June 8, 2023

Stratably hosted Paul Clauss from Whytespyder to share his perspective on why content quality scores (CQS) matter at Walmart and what changes are on the horizon.

Watch The Recording Here

Walmart’s digital business is projected to contribute more than half of total dollar growth this year, and merchants are expecting brands to have strong omnichannel capabilities. In addition, high converting PDPs improve returns on the growing amount of dollars flowing into Walmart Connect. These factors all make meeting and exceeding Walmart’s content expectations critical.

We sat down with Paul to learn more about what changes are coming:

1. What is Omni 5.0
2. Marginal impact of improving CQS
3. The growing number of attributes
4. Projected drops in CQS
5. Timing of changes

Here’s what we found most interesting:

1. Omni 5.0: This is an overarching set of changes to the site that Walmart is making in an attempt to improve search functionality and discoverability and move from simply evaluating completeness to effectiveness.
2. CQS Impact: Walmart’s research indicates a significant direct impact on conversion rate from CQS improvement. For instance, there is a 13% sales lift in conversion when moving from a CQS of 70 to 90. This positive impact is why merchants are so insistent that brands meet a 95 or above score.
3. New attributes: Much of the discussion focused on the increased number of attributes Walmart is going to require, moving from ~15 to ~30. Some brands may already see these new attributes in their item set up sheets. Whytespyder research estimates an average item CQS will drop by 15 points if they don’t update these attributes.
4. Organic rank impact: Sales, conversion rate, and click-thru rate are all more important to organic ranking than attributes, which means updating attributes will not have a major impact on items ranked on page six, for instance. But, for brands with items ranked on the first page, attributes can create that small advantage that moves the item up the first page, analogous to an Olympic sprinter shaving a tenth of a second off her 100-meter time.
5. Attributes impact: Based on Whytespyder research, improving CQS through just attributes drives a 15% lift in sales on average, and also enables greater ad placement because of the relevancy improvement associated with it.
6. Timing: It is believed that Walmart will begin changing CQS to reflect the increased number of attributes by either August or early ’24 (before or after holiday).

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