Shipping and Fulfillment for Walmart Marketplace
Walmart wasn’t always known for its online marketplace, but in the past few years Walmart.com has become a top destination for both sellers and shoppers alike.
Between acquiring companies like Modcloth and Bonobos, and expanding its online shipping capabilities, Walmart has really stepped up its ecommerce game.
Walmart Marketplace offers products that are sold in brick-and-mortar Walmart stores as well as a variety of items from third-party sellers that Walmart has vetted and approved.
Selling on Walmart Marketplace
As the world’s largest retailer, Walmart.com can provide value to third-party sellers. Any approved Walmart Marketplace Seller can take advantage of the following benefits.
Huge marketplace
There is a wide variety of products sold on the Walmart Marketplace and a breadth of eligible items, as long as they aren’t in the prohibited products list. Walmart has no SKU minimums or maximums, so you can potentially list your entire product catalog.
Great exposure
With millions of Walmart customers and more than 100 million site visitors every month, you can increase the visibility of your products by listing on Walmart.com and boost your growth.
Easy transactions
Walmart doesn’t charge a per-order transaction fee to sellers, and all orders are securely processed by Walmart. You get paid every other week, and referral fees are automatically deducted.
Provide your own customer support
As a Walmart Marketplace seller, you control, specify, and manage your return policy and customer service information, which includes a masked email address, phone number, and hours of operation. You can communicate directly with your customers to answer their questions and resolve any issues, though Walmart requires sellers to respond to customer emails within one business day of receiving the message.
Freedom to ship on your own
Walmart Marketplace sellers who go down the self-fulfillment route can choose the carriers, shipping price, and Walmart shipping method they offer (it must be at least one of the five shipping methods available). Sellers control the transit times and order cutoff times that show up on their product listings.
Lower costs
Unlike selling on Amazon, which is known for charging third-party sellers a wide variety of FBA fees and line items, Walmart doesn’t have a setup fee, monthly fee, or subscription fee — they only deduct a referral fee for each sale placed on Walmart.com, which vary by product category.
Importance of shipping fast on Walmart Marketplace
To compete with the likes of Amazon, there is now a Walmart free 2-day shipping program for orders over $35 of qualifying items — without a membership fee like Amazon requires for Prime customers. Walmart has also announced speeding that up to 1-day delivery to keep up. While this program isn’t mandatory for marketplace sellers, providing customers with fast Walmart shipping is important.
Free shipping and fast delivery are known to increase conversions and reduce cart abandonment rate. Providing the experience shoppers want and meeting customer expectations help drive success for any ecommerce brand. Walmart recommends offering both standard and express shipping options to customers so they can select the shipping time that best suits their needs.
Third-party fulfillment for Walmart Marketplace
Sellers that don’t want to handle Walmart fulfillment themselves can outsource fulfillment entirely. A third-party logistics or 3PL provider is a company that offers inventory management, picking, packing, and shipping of orders on behalf of a seller. Here’s how a 3PL handles the entire fulfillment process.
2-day shipping
Working with a 3PL that has several fulfillment centers enables you to distribute your inventory across locations to eliminate the need to ship to high shipping zones and in turn reduce shipping costs and transit times. This makes delivery speeds like 2-day shipping much more affordable by utilizing ground shipping rather than air shipping.
Expert warehousing
When you work with a 3PL, you send your inventory to their fulfillment center so you don’t have to store products, lease a warehouse, or hire staff to oversee warehouse management and build out the infrastructure. If you aren’t an operations expert or have experience with warehousing and fulfillment logistics, then working with a third-party can be a great option.
Walmart.com integration
Many 3PLs support ecommerce fulfillment for all of the places you sell online. In addition to a Walmart.com integration, they can also connect with ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce to automate ecommerce shipping for all of your stores while keeping all of your inventory in one place.
Inventory management and tracking
A 3PL not only stores your inventory but should also provide full inventory management capabilities for everything from inventory forecasting and helping you project when to reorder for optimal stock levels, to providing analytics on how to split your inventory geographically with transparent inventory tracking in their warehouses.
Fulfillment by iLogistics USA can drive more revenue
iLogistics USA and Walmart are integrated to streamline order fulfillment.
You can link your Walmart store to iLogistics USA, sync your inventory, and import your orders. Once set up, orders are automatically sent to iLogistics USA and fulfilled at the fulfillment center closest to the end customer.
iLogistics USA has a network of fulfillment centers across the United States, allowing ecommerce businesses to store their inventory across regions.
In addition to Walmart shipping, iLogistics USA can help fulfill orders placed on your ecommerce website. iLogistics USA has helped thousands of direct-to-consumer brands of all sizes drive revenue by providing 2-day shipping.
To learn more about iLogistics USA, request a pricing quote or sign up for an account below. CLICK HERE
