Selling on Walmart

Walmart Marketplace is one of the largest and most trusted retail platforms in the US. You can offer products from your Ecwid online catalog to millions of Walmart visitors. An omnichannel approach to selling helps your brand reach more customers in more places and drive sales.

To start selling on the marketplace, connect your Ecwid store to your Walmart seller account through the Channable app. During the connection, you will import your Ecwid catalog to Channable and then sync products with your Walmart account. Upon connection, your online catalog appears on Walmart Marketplace, so that shoppers can order your goods directly from the Walmart website.

Walmart deducts referral fees from each completed purchase. The commission rates vary by category and total sales price but range from 6% to 15%.

Requirements for selling on Walmart

To sell on Walmart, you need to meet the following requirements:

• Your business is registered in the US and has a US Business Tax ID or Business Licence Number (SSN will not be accepted).
• Your store is located in the US so products are shipped to Walmart Fulfillment centers from within the US.
• You have the Walmart seller account verified and set up. 
• You comply with the Walmart Marketplace Return Policy.
• Your catalog does not include any products from Walmart’s Prohibited Products Policy.

Step 1. Importing Ecwid catalog to the Channable

Before you start connecting your online store to Walmart, make sure you have set up and verified your Walmart seller account. 

As the first step of connecting Ecwid to Walmart, you will need to connect Ecwid with Channable, and then import products from your Ecwid store so that you can later sync them with your Walmart account. 

To connect your Ecwid online store to Walmart:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Apps → App Market.
2. Find the Channable app and click Install.
3. Click Open app.
4. You will be redirected to your Channable account where you need to login to your account or create a new one.
5. Once you're logged in to your Channable account, you will be prompted to create a connection with Ecwid by Lightspeed. Tick the checkbox and click Add connection:
   

   

6. Click New project to create a new project. In this project, you will create the Ecwid-Walmart connection.
7. You will be forwarded to the Setup page where you can import your product catalog from Ecwid. Click the + Setup import button and select your Ecwid by Lightspeed connection:
   

   

8. Enter the name for the import. For example, Ecwid to Walmart catalog and click Save.
   Channable imports each product variation as a single item.
9. If there are some issues that require your attention, you will see the instructions on what to do to fix them.
10. Click Save and Import.

That’s it. Products from your Ecwid catalog are now uploaded to your Channable account. You can find them by clicking the Items section in the menu on the left in your Channable account. Clicking on an item will show you detailed information about it.

The next step is to sync your product catalog to Walmart.

Step 2. Syncing Ecwid catalog to Walmart

After you uploaded your Ecwid online catalog to Channable, it’s time to sync it with your Walmart account so that your products appear on the marketplace. Make sure you verified your Walmart account since it’s required to get a Walmart client ID and a secret key.

To sync Ecwid catalog with Walmart via the Channable app:

1. Go to the Walmart Developer Portal and click My account at the top right. Choose the Marketplace (US, Mexico & Canada):
   

   

2. In the API Keys section, create a Walmart client ID and a secret key. During this process, you will have to indicate which integrator you work with and which rights you want to give it. Select the Channable app and provide at least the rights that are highlighted in the screenshot below:
   

   

3. Copy your Walmart client ID and the secret key.
4. From your Ecwid admin, go to Apps → My Apps and open the Channable app.
5. Click on your company name in the top menu and choose Connections:
   

   

6. Click + Add a new connection and select Walmart.
7. Fill in the label for your connection, for example: Walmart. Then paste the client ID and secret you received from Walmart.
8. Click Create.
9. In the menu on the left, go to API and click + Add new API.
10. Select the Walmart connection you just made, and give your new API a name. For example, Walmart.
11. Select the field you want to use for Unique ID per item. It’s recommended to go with the id field.
12. (optional) You can also add a master rule group. Master rule groups can be used to install general rules for multiple exports. For example, if you want to sell on other marketplaces besides Walmart.
13. Click Continue.

That’s it. Now you have to create your product listings so that your products appear on Walmart.

Step 3. Creating product listings to sell on Walmart

Once you have created the Walmart API you can set up your product data and create product listings to sell on Walmart. To do so, you need to go to the project with connected Ecwid and Walmart accounts and switch between sections at the top right corner:

There are four settings you need to set up:

• Categories
• Rules for your products
• Build of the product listing
• Attributes

Set up categories to sell on Walmart

Your products need a category in order for your product data to be created on Walmart. Switch to the Categories tab in your project and add categories to your products by using the generate categories feature or create new categories from scratch.

Set up rules to sell on Walmart

Switch to the Rules tab in your project to create different rules to optimize how your product data appears on Walmart. 

In the Channable help center you will find examples of common rules that you can create.

Set up product listings build to sell on Walmart

To access the Build section, switch to the Build tab in your project. Here you will find the preset template for the product listings. All you have to do is to fill it out by clicking on the field and selecting the value. For example, the field Title should display the title of your product and so on. 

Shipping Template ID and Fulfillment Center ID

In Build → Shipping templates, you will find the optional section for mapping Shipping Templates and Fulfillment Centers to an item’s SKU:

As explained in the Walmart Seller Help article, you need to create and maintain customized Shipping Templates for your products on Walmart. As you are done setting up a template, Walmart generates a Shipping Template ID:

Filling in the Shipping Template ID in the Build step enables Channable to automatically match your products to their specific Shipping Templates. If you wish to use different Shipping Templates, create a dynamic field that you fill in with a rule to divide your products and give them the right Shipping Template ID.

Now, you need to fill in the Fulfillment Center ID. According to this Walmart Seller Help article, the Fulfillment Center indicates from which US-based location you will ship your orders. The process is similar to the aforementioned one. The creation and maintenance of these Fulfillment Centers must also be done on Walmart, which will give you an ID that you can use in Channable.

When you have finished setting up the product listings, click Save at the bottom of the screen.

Set up attributes to sell on Walmart

To access the Attributes section, switch to the Attributes tab in your project. Here you will find the list of your categories that you can adjust. Walmart’s categories are very generic (e.g. “Baby Clothing”), but you can specify a deeper category in the attributes. For example, by filling in the field “Pajama Type” for Baby Clothing Pajamas, or the field "T-Shirt Type" for Baby Clothing T-Shirts.

Find a more detailed explanation of what to do in the Attributes step in the Attributes support article in the Channable help center.

Creating variants

When you sell on Walmart, your products’ variations are part of the attributes, meaning that when you don’t categorize them, you can't set up variants. In addition, fields that are necessary to create variants can be unavailable in specific categories where Walmart doesn’t offer variants, making it extremely important to choose the right categories.

After selecting the correct categories, you need to fill in the following three values:

• A variant group ID: an ID that is shared by all variants in a group. You can use for example, parent_id or item_group_id for this.
• A variant attribute name: what value does the variant group differ on (e.g. color, size).
• The field that is associated with the variant code.

Filling this in allows you to create a variant group through the API. You can fill in multiple variant codes by placing an “,” in between each code:

Almost there! Now you have to send your products to Walmart.

Step 4: Sending your products to Walmart

After the setup, your product listings are ready to be sent to Walmart.

To send your products to Walmart: 

1. From your Channable dashboard, go to Settings → Project settings on the left-hand side of the screen and click Activate project:
   

   

2. In the left menu, click APIs and go to Your Walmart API Name → Settings and click Activate API.
3. Navigate back to the APIs overview and click Run now to send your product listings to Walmart.

After the first run, your products will be published on Walmart, but without the price and inventory parameters. In the next exporter run that will happen automatically within 8 hours, the Channable app will set the price and inventory of an item if the item was created successfully. You can use the Walmart Dashboard in order to track an item’s publish status.

Walmart needs approximately 4 to 8 hours to update the price of new and existing listings.

Checking product listings for errors when selling on Walmart

To check your product listings for errors, go to APIs and switch to the Results tab. Click the filter on 'error'. Here you can see which product listings have errors and which are not listed.

Click on a specific error to see more information on what is causing the error. If you have solved some errors by changing the settings or product information, re-run the Walmart API to see the new results.

For additional help, please contact the Channable support team.

Processing orders from Walmart

When someone buys your product on Walmart, a new order will appear in the My sales → Orders section in your Ecwid admin. You will get notification about a new order with an email or a push notification in the Ecwid mobile app for iOS or Android.

Orders are sync between your Ecwid and Walmart accounts. That means, when you change the status of an order in your Ecwid admin and/or add a tracking number, this information is sent to Walmart. And vice versa. As a result, you can manage the order processing both from Ecwid or Walmart admin.

You need to fulfill orders and ship them with the help of the Walmart Fulfillment centers.