tax information (W-9 form)
Payment Information (you need to register with Walmart payment provider, com
Shipping information (select pricing model, shipping methods and region) Complete application

Use The below best practices that would help your product to upload faster
As you have completed your initial registration process, the next thing you should do is to launch your account using the tab “Launch checklist”. This step is highly recommended to complete at this point or early so that as you get started you get a healthy revenue stream.

Complete your Partner Profile
Once your registration process gets completed, then you will be required to fill several pages that include questions about your company. The information you will provide would be viewable by shoppers on Walmart.com and will also be included on your Partner Profile. The information asked would include:

products-on-walmart

Complete Company information (With the logo, display name, and description)
Customer Service information (that includes your phone number, email ID, service policy)
Shipping options (With policy, rates, and processing schedule)
Product return policies and settings
Privacy policy
Sales tax information

Verify Bank Deposit
Log in to the bank account that you used during your Walmart registration process. Do a transaction deposit of $0.01 from Walmart.com and put the description as “WM Marketplace Penny Test”.

Go to the Launch Checklist and confirm the penny testing as complete by clicking on “Mark as Done”.

Prepare your product content
Once you are done with all the administrative work, then the next step is to start preparing your feed for Walmart eCommerce marketplace.

Step 1: Define your integration method
Select from one of the below integration methods, in order to load your data files to your Walmart’s Seller Center account:

Single Item Upload: Ideal for sellers who have just started out and have very limited catalogs. You should have the resources to manually upload individual items. If this option is preferable to you, then you need to do the individual item setup in Seller Center.

Bulk Upload: This option is suitable for businesses with limited IT resources or limited catalogs. This option requires regular handling of multiple excel spreadsheets.

API: This option is highly reliable and scalable, but requires good programming knowledge and quick support from IT. Making use of this option enables you to push and pull data between the Walmart ecommerce marketplace and your shop system.

Solution Provider: Ideal for sellers with bigger and more complex catalogs. Automates all your manual processes.

Step 2: Identify the right product Category
Like Amazon marketplace, the referral fees and product feed specifications differ between categories. Therefore, check out for the right category before you start customizing your feed. To structure your feed as per the Walmart ecommerce marketplace guidelines you can view the category specific templates provided by Walmart. Still, you are not sure on which category your product falls into, then check out the Walmart’s Category Guide

Step 3: Customize the product Content abiding Walmart’s eCommerce marketplace guidelines
The next step is to prepare for category specific product feed, inventory and price feed as per the Walmart’s eCommerce marketplace specifications.

Once you download the correct category template in Excel, you will find the long list of different product attributes. Some of the attributes are mandatory, some are optional, while some of them are recommended. Whether there is a need for an attribute or not depends on the category the product falls into. Some of the common attributes are listed below:

eCommerce marketplace guidelines

Inventory/ Price feed
Also, you should make sure that Walmart ecommerce marketplace is always aware of the latest inventory and pricing of your products. So, its always recommended to automatically sync your real-time product updates to the Seller Center.

Moreover, you can take leverage of powerful solution like Kartzhub which helps to sync all your orders and inventory details with the Walmart ecommerce marketplace. Get automated real-time stock details, shipping updates, account details and simplify most of the processes without the need for human intervention.

Execute Order Testing
This is the last step of the integration process on the Walmart ecommerce marketplace. Once you have completed the setup of your feed and you can view your products within the Seller Center Interface, means you are now ready to begin the procedure of order testing. Testing is very important as it ensures that all the work you have done are in the correct order and the operations are also in working order before your products go live.

The very first thing in this process you need to do is preview your feed within Seller Center. Do this by clicking the link “Complete Item & Order Testing” in the launch checklist tab that is available in your account.Click the link to view how your product appears in front of the shoppers.

Then to test your order fulfillment, you need to pick your 2-3 items for testing. You have to go through the following steps:

Step 1: Update the product price to less than 20 USD and set the inventory to 1 (to avoid accidental purchases from the shoppers of Walmart platform during the testing period.

Step 2: Publish the products you have chosen for testing by clicking on the tab “Publish item”. This makes your item visible to the shoppers instantly.

item visible to the shoppers instantly

Step 3: Once your product is published, you will see that the tab in Seller Central has changed from “Publish Item” to “Purchase Item”. Click the link and it will redirect you to the product page where you can purchase the product. For product purchase, you would need a Walmart.com customer account.

Purchase item

Step 4: You also need to complete the below tests:

Cancellation testing
Shipping testing
Refund Testing
Every step would take some time.

6. Confirmation from Walmart eCommerce Marketplace to go live
Now as you have completed all the processes and completed the testing as well, the next step is to go live and start selling products on Walmart. To go live, you have to:

products-on-walmart

Upload at least 10% of your products or 1000 of your products.
The stock levels should be up-to-date with the price of each item
Then you need to inform Walmart of your readiness to go live by requesting in Seller Center. Walmart will do a final review and then give you the confirmation to go live. It takes some 3-4 days for Walmart to process your request.