71–80 of 88 posts
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Home Depot is good, but their iOS app still lacks a lot of polish around selecting a store, payments, and list management.
I’m genuinely curious - why use the app instead of the website?
The article doesn't mention Walmart's website, which has become very good and widely used, especially as a more trustworthy source for real products than Amazon.com. Also the article is worded as if Walmart is in decline- the future is bright for both of these companies, not that anyone is concerned.
Walmart is getting better, but still way behind on the web front. They'll show you things in stock, then tell you it's out of stock upon checkout. Go back to product page, shows in stock again. They also use way, way too many captchas. Lastly, they divide walmart.com from walmart pickup and delivery for no reason. Some things you order on the .com side are only 'shippable' if your local store has it. So, it's pickup…
Anyone who's tried to buy a video card or other in high-demand item from Amazon knows that the same thing happens there.
The article doesn't mention Walmart's website, which has become very good and widely used, especially as a more trustworthy source for real products than Amazon.com. Also the article is worded as if Walmart is in decline- the future is bright for both of these companies, not that anyone is concerned.
However, Amazon does have one key appealing, regardless who's the seller Amazon almost guarantees the free return, where in Walmart you'd better take it back to Walmart store even it's sold by Walmart themselves.
The return policy is the one single reason Amazon trumped all other online e-commerce which is not hard to see but difficult to clone.
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> they divide walmart.com from walmart pickup and delivery for no reason I can hazard an informed guess as to why that is -- they built .com as an independent company, in order to get it off the ground faster and with less interference from the brick and mortar side. End result: quick iteration, but now two completely separate supply chains. You'd be amazing how complicated warehousing, inventory, shipping, etc. get…
HomeDepot and Bestbuy are what I would hold up as the best websites. Target is decent too, except they started allowed resellers and I was not as easily able to find how to restrict to items sold only by Target.
And yeah, the "marketplace" cancer is everywhere. It's turned Amazon into trash, yet traditional companies seemingly can't help but follow in their footsteps. If I want to sort through vendor reputations for gensym-branded white label gadgets, I'll go to eBay or AliExpress.
FWIW the Home Depot website is much faster if you use noscript to block all of their surveillance vendors. Probably the worst website I've seen with regards to that - by default I think they backhaul all of your mouse movement.
When a shopper enters a Walmart they have a fixed amount of money in their pocket and generally a good idea of what they want. You might get them to grab a candy bar, or buy the next grade up of tires, but it is effectively shifting dollars that would have been spent there already. Revenue growth is all about adding more essential items to the store and eliminating trips to other retailers. Amazon has much more discr…
> When a shopper enters a Walmart they have a fixed amount of money in their pocket and generally a good idea of what they want. You might get them to grab a candy bar, or buy the next grade up of tires, but it is effectively shifting dollars that would have been spent there already. Revenue growth is all about adding more essential items to the store and eliminating trips to other retailers. People with credit cards…
If people spend next months wages, that only temporarily increases sales.
Long term I would expect that non-Walmart credit would decrease sales, since shopper’s income remains constant but they pay more on interest so less remaining for other goods.
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WalMart does also have 3rd party sellers where you have to watch what you buy. I suppose Walmart has a broader variety of in-house sold than Amazon though.
So does Target, I think. Becoming a shady online flea-market must be incredibly lucrative, since everyone who can seems to choose that over just being, like, a normal store, but online.
If you need something specialized like say, upholstery glue, Walmart may have 5-6 different options, one or two of which might be sold by Walmart themselves, if you are lucky. Which means likely long shipping times for all the others as they won't qualify for Walmart plus or whatever they call it.
If you search that on Amazon, you will find probably 30-40 different brands and types of upholstery glue available in all difference sizes, in a jug, in a spray bottle, bulk sized, etc. Most of which is available for Prime 1-2 day shipping and will show up next day.
Walmart and other retailers need to be working with some warehouse logistics companies that basically do what amazon FBA. Because as it is, most of the 3rd party listings on other retail sites are just drop shippers trying to arbitrage off Amazon or ebay products. If you buy from them, the seller will just purchase it from Amazon or ebay and have it shipped to you.
The rest are sellers that already sell on Amazon and ebay and just check the Walmart box in their listing management software to add a few more sales here and there. But without amazon and ebay, they wouldn't be able to maintain their business on Walmart, target, and probably about every other retail platform combined.
And I'm not even sure if ebay amounts to much any more. When I was in the business a few years ago, ebay did still account for maybe 20% of sales. I assume that has gone down, but likely varies depending on category.
Why won't they? The other day I needed a set of air hose tools and looked it up at Amazon, saw it for $19. Went to my local store auto parts store because I wanted to support my local business and they have a fraction of the Amazon set for $42. I ordered it from Amazon and had it in 12 hours. Needed lawn mower filters, at home depot, it was $10.99 for 1 filter. For the 2 types I wanted, got them for $8.99 for 4 and 5…
Not in my experience. I've seriously dialed back my usage of them, but what started me on that path several years ago was comparison shopping for the first time in a long time, and finding that local stores usually matched and sometimes beat Amazon's prices. Why wait 3+ days for two day shipping when I could literally pick it up now for the same price? Now the main issue I have is all the garbage products with fake reviews.