Walmart offers shoppers 3D tour
Retailer ramps up its online experience.
Walmart shoppers won’t have to only imagine how furniture or housewares would actually look in an apartment or dorm room. Now, through two new online features, they can see the items in everyday use.
Walmart has added a feature to its website that will allow shoppers to take a virtual tour of an apartment filled with items. If the customer is interested in one, they can click on a product to get the price and then make a purchase.
Walmart, which became the world’s biggest retailer with its wide array of low-priced merchandise, has been pursuing a more fashionable and upscale customer. The home furnishings category has been an area in which it has aimed to make its mark.
The retailer has been waging a fierce battle to win over online customers from e-commerce giant Amazon. It began ramping up its online presentation of furniture, linens and other items with sleeker pictures and styles in February.
The virtual shopping tour features almost 70 items, ranging from a Mainstays Combo floor lamp for $11.44 to a 16-piece Gibson Home Soho Lounge Square dinnerware set for $34.88.
Meanwhile, college students who need to fill their dorm rooms will also be able to expedite their online shopping trips.
A new “Buy the Room” experience, debuting in July, will allow shoppers to choose among five collections with such themes as “decked out dorm” and “boho.” Instead of clicking through each item one by one, customers can quickly add all the preselected items to their basket. What they don’t want, they simply take off the list.
“We know that many customers shop for their dorm rooms or apartments in the summer months, and we also know that many of them tend to buy certain items together,” Anthony Soohoo, Walmart U.S. e-Commerce’s senior vice president for home, said in a blog post. “For the first time, we’re making it possible to add a group of items to cart to buy a complete look.”