Walmart Product Listing: Your guide to list & optimize products on Walmart marketplace

Walmart has taken the eCommerce world by surprise and has become the leading choice for many brands when expanding to new online marketplaces. Since their launch in 2019, Walmart’s number of active advertisers has increased 175% year-over-year and overall ad spend is up by 95%.

However, given the increasing number of brands now available on Walmart.com, this has also increased the need for brands to differentiate against competitors - especially in crowded categories. That being said, If you plan on selling and advertising on Walmart.com, product listings is one of the most crucial aspects to your success and differentiability. A poorly constructed Product Display Page (PDP) will result in loss of organic rank, conversions, and lack of relevancy on Walmart’s algorithms.

We understand that optimizing your listings can be difficult and time consuming, which is why the following guide will help you to better understand how to increase traffic and efficiently optimize your Product Display Page.

First Glance: Product Listing

The first glance of your product is often when a customer searches for a specific keyword, let’s say “art set” and they are directed to a search result page that will display all the products that are relevant to that search result. This “first look” of your product is very crucial - customers are presented with a wide array of competitor products and thus yours must stand out to ensure that the customer is clicking into your PDP. There are a few factors that advertisers must consider in order to create a compelling “first look” listing:

Main Image

This is the primary image that will represent your product when a customer is browsing through a search result page. This image should be a compelling depiction of what is that you are selling. If your product includes multiple parts (ex. paint kits with multiple brushes, paints, etc) ensure that all the items within your product are being displayed.

Product Title

Aside from the imagery, product titles must also give customers a good idea of what they are buying without having to click on the listing and read the product description. The title should include the most relevant keywords to your products.

Walmart has outlined some best practices for product titles to get the best SEO and readability:

• Ensure that your title remains within 50-75 characters.

• Create a clear, specific product title that customers can easily understand.

  • Brand + Item Name + Model Name (if applicable) + Style (if applicable) + Key Attribute + Pack Count (if applicable) + Size (if applicable).

• Include key attributes of the product; such as sizing, colors, finishes, etc.

• If you have multiple variants within an item such as different quantities, you can also include that in the product name

• Avoid using special characters such as @, * , &

• Avoid marketing phrases (e.g. #1 rated, best selling, high quality, etc.)

Source: https://sellerhelp.walmart.com/s/guide?article=000006404#Copy_Standards

Pricing

Much like any marketplace, pricing is a major consideration during a customer’s purchase decision. Doing a pricing comparison for other competitors within your space is crucial, especially on keywords that are the most strategic to you. For example, if I were to search “art set” and majority of the other comparable competitors within the first search page are priced between $10-$15 and your item is $50, there is a less likelihood of conversion.

Additionally, if you are not pricing appropriately on Walmart, you are very likely to lose your buy box position and be restricted from advertising that product on Walmart.com until you meet the minimum requirements.

Reviews and Ratings

Product reviews are a good indicator of the credibility of your product. When looking at two comparable products, a customer is more likely to choose a product that has many 4-5 star reviews versus one that has very few reviews. Ensure that you are investing in getting more Walmart reviews whether organically or through third party sites like BizzareVoice.

Second Glance: Product Display Page (PDP)

Great - you got a customer past the first consideration phase of the search result page! Now we have to take your listing to the next step to ensure that the customer is actually convinced enough about the value of your product that they are willing to buy it. Remember, if a customer clicks on your product but does not buy it, you must still pay for the click.

Again, there are some important factors to consider on your PDP:

Additional Images

As stated before, your main image should do a compelling job of portraying to customers what it is that they are purchasing. However, a customer may want to look at other images of the product as well when making their purchase decision. Please ensure that you are following Walmart’s image guidelines.

Some tips that we have for additional product images:

• 4 is the minimum amount of pictures that you should have, however 7 is the ideal amount

• Include lifestyle images - these are images of the product in use in a real environment

• If there is a part of the product that you would like to ensure a customer sees, you can include a zoom’d in image as well

• If you are selling a consumable item, ensure that you are also including all the appropriate labels (ex. nutritional facts)

• Include images that have text overlays on them, especially if you want to include important attributes of the product

Product Description/ Key Features

Your product description is the another key feature in your PDP that should relay a compelling story of your product. This is a longer description of the product compared to the title, so you can definitely go into further detail.

Best practices when curating a product description:

• The word count must a minimum of 150 words, but you can certainly exceed this

• Ensure that you are being conversational in your writing, and you are trying to also sell your brand’s personality and authenticity

• Avoid repetition and jargon - this will decrease your credibility

• Make sure to include relevant keywords that you were unable to outline in in your product title

Best practices when curating key features:

• These are short phrases and key points about your product

• Each bullet point should be no more than 80 characters

Please reference Walmart’s guide here for some guidelines and examples of product descriptions and key features.

Wrapping up

We understand how confusing and time consuming this all can be. Not to worry - Perpetua is here to help. We offer in house listing optimization services that will save you both time and resources. Reach out to us at hello@perpetua.io to learn more!