I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
Powered by Oodle, the retailing giant is offering online classifieds – even job openings from archrival Target Corporation! The cobrand is linked from Walmart’s homepage and everything.
OK. Content equals traffic. Traffic equals consumers. And if Compete data is to be believed, Walmart.com receives about 25 million visitors a month (not counting the holidays). If 10 percent of that goes to the online classifieds section, we’re talking 2.5 million visitors and about 15 million or so pageviews each and every month.
Yeah, it’ll drive online purchases, but is this what the Walmart brand wants to be about? I’m torn as to whether this is genius or a sure sign of The Apocalypse. I mean, what’s next? The Ford.com online classifieds site? Maybe Starbucks?
Please don’t be a trend, God. Please.
Update: Covered on Techcrunch.
Popularity: 12% [?]
May 29th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’d vote genius.
Wal-Mart.com consumers are obviously generaly ready to purchase or perform comparison shopping/reviews. Offering free online classifieds offers a great way for WM to cross-sell/upsell suggested Wal-Mart.com products (a la Buy.com) while no-doubt offering an intriguing additional data channel for their marketing analytics.
Plus for them, I’m sure the cost of entry was infintessimal, why not take a shot to see what they can do with it with little risk.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I suppose Wal-Mart wants to transform their Website into a portal where people will stay longer, conduct more transactions and can access all types of content. With cobranded technology, any site can add any content or service without developing it themselves. But does adding completely unrelated services dilute your brand or actually create deeper relationships with your site’s users? I think it can do both depending on the brand and the product offered. From the employment standpoint, I don’t think many recruiters are going to post jobs on the Wal-Mart board specifically because of the brand and the connotation. I also don’t think many job seekers are going to think of the Wal-Mart board as a place to find serious professional opportunities. The Web has already reached a critical mass of tens of thousands of unconnected job boards and recruiters and job seekers are well aware what those boards offer. Just because it’s so easy technologically to add the service does it mean you should? I think this is just another great example of the proliferation of cobranded technology and great sales pitches to executives that have no critical thinking.