Walmart.com Review

Wal- Mart is the largest retail operation in the world and the largest corporation in the United States in terms of total annual sales revenue. The company made the decision many years ago to establish a presence in cyberspace. The addition of an internet on- line store has now added more money to the mountain of Wal- Mart revenue. The web site is simply Walmart.com, the on- line store for the retail giant.

Web Site Commentary:

Walmart.com offers merchandise for sale in the following broad categories: Electronics, Photo, Movies & Music, Books, Toys, Video Games, Home, Garden & Patio, Sports & Fitness, Baby, Gifts & Flowers, and Jewelry & Watches. Many of the items that you can find at your local Wal- Mart store (except for food) can be purchased through one of these links.

Walmart.com does offer a few other merchandise areas that could come in handy. You can place an order for a prescription drug through this site, buy tires, purchase contact lenses, even sign up for a Wal- Mart credit card. There are also items like school textbooks for sale and a clearance and price rollback section featuring items that have been further reduced.

Walmart.com offers three methods for shipment: Express (1 Business Day), Priority (2 or 3 Business Days), and Standard (3 to 7 Business Days). If your item of merchandise is very large (like a piece of furniture), then you will have to use the special freight option, which will take 7 to 14 days. Shipping charges are based on weight, so they vary widely from item to item. However, some items like CD's are charged based on a flat rate and not by weight.

I first got to know Walmart.com a few years ago when I was looking through different on- line store sites to complete my Christmas shopping. My experience from then to now has been positive and Walmart.com does have some good points worth mentioning. There is a large amount of merchandise for sale in this site and unless you're looking for a specific brand that is more on the obscure side, you should have no trouble finding what you want in Walmart.com. The site even offers a few things that surprised me, like the tires (can you imagine the shipping charges for a set of 4 tires!) and a vacation service.

Prices at Walmart.com are competitive, and I have been able to find CD's and books at prices that are equal to or below the prices charged by the on- line competition. However, product information at Walmart.com is only so- so. With some items, you don't really need much product info, but with other items, it can make the difference between buying and not buying. It's also useful to have more product info when a customer is browsing for something to buy. Take the books section, for instance. There is very little product info at all on each book. It doesn't come even close to the amount of info contained at an on- line store like Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com.  

Taken as a whole, Walmart.com is a fairly good discount store web site. It's easy to use, and the pages load in good time. Customer service reps are easy to get hold of, with availability seven days per week, nineteen hours per day. Prices are competitive, but you have to be careful about the sales tax and the shipping. With these charges added in, your total could end up higher than what you would pay at another web site, and it might even be higher than the price you would pay at the store itself.

Bottom Line Viewpoint:

Walmart.com isn't overly impressive. I have had better on- line shopping experiences and I have used other sites that were more user- friendly with more customer tools to help make a purchase. But this is still a good web site to try if you're in need of general merchandise from clothing to appliances to books and much more.