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Walmart Introduces Pro Seller Badge for Top-Performing Merchants

The new pilot program will help sellers build credibility and consumer trust on Walmart’s marketplace. Discover the eligibility requirements and benefits for your business. By Natalie Taylor October 27, 2020

Walmart this month launched a new Pro Seller badge to highlight top-performing sellers on its e-marketplace. The digital badge appears next to sellers’ business name within Walmart’s search results, item page, additional sellers page, add-to-cart confirmation page, and in the shopping cart to inform customers pre-transaction of the seller’s premium status.

The pilot program, initially available only to select sellers, is designed to help merchants build customer trust and credibility on Walmart.com, which in turn will help drive conversion for qualifying sellers.

Currently, just 350 out of the 60,000 merchants on Walmart have the Pro Seller badge, according to Marketplace Pulse, making its exclusivity an added incentive for other sellers to optimize their performance and customer experience to earn the coveted badge.

Program Benefits for Walmart Merchants

The new badge can help sellers boost their exposure, as offers with a Pro Seller badge are designed to be eye-catching in search results and increase visibility.

Plus, the badge serves as an alert to the shopper that the qualifying seller is known to consistently provide excellent shopping experiences with on-time delivery and free returns, which can help provoke a purchase decision.

Unlike Amazon, Walmart does not currently rank Pro Sellers higher in search. Rather, shoppers are left to visually vet sellers themselves within their searches. Amazon, on the other hand, rewards top-performing merchants with higher placement in organic search, as its algorithm considers numerous performance metrics including sales performance history, positive customer reviews, and product prices.

How to Quality for Walmart’s Pro Seller Badge

To qualify for the Pro Seller badge on Walmart’s marketplace, sellers must meet the following high-performance standards:

High On-Time Delivery Rate: The seller’s 90-day Delivery Defects rate must be less than or equal to 5%. In other words, your On-Time Delivery rate must be at least 95%.

Low Cancellation Rate: Your 90-day Cancellation Defects rate must be less 1% or less for seller-related cancellation reasons.

Free Online and In-Store Returns: The seller’s entire catalog (100%) must participate in free online or in-store customer returns, with no restocking or return shipping fees.

High Listing Quality: At least 60% of your trending items must have a listing quality of at least 50%. This score is a composite measure of your product’s Content and Discoverability, Offer Score, and Ratings and Reviews.

Compliance With Walmart Marketplace: The seller must be compliant with Walmart’s marketplace policies and other performance guidelines.

To find out if you meet Walmart’s Pro Seller badge criteria, log into your Seller Center account and visit the Growth Opportunities tab under Analytics and Reports. From there, visit the Listing Quality Dashboard and select the Pro Seller Badge section to view your status and how many criteria you currently meet.

Your status within the Pro Seller Badge section will be one of the following:

Not Eligible: This means you do not meet the minimum criteria and do not qualify for the badge. Revisit your performance metrics and make optimizations where necessary to improve your eligibility.

Eligible: You meet the minimum criteria and will receive the Pro Seller badge after Walmart completes an internal review. Badges are distributed twice a month, on the fifth and the 20th of each month, during Walmart’s “refresh cycle.”

Badged: You meet all the criteria and your Pro Seller badge is currently displaying on Walmart.com. To note, your eligibility will be reviewed in each refresh cycle, so be sure to maintain your high-performance standards to keep your badge display.

Badged With Alert: This means you received the badge during Walmart’s last distribution cycle, but you are falling below some of the requirements and may no longer qualify for the badge in the next cycle. If this is the case, hover over the alert to view the criteria you are no longer meeting to ensure you remain eligible for the badge.

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About the Author

Natalie Taylor is the content manager at Feedvisor, where she oversees and executes on the company's content marketing strategy. Prior to her work at Feedvisor, she wrote for a B2B supermarket magazine, focusing on merchandising and marketing trends in the grocery industry.

Final Thoughts

Walmart’s launch of the Pro Seller badge is the company’s latest step toward building credibility on its marketplace and enticing both consumers and merchants to the platform. Similar to the “verified” users’ badge seen on social channels like Twitter and Instagram, or the Top Rated Seller status seen on eBay, the Pro Seller badge on Walmart indicates the company’s priority of trust, professionalism, and quality service on its marketplace.

Walmart said it will continuously monitor and adjust the seller badge criteria, approach, wording, and designs as needed to optimize the customer experience and improve conversions for qualifying merchants. Be sure to continuously review your performance metrics and eligibility criteria to make improvements where necessary, and be on the lookout for communication from Walmart should you become qualified, so you can begin to leverage the numerous benefits of the Pro Seller badge pilot program.

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