Walmart provides essential guidelines to use before publishing any listing. We heavily recommend always following these closely, as they play a significant role in the organic rankings. 

Walmart’s algorithm uses an optimization triangle to determine the quality of your listing and sets ranking based on:

1. Content: Relevance across product categories, title, images, descriptions, and attributes.
   

   Relevancy is what shapes the content of a product listing. It’s like an intrinsic ranking system that factors keywords, descriptions, and even bullet points to calculate how “relevant” your items are for any given search term or keyword. The relevancy of the content is a vital factor in rankings.

   Use long tail keywords that describe the product best. For example, use “Long Sleeve Black Stretchy Unisex Sports T-Shirt”, don’t use “Black t-shirt”. Read more on Walmart SEO in this article.

2. Performance: Does your product listing adhere to Walmart policies, customer rating, customer response time, order defect rate, shipping duration time, total order count and other performance metrics?
3. Offer: Walmart’s customer promise is: “Every day low prices on a broad assortment – anytime, anywhere.” The best price policy does not mean always selling the cheapest products. Your product should have pricing with the best offering relevant to your product, its category, and its niche. Consider product pricing, shipping fees, shipping speed, and in-stock rate. 

A perfect product title is short, clear, and engaging

[Your Store Brand + Item Name + Product attributes/keywords + Size]

• Keep the title between 50 and 75 characters long.
• Do not use special characters like $,#,@,*, and others in the title.
• The uniqueness of your product name improves your listing ranking.
• Include key product attributes in the name. For example, “matte finish”, “true to size”, “light fabric”. 
• Include the primary keyword for the product you sell in the title.
• If the product has only one color, include the color name in the title.
• If the product has a few variants, such as size, include the information in the title.
• You may not include information about yourself or your company aside from the product brand in the title.
• Avoid special characters.
• Avoid marketing phrases such as “top-selling.”
• Avoid referencing other marketplaces (for example, “Sold on eBay”).
• Don’t capitalize all the words in the title.
• Example: Generic Brand Unisex Stretchy Running Shorts in Black, S-2XL

Product description is all about building trust and ranking

The field allows you to craft a keyword-rich description, which customers are most likely to look for. The description appears below the listing mockups in Walmart. We recommend keeping the description between 500-1000 characters, short but long enough to describe your product in enough detail. 

Do’s:

• Include your brand name, product name, and potential keywords with enough searches.
• Define the features of the product clearly.
• Avoid grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Keep the language simple and clear.
• Don’t stuff the keywords in the description – use them in a way that appears natural while reading.

Dont’s:

• Do not copy the description from other sites or listings – write a unique description for your products.
• Do not include personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers, or website URLs.
• Do not include offensive, obscene or other language violating the Walmart Trust & Safety standards.

Key features are all about showing the functionality and features of your product

• Define the features of the product clearly.
• Use bullet points.
• Avoid grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Keep the language simple and clear.
• Don’t stuff the keywords in the description – use them in a way that appears natural while reading.
• If your items have multiple variants for colors, you can include the available colors in the key features to improve SEO.
• Don’t copy the product description from other websites – even your own.

Product images should be of high quality

Mockups make the difference if a buyer clicks on your product or not while searching for the best product. 50% of the buying decisions are made purely on the product images.

If you choose to use your custom mockups in Walmart, here are a few things to consider:

• Use only JPEG (.jpg) images.
• Every picture should be high resolution, meeting Walmart’s image requirements (make sure the image is large enough to allow the zoom function to work).
• The image’s aspect ratio should meet Walmart’s image requirements for that specific category.
• The product image should be professionally lit, focused, and photographed.
• Focus the product in the center.
• The main title image should have a white background (RGB: 255/255/255)
• The main title image should not show extra accessories you are not selling with the item.
• A minimum of 3 images is recommended, but the more, the better.
• Photos must meet Walmart’s Trust & Safety standards.
• For additional background pictures, you can include a background relevant to the product that you sell.
• Include a visual size chart.
• An infographic image describing the product’s benefits is recommended.
• Don’t include logos, texts, or watermarks on the images.

You can find the complete Walmart image requirements here. 

Select relevant attributes

Attributes serve as the aisles and shelves of Walmart Marketplace, ensuring that buyers can discover your product. The three most crucial attributes are listed below. By filling in these attributes, your item will have a content quality of approximately 60% and will be properly categorized on the website.

• Gender
• Clothing size group
• Age group

Other important attributes that will make your products appear in searches are:

• Sleeve length
• Neck style
• Fabric
• Pattern

You can update the product attributes individually or in bulk:

• To update a single item, navigate to the Walmart Seller Center → “Items.” Click on the product and update the fields listed.

• To update existing items in bulk, navigate to the Walmart Seller Center → “Growth Opportunities” and click on the button “Bulk Attribute Editor”. Step-by-step instructions by Walmart can be found here.

Price your products competitively

Price is essential for Walmart’s algorithm. We recommend reviewing prices regularly, comparing your pricing against other sellers and their products in your category and niche. You can leverage the Walmart repricing tool. 

Also, don’t forget shipping prices – Walmart buyers appreciate free shipping. 

While we do not automatically create free shipping templates for you, you can easily customize one we have created to enable free shipping. When publishing new products, select the customized free shipping template during publishing. 

Walmart ranking appreciates products that are always in stock

Walmart aims to offer customers a reliable shopping experience they can return to again and again. Products that regularly sell out could prevent shoppers from doing so. Accordingly, Walmart’s algorithm doesn’t like them.

Order routing is highly recommended to ensure that stock issues are not an issue for you and that orders are fulfilled the fastest way possible. 

Focus on getting more product reviews

Reviews provide social proof to new buyers, and help you get products in front of customers' eyes. To boost your chances of getting a review on Walmart, offer seamless customer service. Answer customer emails within a day, and we’ll do the rest to support making sure tracking information is accurately provided and that you have the best print and fulfillment providers. 

To accelerate the review process, you can send an email to your customers personally thanking them for their purchase and asking them to submit a review.

Monitor your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Customer experience is as important to Walmart as it is to us at Printify. 

The Walmart Seller Center Analytics & Reporting dashboard provides insights into order defect rate, on-time shipping rate, on-time delivery rate, and your trust and safety score. 

Should you have any worries about your products related to defects, shipping, or delivery times with Printify – we are here to help!