Walmart business operations and market presence

Wal-Mart

My first impression of the Wal-Mart website is that it is cluttered. There is no central focus to draw my eyes, only a cacophony of different offers pulling my attention in different directions, and yet not pulling my attention anywhere. If I came to the Wal-Mart website looking for a specific item, there is no search function nor menu on the immediate opening screen. Indeed, there is no search function anywhere on the front page -- the usual departments one might expect from a retailer are not present. I wonder if the presentation of the front page would be different if I had an account. At present, unable to find what I am looking for, I would not be inclined to start an account anyway.

The company appears to use its website as a clearing house. There are a variety of products for the home online, apparently special deals. I see televisions, smartphones, vacuum cleaners, closets, bedding sets and discounted pharmacy prescriptions. There is little sense of focus in the offerings. There is a makeup advertisement in a relatively prominent position, which makes the page look unprofessional -- apparently Wal-Mart needs the cash. I am unsure what customer the website targets. The offerings tend towards home furnishing and decor, which indicates a middle class suburban customer, but there is little indication beyond that of any particular target market in mind.

The impression that I get of the company when visiting the website is largely negative. The company appears to be disorganized and not at all attuned to the needs of the customer. The offerings are random and the design is unprofessional. The key features that I expect on the front page of a corporate website -- a menu, a place to log in, and things to guide to me what I want -- simply are not there. The impression I get is not of a company that is the second-largest online retailer in the world, but rather a company that has no idea how to design a website and that has no discernable interest in the needs of the customer. The products sold look cheap, and aside from the randomness of the selections the website appears to offer a fairly narrow range of goods. There is certainly nothing high end about either the presentation of the website nor its offerings.

The Wal-Mart website does have a Store Finder feature. Using this feature, I can find out some general information about the physical store that I visited, such as its hours and the different services it provides. The store is presented on a map as well. There are no specific details about goods available at the store or anything of an in-depth nature.

To test the Google reach of Wal-Mart, I decided to search for a product that was featured on the front page of the company's website -- vacuum cleaners. A search for "buy vacuum" yielded Yahoo! Shopping, Best Buy and a store in Australia, but Wal-Mart did not make the front page. A search for "vacuum cleaner" again failed to turn up Wal-Mart. Adding a geographic search also failed to turn up Wal-Mart, instead yielding specialty stores focused on this product. Thus, competitors do turn up on the front page, but Wal-Mart does not. However it is worth knowing that aside from Best Buy, the competitors tend to be specialty stores. Other general goods retailers that form the main competition for Wal-Mart, such as Target, Sears or Amazon, also do not turn up on the first page of Google hits. I believe that for specific products, Wal-Mart does not have good search optimization. It is conceivable that Wal-Mart relies on its substantial brand recognition to bring customers directly to its website, rather than via a search engine. Alternately, the breadth of Wal-Mart's product line makes it unlikely that it will receive pagination by search engines for any given item that will bring up Wal-Mart on the first page of a search.

When "Wal-Mart" is googled, most of the hits are from Wal-Mart. The company's main retail site is the first three hits. This is followed by news stories about Wal-Mart, some of which are based on Wal-Mart press releases. Wikipedia is represented, as is WalMartStores.com, the company's corporate website. At the bottom of the first page of Google hits are sites that are not created by the company. These include critical sites such as WalMartWatch.org and the satirical PeopleofWalMart.com. Lastly, the New York Times is included on the first page of Google results. Bing results are less critical, but do feature a union website that discusses Wal-Mart related labor issues.