Walmart wants to get to know you a little better.
The retail store will be making changes to its website to personalize customers' online shopping, in an attempt to compete with competitor Amazon.com, reported The Associated Press.
Walmart's new website will now be able to show shoppers more products they may be interested in based on their previous purchases, AP reported. Additionally, Walmart.com's home page will be customized for each shopper based on where they live and will feature local weather and events, and will also include the customer's search and purchase histories.
In other words, if a new mother buys a stroller on Walmart.com, the new website might recommend diapers, AP explained.
The new feature comes as a push by Walmart to improve its customers' online shopping experience. The company plans to perform a complete re-launch of the site in the beginning of 2015 and is looking to boost its business online, after its U.S. discount division saw disappointed sales this past year, said AP.
According to AP, Walmart Stores Inc.'s e-commerce sales increased by 30 percent in its fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 to over $10 billion. But Walmart's U.S. discount division has had five straight quarters of sales declines in stores opened at least a year. AP says Walmart sees big growth opportunity in the online business because Internet sales are only a fraction of the $473 billion generated in overall annual revenue. Compare that figure to Amazon's $60.9 billion accrued in annual sales.
Other retailers like Home Depot and Staples already have websites that personalize online shopping experiences for customers, AP reported. According to Home Depot, 25 percent of customers who visit the company's website already see product recommendations based on browser history or recent purchases.
Walmart said customers have responded well to improvements made to the website in the last two years, including quadrupling the assortment of offered items to 8 million, AP reported. And when Wal-Mart updated its search tool, it saw a 20 percent increase in completed purchases after searching for the product in the new search engine, according to AP.
But that's not all - customers will also see a quicker online checkout process over the next couple of months, while the company will be able to update web pages quicker with new products.
Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told AP that changes in customization can help left a retailer's online sales in the mid-single digits.
