The largest retailer in the world is shaking up things fast in the Canadian eCommerce landscape. If you sell any kind of physical product, you need to read this. 

Already the second-largest marketplace in Canada, the Walmart Canada Marketplace has racked up some serious numbers. According to Comscore, Walmart.ca is attracting 70M monthly visits from 14M online shoppers, and Canadian sellers couldn’t be happier. 

Walmart brings a massive customer base, a solid reputation, and significant features that can give sellers a much-needed competitive edge. These include:

• No set-up or monthly fees,
• Listings on affiliate websites,
• Low competition,
• Easy checkout process.

As we speak, hundreds of sellers are setting up shop on Walmart.ca right now - whether it is a Walmart Canada Marketplace electronics store, or a catalog of varied goods and services.

The good news is that the Walmart Canada Marketplace is not restricted to Canadian sellers! 

If you’re a US-based seller seeking a newer marketplace and fewer competitors, Walmart Canada Marketplace is perfect for you. According to Walmart, each seller on its US marketplace receives roughly 27,000 monthly visitors. Since Walmart Canada Marketplace is newer than even its US counterpart, the visibility for your store will go through the roof!    

What makes Canada even more attractive is the tech-savviness of Canadian consumers, which ensures high reach for your store.

What makes it really worth it for US sellers is the ridiculously low LTL rates for shipping products from the US to Canada. Whether you’re an American or a Canadian eCommerce business owner, we believe it’s the right time for you to stake your claim!

This may well be the new Canadian Gold Rush of 2020!

If you’ve already set up shop, you are ahead of the curve. Congratulations!

That said, your Walmart Canada Marketplace journey has just begun and you need to sustain the momentum. To be a top seller, you need to get more eyeballs to your store. 

You need a strategy that enhances your conversion rate and offers customers a fulfilling experience every time they visit your Walmart Canada Marketplace store.  

Here are 3 easy steps for you to increase traffic! 

Let’s dive right in.

Optimize Your Listings

Canadian customers shopping online want  more product details and better pictures. In fact 36% have said that they find product listings to be less than compelling.

Luckily, all you need to do is to get the basics right.  The optimization rules in the graphic below should give you a leg up:

Be specific with product names. Include important details such as brand, model, number or color Product names should be 50-75 characters long Add both primary and additional product images to enrich listings Pictures speak a 1000 words. Ensure high-quality images, in keeping with Walmart’s image guidelines Use selective keywords in your product description and highlight your key features Include customer reviews Include a Call to Action

To reiterate, your customers should have a clear idea about your products. Describe them in a way that leaves no room for any doubt. 

For example, we think that this listing on Walmart Canada Marketplace works very well:

Also make sure that there are no attributes that may be misconstrued by shoppers. For instance, if you are selling a painting without the frame but are including a secondary picture of the painting within a frame, mention that the frame is not a part of the final product and is only used to display what the painting would look like after being hung on a wall. 

With the holiday and festive season right round the corner, many people rely on Google to suggest new and innovative gift ideas. You can capitalize on this by ensuring that you enter relevant keywords in product titles and descriptions to direct holiday shoppers to your store. Examples of such keywords are “Christmas gift ideas”, “gift for dad” and “unique gift for mom.” 

Maintain Excellent Seller Metrics

If you perform well as a seller, you will rank higher as a seller - it's as simple as that! 

With the goal to ensure and enhance customer satisfaction, Walmart Canada Marketplace has established metrics against which sellers' performance is measured. 

Termed Seller Performance Standards (SPS), these 5 metrics are designed to ensure that sellers provide a stellar customer customer experience, right from the time an order is placed on Walmart.ca to when it arrives at the customers' doorstep. Not meeting these not only reduces your standing and visibility as a seller, it can also lead to account suspension. The 5 metrics are:

• Order Defect Rate (ODR) Reduction
• Rejected Returns Reduction
• Customer Experience
• Product Level Compliance
• Content Quality

As a seller, you can track your performance through the Seller Scorecard, which includes details on each of the metrics. This Scorecard, made available on Seller Central, currently includes details of only one metric, the Order Defect Rate (ODR).

Calculated by dividing the number of orders with at least one defect by your total number of orders during the same period (Walmart calculates this for 14 and 90 days), ODR is by far the most important of the 5 metrics and the key to ensuring top performance.  

Walmart Canada Marketplace considers the following as order defects :

• Cancellations
•  Returns
• Shipping defects (late orders)

You must maintain an ODR of no more than 15.5% to meet the minimum Seller Performance Standards. 

There are several ways to keep your ODR under this limit and Walmart Canada Marketplace recommends the following:

Ship with an Official Walmart Shipping Service Provider

Shipping and order fulfilment play a direct role in your customer experience (CX), and eventually good customer experience is what will get shoppers coming back to you again and again. 

It is essential to have an effective shipping strategy in place to not only elevate customer experience to a new level but to also reduce shipping-related defects, which form a big part of the overall ODR that we just talked about. Great shipping also serves as a fantastic promotional tool.

Wouldn't it be great if you could reduce your costs at the same time?    

This is where using an official Walmart shipping service provider makes sense.

Freightcom, Walmart Canada Marketplace’s official shipping partner, offers a host of features and deeply discounted rates from top-tier carriers. Key benefits include:

Reach out to us to learn more! 

Opting for Freightcom also gives you access to our eCommerce shipping solution ClickShip, which allows you to automate your shipping process and gives you access to some of the lowest shipping rates. ClickShip is very highly rated on the Shopify app store.

Make sure that you experiment to see what works best and add your own special touch to highlight your brand's uniqueness.

Ready to become a seller on the Walmart Canada Marketplace yet?

You can apply here. 

If you want to be one of the first to benefit from the upcoming Walmart Canada Marketplace integration, reach out to our sales team at sales@freightcom.com