Is new always better? The case of the Walmart website

In e-commerce, the website is the key business channel, and it is not often that major retailers decide to dramatically alter its appearance. It is a risky move, which can alienate loyal customers that are accustomed to a certain look and feel. One of the latest such endeavors is the revamped Walmart.com, launched in May 2018. After analyzing the category pages, product pages and navigation on Amazon, Target, and Walmart, we decided to focus solely on Walmart to compare the user experience on the old and the new website.

For our study, we recruited 300 Walmart online shoppers. Half of them tested the old website, while the other half was redirected to the updated version. Our key takeaways include:

• Adding the 5th column in the product list layout has increased the average number of products seen by  11% and the purchase intent by more than 15%;
• Consumers were equally successful in navigating and completing tasks on both websites, however, more online shoppers used the Departments menu on the new website;
• The new site design is perceived as more appealing compared to the old version.

The new product list layout increased the purchase intent by more than 15%

The new product list layout features five instead of four columns, which increases the visibility, attention (average time spent looking at the area), and the number of products seen. These factors transferred to the purchase intent, which has seen a significant boost of over 15%. Most shoppers don’t scroll very deep down the page, so the more products are seen in the first 4-5 lines, the higher their chances for getting chosen.

With our online eye tracking platform, we revealed consumers’ browsing patterns and the areas they found most interesting. As can be seen on the visibility color map (paper towel category), the green areas are seen by more than 50% of respondents (the dark green by more than 75%), the yellow areas are seen by less than half respondents, while less than a quarter noticed the red areas.

The products positioned in the top rows and middle columns maintain good visibility and attention. However, the visibility remains lower in outer columns by default, particularly on the right-hand side.

Thanks to the fifth column in the updated layout, the sponsored products section (on the bottom) appears earlier on the page and it is significantly more noticeable.

Changes in navigation: a nudge towards the Departments menu category pages

When searching for a product on e-commerce websites, most shoppers turn to the search bar as their first step. However, since this bar is less visible in the new layout, shoppers used the Departments menu more frequently to look for the products they needed.

Our navigation results have also shown that shoppers of the new Walmart site spend 13.5s less exploring the offer on the website. Despite these findings, there isn’t a significant difference in the success rate and the number of steps to the desired product, showing that the new Walmart.com has retained the level of ease of navigation, but hasn’t elevated it.

How do consumers evaluate the shopping experience?

It was interesting to see that only slightly more than a third of the respondents (37%) noticed the new design. This speaks to the fact that Walmart did not aim to create a new visual identity but to improve the user experience without disrupting consumers’ habits. Shoppers want to be able to make purchases efficiently, almost automatically, so any drastic changes in the interface would probably lead to a drop in conversions and increase bounce rates.

Overall, consumers almost equally enjoy shopping on both the old and the new website and easily find the desired products. Still, the new Walmart.com performs better in certain aspects – in direct comparison, it is cleaner, more appealing, and has better images, all contributing to a more enjoyable user experience. The product lists are considered to be more premium, unique and clean, with more advanced sorting options, filters, additional information, and user reviews.

Lessons learned

In case of the new Walmart.com, the modifications were made right where they should – the seamless navigation was not jeopardized, while the appeal of the website was increased with high-quality photographs, pleasing to the eye. For retailers and CPG companies considering the same move, the most important takeaway is to focus on the user experience first and make it as enjoyable and smooth as possible – the business results will follow.

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