Walmart Brings AR, Buy Now, and Virtual Queue Capabilities to Digital Shopping
Walmart is adding even more enhancements to its digital shopping experiences ahead of the busy holiday season. Following a set of improvements announced this past month, Walmart is now also investing in new capabilities such as augmented reality (AR), Buy Now, and a virtual shopping queue.
Building on its existing augmented reality services, the company expanded its “View in Your Home” AR feature, allowing consumers to virtually see how a TV would fit in their space before they purchase. The initial version of this feature rolled out in July.
Additionally, Walmart has taken personalization to another level by suggesting items to complete an outfit using styling solution Stylitics. The recommendation service is available for 8,000 items across seven categories and 16,000 outfit variations.
“Every improvement to the site experience helps us create a faster, more engaging and more personalized experience for our customers, and we’re just getting started. The closest store to our customer is in their pocket, and they can trust us to make it easy for them to save time, save money, and, ultimately, live better this holiday season,” said Brock McKeel, senior vice president, site experience, Walmart e-commerce.
[Read more: Walmart Emphasizes Importance of Digital and Customer Growth Amid ‘Dynamic’ Environment]
The company is also looking to elevate online shopping experiences by expediting the process through new functionalities. Among them is a new Buy Now feature, available on most items, that allows customers to purchase items directly from item pages without requiring going through the shopping cart first.
As part of this effort to simplify the process, Walmart has also introduced a virtual queue through which customers can keep their place in line for high-demand items during Black Friday events while they continue shopping for other items on the site. Walmart will display an estimated wait time and how long customers have to checkout in order to be eligible for the item. For those interested in purchasing multiple high-demand items, the company is allowing customers to enter into multiple queues.
Walmart has also improved visibility into popular and most-viewed items, populating customers’ search results with these items and showcasing how many people have the item in their carts so they can purchase before they go out of stock.
“As many of us start preparing to welcome friends and family members into our homes for the holidays, Walmart is taking the same actions to get our ‘house’ ready for holiday shopping,” said McKeel. “We’re pulling out all the stops for our customers on Walmart.com, ensuring that they have fast, frictionless, engaging, and personalized shopping experiences that save them time, save them money and make shopping on our site just as easy as shopping in one of our stores.”
Additional improvements include green on-sale tags which quickly identify discounted pricing across the site.
“As we begin to showcase the amazing deals our customer can find at Walmart this holiday season, we will maximize customer exposure to those deals throughout multiple touchpoints in the customer journey from the homepage all the way through the order confirmation page,” added McKeel.
