Walmart recently unveiled a new look and design across its stores in the U.S. The new design is inspired by airports and Amazon. Plus, the plush new design is intended to provide its customers with an omni-shopping experience. What can other retailers learn from it?
One of the worst-hit businesses in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic was the brick-and-mortar retail stores. According to a reportOpens a new window by Statista, about 47% of consumers said that they had reduced day-to-day spending on in-store purchases as of March second week this year due to the pandemic. At the same time, another reportOpens a new window by Statista showed that the online traffic in the supermarket segment grew by 60.7% in the week ending June 14, compared to that of January and February 2020.
Consumers reducing day-to-day in-store spending.
Source: Statista
Now that retail businesses are slowly reopening, business owners need to take certain measures to improve their customers’ in-store experiences to attract them. Walmart has been working on improving the shopping experience for its customers over the past few years. The company recently announced a new designOpens a new window across its stores in the country. It plans to redesign 1,200 stores by the end of next year, which is an exercise toward improving in store shopping experience. We sit down to discuss a few things other retail businesses can learn from it.
Learn more: Post-COVID-19 Retail: 5 Operational Things Business Owners Should Consider When They Reopen
A Brief Description of the Walmart Store Redesign
Signages and iconography: The company has redesigned its stores’ exteriors and interiors to reflect its app’s icon. As soon as shoppers enter the store, they see a clean and colorful iconography greeting them. They will also find large electronic information boards inspired by airport signages at the store entrance. These boards will direct them to the main product sections of the store. The direction signs match with the categories and icons you find on the Walmart app. The store uses bold and dimensional typeface (e.g., DAIRY, PIZZA, DELI) that helps customers find the section they are looking for with ease. Aisles are marked with number and letter combinations to help shoppers who use the app to easily find and pick up products.
A Walmart shopper checking out the app.
Source: Walmart
Layout design: The retail store layout is designed to provide better visibility to items. There are also dedicated sections for toys, electronics, baby products, and a few other items. The company has improved the exterior layout design for people who are hesitant to set foot inside the store due to the pandemic. People can see a big blue arch from a distance. This arch, usually across the parking lot, marks the area where people can retrieve their online orders. Walmart had already implemented retrieval of online orders in their parking lots, which almost doubledOpens a new window the company’s ecommerce sales during the last quarter.
Walmart’s seamless store shopping video tour for 2020.
Source: Walmart
Digital experience: As shoppers enter the store, they are encouraged to use their smartphone and download the Walmart app while shopping. The stores have also enabled end-to-end digital navigation. The navigation system is inspired by airport wayfinding systems. The navigation system helps people traverse through the stores with speed and ease. The stores will soon enable self-checkout kiosks and touchless payment options such as Walmart Pay. A few locations have enabled a ‘Scan & Go’ technology to help shoppers manage checkouts directly.
So, what can other retailers learn from these design changes and new implementations? Here are four things.
1. Help Customers Save Time During Shopping
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people prefer to shop at a store. Traditionally, the retail floor layouts were designed to encourage shoppers to spend more time browsing for items. While some shoppers would focus on buying the items they needed, others would not mind strolling through the aisles browsing various display items. However, post-COVID, the scenario has completely changed. Online shopping and sales undoubtedly shot up. According to a Global Connected Consumer Index ReportOpens a new window by Selligent, 28% of respondents said they would shop mostly online 6-12 months after the pandemic subsides and life comes back to normal.
Walmart’s redesigned store with big signages
Source: Walmart
Besides online sales getting a boost, people’s in-store shopping behavior too has changed. Post pandemic, people who come to stores want to quickly get in, buy the items they need, and get out. They do not want to spend time searching for the items as they are concerned about their health and safety. Walmart understood this customer mentality much earlier than the pandemic and started redesigning its layout. The company did this to help its customers save time and reduce cognitive load during shopping.
Other retailers should become mindful of these customer sentiments and preferences and make provisions so that shoppers can navigate the stores with ease. There will still be opportunities to create dedicated locations and spots within the store to enable experiential shopping.
Learn more: 6 Smart Ways To Improve the Customer Experience for Retail Post-COVID-19
2. Leverage Technology To Enhance Customer Experience
The importance of digital experiences cannot be stressed enough in today’s times, especially when customer preferences are rapidly changing. If retail companies have not thought about digitally transforming their businesses, this is high time they did. Implementing technology has become of utmost importance to improve customer experience. According to studies, consumers are willing to pay more for enhanced customer experience.
Digital transformation need not require you to transform your business 360 degrees within a short period. However, it does involve implementing technology to transform your activities and processes. Creating an online portal or having an active presence on social media is just the first step in enhancing customer experience.
For customers who visit the brick-and-mortar store, digital technology improves shopping convenience and provides a better experience. For example, a digital navigation or wayfinding system can help customers find the right aisle and the required item with ease. Further, as customers are concerned about their health, payment options such as self-checkout and touchless checkout can build confidence. These checkout options also allow customers to spend less time in queues. You can further use beacons and location-based targeting to enhance the customer experience.
3. Provide an Omni-Channel Experience
According to the report Opens a new window by Selligent, about 39% of respondents will combine online and in-store shopping once the pandemic subsides. Further, 24% of the respondents will shop in-store. According to The New Store Shopper in High-Touch Retail studyOpens a new window by Incisiv, 80% of shoppers plan to increase Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS), and curbside pick-up over the next few months.
How people will shop when life returns to normal.
Source: Selligent
These statistics show that shoppers have various preferences, and retail stores should be ready to cater to these choices. Walmart’s redesigning of about 200 stores this year (and another 1,000 next year) is an exercise to accommodate its shoppers’ needs. The new signages, iconography, and navigation that reflect the app, the internal layout design, facility for online order retrieval, and the touchless, as well as self-checkout options, all are geared toward giving shoppers a seamless omni-channel experience.
Other retailers should direct their efforts to meet the various customer choices and provide them a seamless shopping experience if they already have not.
4. Retailers Can Offer Phenomenal Customer Experience at a Budget
Large retail chains like Walmart and Target may be able to afford a high cost to redesign and upgrade their stores. For example, Target ran a $7 billion program to redesign its stores in 2017. In 2019, Walmart spent about $11 billion to improve its stores. Smaller retailers may not be able to incur such massive costs but can still offer a brilliant shopping experience for customers.
For example, Walmart uses big and bold signboards and direction signs to help its customers navigate its stores easily. This approach is something retailers can emulate on a budget. Further, they can enable contactless payment options. They can also designate specific areas within the stores for shoppers who prefer to pick up their online orders. These steps can build confidence in their customers while giving them a pleasant experience.
Source: Walmart
Learn more: 3 Lessons from Rubik’s Cube for Retailers Who Are Surviving the Pandemic
To Summarize
In times when COVID has heavily impacted retail businesses, it has become even more important to provide extraordinary in-store shopping experience and build customer trust to survive. Walmart’s exercise of redesigning its stores is a step toward this goal. Other retailers, too, can take a leaf from this exercise and work toward building customer trust and boosting their revenues.
What lessons can you learn from Walmart’s new design to improve customer experience? Share it with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .