Wal-Mart Launches Expanded Web Site

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, inaugurated an expanded Web site over the weekend, hoping to gain new customers while coaxing hesitant Wal-Mart customers into joining the e-commerce revolution.

The redesigned site features an expanded product selection alongside de rigueur e-commerce functions such as product comparisons, shopping list storage and gift finders. The site also establishes Wal-Mart online as a supercenter, with new offerings such as a travel service and a photo store.

Perhaps most importantly, the revived Walmart.com is a key part of the company’s newest gambit--creating an online customer base. Wal-Mart said last month it will become an Internet service provider business in a partnership with America Online.

The AOL deal is designed to court Web newcomers, the non-techies who more closely reflect Wal-Mart’s middle-America customer stronghold. Wal-Mart also hopes to gain a share of those not yet online. The company has said it will target the 40% of Wal-Mart-served towns that have no Internet access.

The company hopes that, once online, those customers will be all the more encouraged to purchase by the simple, clearly explained Wal-Mart site--complete with online versions of the famous Wal-Mart greeters and the words to the ballyhooed Wal-Mart cheer, which employees recite every morning.

“They’re not going after the highfalutin’ Web crowd,” said David Cooperstein, the consumer e-commerce research director for Forrester in Boston. “I see them starting to get customers who will only go to Walmart.com, not thinking about shopping on the Internet, just thinking about shopping at Wal-Mart online.”

Wal-Mart, with annual revenue of about $160 billion, is not likely to see dramatic sales gains or losses with its expanded site, analysts said. But other companies could see a change as a result of Wal-Mart’s growing Web presence, including Kmart and J.C. Penney, as well as Internet-only retailers, said Jeff Stinson, an analyst with Midwest Research in Cleveland.

“This is a very significant competitive threat,” Stinson said. “If and when the Internet becomes more significant, Wal-Mart can be in a position to capitalize on it.”

Other analysts suggest that even with its significant clout, Wal-Mart will have its work cut out for it.

“The challenge Wal-Mart faces is to offer some unique value proposition to get people to shop there,” said Allen Weiner, vice president of analytical services for NetRatings Inc. “Wal-Mart is a friendly place, you get good value there, but how you translate that to the Web I don’t think is necessarily well spelled out.”

Wal-Mart has been on the Internet for three years, offering a fraction of its product mix on a simple site the company did little to promote. Wal-Mart said the new site has between 500,000 and 600,000 items for sale.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based company first said it would introduce a redesigned Web site in fall 1998, in time for the holiday season. The launch was later extended to Jan. 1, a date some retail watchers complained made the giant discounter late in coming, but others said was an important pause to make sure its house was in order.

“It is by no means a site that revolutionizes the Internet, but I don’t think that was the goal. The goal was to revolutionize the Wal-Mart shopping experience,” Cooperstein said. “It’s to be determined whether their shoppers care.”