U.S. retail ecommerce sales grew 44.5% year over year in Q2 2020 — and now are expected to reach 18.1% of all retail sales by 2024, according to eMarketer. With COVID-19 pushing shoppers online much faster than expected, winning on the digital shelf is more important than ever.
And this need to remain competitive on the digital shelf is only magnified during the holiday shopping season. As the second-largest ecommerce retailer, Walmart Marketplace is an excellent way for brands to reach new shoppers within an increasingly competitive landscape.
Alicia DeFinis, associate director of partnerships at Walmart Marketplace, joined us for a recent webinar, “How to Build a Winning Walmart Marketplace Strategy,” in which she shared how to become a Walmart Marketplace seller, and some new insights about meeting holiday shopping demands this season.
Holiday Pro-Tips From the Walmart Team
Learn how your brand can navigate the holiday shopping season with these tips — direct from the Walmart team.
Walmart’s Most Popular Holiday Categories
There are five categories where the Walmart team is doubling-down on their efforts, all of which are aligned with historically strong Walmart sales during the holidays. These insights could help your brand understand where to focus your efforts on Walmart Marketplace to boost discovery, engagement, and sales.
- Food and Beverage: There are 12 food and beverage purchases every minute during the holidays. (By the time you finish reading this blog post, there will have been 60 food and beverage sales on Walmart.com.)
- Toys: There are 2 million video games purchased every week during the holidays.
- Tech: There are 126,000 electronic items purchased every day during the holidays.
- Beauty: There are 475,000 beauty products purchased every week during the holidays.
- Holiday Apparel: There are 65 million items purchased every week during the holidays.
“These are the places that really carry our holiday season,” DeFinis said. These categories, according to DeFinis, offer excellent opportunities for brands to jump-start their Walmart Marketplace program.
COVID-19 Themes to Watch
Gifting guides are one of the important tools that Walmart uses to highlight their products during the holiday season. Due to COVID-19, there are some major changes to these focus areas, as each highlights a change in how shoppers are adapting to the ongoing pandemic.
“This year is going to be more unique. Less people traveling to go see family and focused more on their indoor holiday parties — or staying home, investing a little bit more, and making their home cozy and really well-equipped for the holiday season,” DeFinis said.
DeFinis stressed how spending may increase in select categories, such as indoor and outdoor decor and table settings, due to these changes. Consider how shopping habits have changed due to the ongoing pandemic and how you can optimize your product pages to fit these themes.
- Gifts: Toys, tech, gaming fashion, home appliances, decor, beauty, grooming, sporting goods, and food gifts.
- Winter Fashion: Cold weather outerwear, indoor wear for warmth, and winter theme brands.
- Holiday Toys: Gift guides highlighting toys by age and gender.
- Holidays at Home: Gift prep products, as well as indoor and outdoor decor.
- Entertaining: Table settings and holiday celebrations.
- Deals: Electronics, video games, toys, home appliances, and sporting goods.
Build Engaging Product Experiences
A winning Walmart Marketplace strategy must include engaging product experiences, as these help shoppers experience your products online as they would in a brick-and-mortar store. Bringing the in-store holiday shopping experience online with rich media, also called below-the-fold content or enhanced content.
The Salsify Commerce Experience Management (CommerceXM) platform can help brands move quickly to update and optimize product pages on Walmart Marketplace to adapt to changing holiday trends. This speed and agility helps brands grow sales and market share — while building lasting relationships with shoppers during the holiday season and beyond.
Watch our on-demand webinar with Walmart to learn more about Walmart Marketplace and how to leverage it to meet growing holiday ecommerce sales.
