I shop on both websites every week. I spend about $150/week in one order on Walmart.com, primarily food. I sporadically buy from Amazon, but place over 200 orders a year.
For the first thing, if a product can be delivered from my local Walmart to my house within a few hours I feel like it has reached a much higher quality bar Amazon. Walmart put a lot of effort picking items to put on their shelfs. Much more than Amazon, or things that are shipped to you over days on Walmart.com. Both have good return policies, but returning to an actual store is easier.
I rarely purchase something from the front page of Amazon, but often purchase from the front page of Walmart. I find using amazon to find anything but very specific products to be a complete waste of time. All categories and subcategories are overfilled with look-a-like products, and is just spam to search through. The types of things Amazon recommends are almost exclusively things I have already looked, or something I have absolutely zero interest in.
Walmart's recommendation system is powerful at getting me to make smaller purchases. A lot of it is because of the repeat purchase nature of groceries. It knows I've bought my favorite type of orange juice 12 times, it shows me the orange juice, and I buy it again. It's also good at getting me to buy things I have never bought before. Walmart has categories that are good for browsing. If I type in "cookie" I get a wide selection of cookies, and can find something I want to eat. When I visited the home page there was a large selection called "Patio and Garden". I just realized I would probably like to do some gardening, and will buy supplies from walmart.com later.
I could have written the same comment, word for word.
Walmart completely blows away Amazon for shipping most things I buy. Further, while obviously not typically known as a bastion of quality, the items I get from Walmart are of higher quality than those on Amazon, in aggregate. Put another way, they don't carry a lot of the junk and misleading products that AMZ does.
Speaking to your last point, I love that it orders searches intelligently. If I search for 'cookie', the top result is the one my wife likes, and it tells me how many times I've purchased it. This helps so much in that I don't have to remember brands and such anymore, they do it for me.
If it wasn't blindingly clear, I'm a huge fan of everything they're doing online over the last couple years, and get immensely more value out of Walmart+ than Prime.
Except as soon as you get off that 'redesigned website' homescreen you're plunged deep into Marketplace and Third Party Seller Hell when you just want to find things locally in your home store.
^ I was seeing this on the HN top going "why are we praising walmart now?" then I open it and the first comments are praising it too. But yes exactly what you said. I need to see if my store has something available and that's so difficult now adays because they want you to just order online from the Amazon clone they built. I wish every brick and mortar store didn't need to also be a flea market.
Clicking or tapping “in store” or setting filter on left to Walmart as the seller is easy enough, but it is a dark pattern for Walmart to remove the Walmart-as-seller filter every time you search.
Amazon, however, does not even let you filter for Amazon as a seller most of the time.
Uh, it's been like this for at least 1.5 years? It definitely looks better and works much better than Amazon's, but Amazon (on the whole) has more features.
When we know what we want going to Amazon and checking the price is easy. When we have no idea what we want and have the option of getting it delivered from the store the same day we just use Walmart.
The exact opposite for me. If I know what I want, I go to Walmart by default simply because Walmart (and Target) let you reliably filter seller to Walmart and Target.
And, as far as I know, they do not commingle inventory.
If I do not know what I want, or it can be some cheap AliExpress crap delivered quickly with a return policy, then I go to Amazon.
I don't really care about the look and feel of the website as much as utility. And I feel like Walmart has much better utility these days. Amazon search results are littered with drop shipped garbage from Aliexpress on 95% of search queries.
For all of Amazon’s so called emphasis on “customer obsession” I feel they’ve never been known to get the UI right. Their web site has always been borderline horrible to navigate.
It feels like a band aid over the archaic “search vs browse” dichotomy which ultimately does neither well.
If you search amazon you are limited to the “all site index” which is inferior to category specific indexes- and from that point it’s anyones guess which of the myriad of similar sounding categories is actually the best one for trying to find the item you are looking for.
It’s gotten worse with the influx of cheap Ali baba listings and sellers.
Walmart UX is no shining sterling example either but I struggle on average must less with it.
If any developers from Walmart happen to read this, the search on the purchase history page (https://www.walmart.com/orders) is broken, and has been broken for months now.
It is broken both on the web and in the Walmart app. I've reported this via the website feedback form several times. It briefly started working again after the first time I reported it, then broke again.
For example, if I search for "ham", it shows two orders, one from May 2020 and one from Nov 2020. But I've bought ham before May 2020, after Nov 2020, and between those two months.
It looks like the problem is that it is only looking at orders that are classified as "Delivery from store" or "Curbside pickup" orders. The aforementioned two orders are my only orders of that kind.
All my others are "store" orders, where I gathered the items myself and then paid at self-checkout using the Walmart app, either scanning at the register and then using Walmart Pay or scanning as I shopped with Scan and Go and then using Scan and Go's checkout procedure.
"Store" orders show up in the purchase history just fine. I can see them all there, and can view the details to see what items were included. It's just search that can no longer see them.
Somewhat related but for years I've been surprised by how irrelevant the items Amazon recommends on my homepage. They have decades of my personal shopping data along with credit card, demographic, media interests, and lots more.
The irrelevant suggestions + cluttered homepage UI makes Amazon only useful when shopping for something specific.
> If Walmart can guarantee me not getting counterfeits
They cannot and Walmart often procures subpar products of the same model and this allowed them to sell it for cheaper. (Amazon largely does the same thing but at least with Amazon you know its either cheap or a counterfeit) [1]
Walmart continues to fail at helping me find a store. The search field doesn’t use device location, and requires a zip code. I don’t keep track of zip codes when traveling. I don’t even know the zip codes in the next county!
Correction: device location is broken (and has been for years?)
Multiple retailer’s websites do not remember the store I choose to shop at near me, even when logged in. Home Depot/Best Buy/Staples/Costco come to mind.
Insane that in 2023, such a basic feature can be broken. I gave you all my information, and you still cannot use it?
Target implements this feature better than many retailers. They show your three most-recently-visited stores. Problems arise, however, if your most-recent visits were during trips out-of-state, and you don't care about the store in Kansas City. No, Target, I don't want to pickup the order 1500 miles away.
I find that most are using the store closest to wherever they think my location is based on IP address. Which makes zero sense to me since they have my home address, which they have shipped to numerous times before.
Walmart's design does not work (ie, add to cart buttons fail) with javascript turned off. Amazon's does (I can browse, add to cart, and check out). I know where I'll be shopping.
For the first thing, if a product can be delivered from my local Walmart to my house within a few hours I feel like it has reached a much higher quality bar Amazon. Walmart put a lot of effort picking items to put on their shelfs. Much more than Amazon, or things that are shipped to you over days on Walmart.com. Both have good return policies, but returning to an actual store is easier.
I rarely purchase something from the front page of Amazon, but often purchase from the front page of Walmart. I find using amazon to find anything but very specific products to be a complete waste of time. All categories and subcategories are overfilled with look-a-like products, and is just spam to search through. The types of things Amazon recommends are almost exclusively things I have already looked, or something I have absolutely zero interest in.
Walmart's recommendation system is powerful at getting me to make smaller purchases. A lot of it is because of the repeat purchase nature of groceries. It knows I've bought my favorite type of orange juice 12 times, it shows me the orange juice, and I buy it again. It's also good at getting me to buy things I have never bought before. Walmart has categories that are good for browsing. If I type in "cookie" I get a wide selection of cookies, and can find something I want to eat. When I visited the home page there was a large selection called "Patio and Garden". I just realized I would probably like to do some gardening, and will buy supplies from walmart.com later.