Walmart Merges Main App With Grocery App

Need to Know

• Walmart is merging its main Walmart store app with the Walmart Grocery app.
• Once users are transitioned over to the main Walmart app, the Walmart Grocery app will shut down.
• Walmart has 120,000+ grocery items available online, which will soon be available to the 86+ million users of its main Walmart app.
• This merger will streamline Walmart’s efforts to compete with Amazon and other entrants into the online grocery industry.
• Walmart also plans to add Wallmart Grocery to its desktop and mobile web experiences on walmart.com and will redesign the site to blend with the overall brand. 

Analysis

Walmart is on a mission: to merge, optimize, and exceed expectations when it comes to seamless customer experiences, online and off.

To that end, and to bolster insight into e-commerce data and ease of use, the retailer is merging its main Walmart app and the Walmart grocery app. Simply put, many customers didn’t know there were two different apps for the same store, and the retailer wasn’t making good use of the customer information for the grocery app, so now Walmart will transfer all its grocery customer accounts onto the main platform. 

According to data from Sensor Tower, Walmart’s main app was downloaded 103+ million times since January 2014, and is the number 2 app on the App store shopping section. It even beat out Amazon’s app on Black Friday, the busiest shopping period of the year. In comparison, the Walmart Grocery app was only downloaded 16 million times, and ranked number 30 on the App Store. 

This merger reflects a broader optimization of processes for Walmart, which just recently merged its eCommerce and in-store product buying teams. By streamlining the inventory management and the customer experience via the apps, Walmart is hoping to improve access to more than 120,000+ grocery items available to customers who are already shopping at Walmart for other items. 

Walmart chief customer officer Janey Whiteside said, “It really depends on what you’ve got going on in your life at any point in time and what you’ve got going on during the day. Do you want to go into a store and browse? Or do you want to order from the palm of your hand and pick it up on the way home? Do you want to order and have it delivered to your door? Do you want it delivered to the fridge? Do you want to have it next-day or have it today? Bringing all of our assets and all of our capabilities together in one place is really the natural next step.” 

This move is a strategic one for Walmart, which is preparing to take on Amazon with its new subscription service, Walmart+. This unification of Walmart’s separate apps is a direct differentiator to Amazon’s sometimes-confusing process, which offers grocery delivery via two separate apps as well: Amazon Fresh and WholeFoods, on both the main app and Amazon Prime.

It’s not only Walmart that’s looking to simplify its customer data and ease of use for its eCommerce platforms: Target also recently unified its Shipt grocery delivery app with its main app and website.