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The anti-Amazon website
Can Walmart solve some of Amazon’s worst problems, and translate the best of its brick and mortar into an online experience? The odds are stacked against it but the giant is moving purposefully forward.
There has been much talk about Walmart buying into Flipkart and fighting Amazon on Indian shores too. Walmart, which is more than three times the size of Amazon, boasts about $500 billion in annual sales and 11,700 locations across the world. The world’s biggest brick-and-mortar is sprucing up its act in the e-com sector too with great gusto. It wants to close the huge online gap with Amazon - the latter’s online business is 10 times that of Walmart.
After taking over Jet.com, Bonobos and Modcloth to get in direct touch with Millennials, it has now launched a brand new redesigned website. The new Walmart.com aims to be warm and approachable, with imagery that evokes a lifestyle brand rather than a place to just get good deals. Not Amazon at all.
Walmart.com is “local and personal”. It is meant to feel like a specialty store, with a photo-heavy mix of algorithmic recommendation and merchandiser-curated selections that mine buyers’ shopping history. This week’s redesign is just the front end. What Walmart wants to do is leverage its greatest asset - the 4,700 physical stores - to take on the competition.