Selling on Walmart Marketplace? Optimize Your Shipping First.
Despite being around for less than a decade, Walmart Marketplace is pretty massive.
- It receives 110 million unique visits every month.
- This makes it one of the top three most visited online marketplaces in the U.S.
- Nearly 40% of brands selling on the largest online marketplace plan to expand to Walmart.com this year.
And last week in its Q2 earnings report, Walmart announced a 40% year-over-year increase in ecommerce sales.
Selling on Walmart Marketplace is a perfect way for ecommerce retailers to expand their reach. And we want to help merchants get the most from the opportunity. That’s why we’re co-hosting a webinar with Walmart next week.
On Tuesday, August 28 at 1:00PM CST, Walmart’s Strategy and Business Development Manager and ShipStation’s Sales Director will share their expert advice on what it takes to succeed at selling on Walmart Marketplace.
The webinar will cover how to apply to be a Marketplace Seller and how to build a positive shopping experience. For this blog, though, we’re going to focus more about fulfillment. Specifically, how efficient shipping and delivery can make you a Walmart Marketplace top performer.
Here’s why you should consider becoming a Walmart Marketplace seller and how ShipStation can help once you’ve decided to make the leap.
Why Selling on Walmart Marketplace Is a Good Idea
This impressive growth is certainly a major incentive. But it isn’t the only reason to start selling on Walmart Marketplace. Another strong motivator is the retail giant’s dedication to its third-party sellers.
Walmart’s application process considers the reputation of the seller and the brands they sell. It looks for merchants that offer high-quality merchandise and provide exceptional customer service. The retailer also evaluates every seller’s pricing structure and fulfillment process.
This exclusivity means being accepted is a testament to your brand’s reputation.
Additionally, Walmart doesn’t charge setup fees. And there’s no monthly or annual fee to continue selling on Walmart Marketplace. Plus, merchants can pause and resume selling on Walmart Marketplace at their convenience without penalty.
The Role of Fulfillment in Walmart Marketplace Success
To remain active in Walmart Marketplace, you must provide valid tracking numbers for at least 95% of shipments. And you must ship orders by the end of the following business day. But to be considered a Walmart Marketplace top performer, you must also meet the following requirements:
- Deliver orders within five business days
- Offer free shipping for all orders
It’s in every seller’s best interest to be a top performer. Because the stores that consistently perform well in these areas are granted higher rankings in the search results pages. And the efficiency of a seller’s shipping and delivery workflow has a major impact on whether or not they can achieve these benchmarks. Thus, it’s also in every seller’s best interest to optimize fulfillment.
How ShipStation Makes Selling on Walmart Marketplace Easier
We’ve established that efficient fulfillment = success on Walmart Marketplace. And since using ShipStation is the key to efficient fulfillment, it just makes sense to add ShipStation to your shipping and delivery workflow.
There are four factors that affect how quickly you get an order out the door. One of those is fulfillment lag time. Fulfillment lag time is the length of time it takes for you to pick, pack, and ship the order. A Walmart Marketplace seller’s fulfillment lag time can be no more than 24 business hours. And without a highly optimized shipping workflow, meeting this requirement can be remarkably challenging.
But with ShipStation’s order management features, you can dramatically reduce how long it takes to dispatch shipments. ShipStation gives you complete visibility into the status of every order. And it allows you to automate quite a bit of the fulfillment process. With ShipStation, staying within that 24 hour window is a whole lot easier.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to dominate Walmart Marketplace, register for our free webinar! How to Succeed on Walmart Marketplace: Start, Sell, and Ship will show you exactly how to build your brand by adding this new channel to your sales mix.
Register for the webinar now!
