Love them or hate them, Walmart is a massive leader in the retail space, and they got there by understanding and refining their customer journey—knowing and optimizing the customer experience at each stage of making a purchase.
But a single dead end can bring it all crashing down: take Walmart’s customer journey with us and find out if it ends in the deal of your dreams, or another website nightmare.
Step 1: Turn desire into need
Walmart spent $4.1 billion USD—about the GDP of the Northwest Territories—on advertising in 2023. It’s worth that much for Walmart to be the first place people think of when they think of a particular item. One of Walmart’s strengths as a brand is the wide range of goods it carries: in customers’ minds, if it’s something they want and can afford, Walmart probably has it. And if Walmart has it, they probably have it for less than other retailers.
With a product like AirPods, Apple’s brand and customer loyalty do the heavy lifting of convincing consumers that they need a pair now. Walmart only needs to show that they carry it, and they’ve succeeded at this stage.
Image source: www.unsplash.com
Step 2: Research and make a decision
Customers have access to an incredible amount of information when making a purchase, and smart customers take full advantage. After all, there are thousands of user reviews to cross-reference, alternative brands to consider, and retail options.
That last factor is especially relevant to AirPods, because Apple’s technology lives in a closed ecosystem: Apple products work with other Apple products, and don’t work with outside tech. AirPods aren’t there to compete with other Bluetooth headphones to increase Apple’s share of market, they’re there as an iPhone value-add to increase Apple’s share of wallet.
What that means is that all Walmart needs to do to succeed at this stage is show up in customers’ searches as quickly as possible and offer a lower price point than Apple. Some solid SEO work on Walmart’s site gets them to the top of a Google search, but their digital marketing team threw in a promoted search result just for good measure.
Image source: www.walmart.ca
Customers will typically do their research in a couple of stages, possibly even visiting a retailer’s site several times before they feel more comfortable moving forward. Walmart does a great job at this step, making sure prospective customers know what deals and promotions are available, and looks for chances to reinforce or validate a customer’s decision.
This is where Walmart makes another smart move: they’ve already beat out Apple’s online store in the search results, and in price. They reinforce this advantage by being careful to offer the same warranty and protection, and the same shipping time.
Step 3: Purchase (and beyond)
At this point, the customer has made up their mind. They know what they want, and they know where they want to get it from. In the case of our AirPod stransaction, this stage should be a rubber stamp because of Walmart’s hard-earned wins at each prior stage. But here’s where the rollback ends and the nightmare begins.
Full disclosure time—this is a true story. We know just how effective Walmart’s website and marketing efforts are along the customer journey because we recently took that journey ourselves. Here’s how it journey started:
And here’s how it ended:
Clicking “place order” was supposed to be the last step in the transaction, and in a way it was—this error message was all that popped up. From a retail website perspective, this screen is about as bad as it gets. Here’s why:
- The message is so vaguely worded that there isn’t anything for a customer to grab onto to try and come up with a fix, or describe to Walmart’s customer service—whose contact info/link is notably absent.
- The error message implies that the problem is small and will fix itself (it didn’t). That creates an immediate disconnect for the customer between what they’re being told and what they’re experiencing—it erodes a sense of trust a little more each time it pops up.
- This is the absolute worst time in a transaction for an error like this. The customer has already done all the work they’re going to do, filling out the shipping and billing info, applying discount codes, and entering credit card info.
This is the absolute worst time in a transaction for an error like this. The customer has already done all the work they’re going to do, filling out the shipping and billing info, applying discount codes, and entering credit card info.
Image source: www.unsplash.com
Key takeaway: Why even one error message matters, a lot
To get such a poorly handled checkout error after putting in all the pre-work is an insult that a customer won’t quickly forget. Not only does it cost Walmart the sale of those AirPods, but they also missed out on any other share-of-wallet items a customer might have added to their cart while on the site anyway.
Walmart did everything else right, but none of it—or the $4.1 billion spent—mattered in the end, all because of one issue in the site’s code. Even if that error only comes up a tiny fraction of the time, each and every time it does it costs Walmart sales and damages their brand.
If a customer goes through this and starts telling their friends and family what a bad experience they had, Walmart could see lost sales across its other departments as people take their grocery, home items, and clothing business elsewhere.
That’s why it’s so important to prioritize a seamless website and checkout experience. Mistakes early in the customer journey can be costly, but even if your marketing, SEO, and pricing are all perfect, a broken checkout experience will cost you the sale, every time.
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