WMT Walmart Inc

By Sarah Nassauer 

Walmart Inc. wants its website to look less like a Walmart store.

The retailer plans to redesign the site next month by decluttering the product listings, de-emphasizing the Walmart name and using a lot less bright blue. Executives say the goal is to make a site that appeals to higher-end brands and encourages shoppers to browse for products.

Walmart has spent heavily to ramp up its e-commerce business, which accounts for 3.6% of its U.S. sales. Its website has around 100 million unique monthly visitors, compared with 180 million at rival Amazon.com Inc., according to comScore Inc.

Instead of stretching the Walmart name, logo and bright blue color across the top of the website, the new home page will highlight only a small yellow "spark," the internal name for Walmart's star logo. Instead of seeing a hodgepodge of products, shoppers will more often see which products are selling best in their city or past purchases that can be reordered quickly, shown with high-quality photos of people using products.

The redesign "is meant to be cleaner and more modern and more appealing such that we are able to open up more relationships with brands," and customers become more loyal, said Marc Lore, chief executive of Walmart U.S. e-commerce. "It allows us to broaden the assortment we are able to offer."

The new Walmart site will include a Lord & Taylor department store landing page, where some of that chain's goods will be sold as part of a partnership between the retailers announced last year.

Walmart has worked over the past year to broaden its appeal and reputation beyond its traditional budget-store roots. In February, the retail behemoth took "Stores" out of its legal corporate name to be "consistent with the idea that you can shop us however you like," Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said at the time.

Walmart has invested heavily in e-commerce in recent years, using its cavernous and profitable Supercenters and cost cutting to fund the unprofitable business of shipping everyday goods to homes. The redesign is part of Walmart's effort to make e-commerce more profitable, Mr. McMillon told analysts earlier this year.

Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 17, 2018 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)

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