Walmart has always operated on the philosophy of being focused on the needs of its customers. Founder Sam Walton built his business on this principle, insisting, “Customers are not cold statistics. They are flesh and blood human beings with emotions and feelings just like our own.” When the Walmart.ca team found itself running a series of A/B tests and making incremental site improvements—without a unified roadmap as to whether these changes improved the overall experience customers— they knew they needed to make a change. They turned to UserTesting to pair qualitative customer insights with the robust analytics data they were already relying on. This gave them a more thorough picture of what customers wanted and what site changes they should therefore prioritize.
“We were looking at our tests individually and independently and we didn’t have a North Star to figure out, as a whole, ‘Is this still the experience we want to drive for our customers?'” - David Raine, Manager, Site Optimization, Walmart.ca
The result was a more targeted approach toward making site improvements that addressed challenges and expectations customers had while shopping on the site. For example, one section of the site routinely saw drops in mobile traffic. Without a sense of why this was happening, the team might have experimented with functionality, searchability, assortment, or even pricing. Instead, by watching videos of customers interacting with that section of the Walmart.ca website, they were able to determine that customers wanted to see the featured product visually displayed in a different way. Upon making this change, this section of the website alone saw a 13 percent increase in revenue.
Customer story