Three challenges holding sellers back on Walmart (and how to solve them)

Expanding to Walmart Marketplace gives you an opportunity to reach new customers, but knowing where to start isn't always easy. Which products are worth listing? How do you get them live without spending weeks fixing errors? And how do you handle fulfillment when orders start coming in? These are three of the most common challenges we see when sellers are trying to grow on Walmart.

During a recent webinar, Shweta Srivastava, Director of Tech Ops, Assortment Growth & API Ecosystem at Walmart Marketplace, joined Dan Sugarman, CEO and co-founder of Zentail, to discuss each challenge and share practical ways to overcome them.

Here are the biggest takeaways from our conversation.

Want to see the full conversation and live Zentail demo? Check it out here.  

Challenge #1: Knowing which products to sell on Walmart

If you're already selling on Amazon, your best sellers might seem like the obvious place to start when expanding to Walmart. It's a reasonable approach. Those products already have a track record, and you know there's customer demand for them.

But Walmart shoppers don't always want the same products as Amazon shoppers. What performs well on one marketplace might not see the same success on another. That makes choosing the right assortment an important first step.

“The number one foundational block for a seller's success on Walmart lies in getting the right item onto our platform,” Shweta explained.

So how can you identify those products before investing time and resources into getting them listed?

The solution: Use Walmart Customer Favorites to identify products with demand

Walmart Customer Favorites are products Walmart has identified as having strong customer demand. These recommendations are based on an analysis of millions of listings, including popular searches, best-selling products, and broader ecommerce trends.

These recommendations give you a clearer picture of which products may be worth prioritizing, including products you already carry but haven't listed on Walmart.

According to Walmart FY26 performance data shared during the webinar, Customer Favorite items can receive:

• Up to 5x greater page-view visibility
• Up to 12x higher sales per item

Both numbers compare Customer Favorites with competitively priced, fast-shipping non-Customer Favorite items.

Of course, being a Customer Favorite doesn't guarantee sales, but it gives you a more informed starting point than relying on performance from another marketplace. With Zentail, you can connect your existing catalog to see which products Walmart has identified as Customer Favorites, including ones you haven't listed on Walmart yet.

Learn more about Walmart Customer Favorites.

Challenge #2: Getting your products live and keeping them healthy

Once you know which products to prioritize, the next challenge is making them available for purchase. Every marketplace has its own listing requirements. Product attributes need to be mapped correctly, required information must be present, and errors need to be resolved before products can go live.

If you're managing hundreds or thousands of SKUs, that work can add up quickly. And even after a product is published, inventory changes or new listing requirements can create additional problems.

The solution: Use Zentail to identify and resolve listing issues

During the webinar, Dan demonstrated how Zentail connects Walmart Customer Favorites with your catalog and listing status. You can filter your catalog to Customer Favorites and see which products are live, which have errors, and which haven't been listed yet.

This makes it easier to identify opportunities that might otherwise be buried in a large catalog, including:

• Customer Favorites that have never been listed
• Products with missing attributes or listing errors
• Listings that have become unavailable for purchase

Zentail's SMART Types technology helps map existing product information to Walmart's requirements, reducing manual catalog work. You can also use Quick Edit to correct attributes across multiple SKUs rather than updating each product individually. These tools also help you maintain listing health over time by identifying new errors or requirements that need attention.

Challenge #3: Setting up fulfillment without adding complexity

With the right products live, the next question is how to fulfill orders. If you're already using Amazon FBA, expanding to Walmart has traditionally meant moving inventory to another warehouse or setting up a separate fulfillment process.

During the webinar, Dan described how sellers sometimes test Walmart by sending a small amount of inventory to a new warehouse and listing just a handful of products. It's a costly way to test a new channel, especially when such a limited assortment might not give you a clear picture of Walmart's potential.

The solution: Use your existing inventory and fulfillment setup

Through Zentail's integration with Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF), eligible sellers can use their existing Amazon fulfillment inventory to fulfill Walmart orders.

Zentail syncs inventory levels, routes orders through MCF, and returns tracking information while supporting Walmart's requirements around neutral packaging and approved delivery carriers.

This lets you test Walmart without immediately splitting inventory between warehouses. As sales grow, you can decide where to allocate more stock based on which products are performing well.

Once orders start coming in, delivery speed becomes especially important. “In order to truly maximize your sales on Walmart Marketplace, you need to ship it fast. You need to delight your customers, and that's where fulfillment becomes very important,” said Shweta.

Walmart data shared during the webinar showed that Customer Favorites paired with competitive pricing and two-day or faster delivery can generate up to 4x higher sales compared with Customer Favorites that aren't similarly optimized.

What comes after solving these three challenges?

Once you've identified products with demand, made them available for purchase, and established reliable fulfillment, you can start building on what's working.

During the webinar, Dan and Shweta discussed several ways to take that next step:

• Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS): Move proven products into Walmart's fulfillment network to offer faster delivery.
• Walmart Connect: Use advertising to increase visibility for products that are already performing well.
• Promotions: Run deals and other offers to encourage additional sales.

With actual Walmart sales data, you can make more informed decisions about where to invest next.

What does that look like in practice?

Tevra Brands is one example shared during the webinar. When Tevra began expanding on Walmart, the team faced challenges getting products listed and managing fulfillment. By using Zentail to manage its catalog, inventory, and orders, Tevra increased the number of products available for Walmart customers to purchase.

The results included:

• 8.5x more buyable Walmart listings
• A publish rate above 90%
• More than $100,000 in Walmart revenue in a single 30-day period

Read the full Tevra Brands case study.

Limited-time incentives for Walmart Customer Favorites

Walmart is also offering limited-time incentives for qualifying Customer Favorite products. Depending on eligibility and program requirements, you may qualify for:

• Up to 100% off referral fees on qualifying Customer Favorite items
• 100% off WFS storage fees
• 15% off WFS fulfillment fees

The offer is scheduled to run through January 31, 2027, and additional terms and conditions apply. You can review your available offers and eligibility in Walmart Seller Center.

Where should you start?

We ended the webinar by asking Dan and Shweta what they'd recommend sellers do first. Both had the same answer: find out which Walmart Customer Favorites are already in your catalog. 

“Whether you have a lot of Customer Favorites or just a few, it's a great data point. It's free to find out, and it's very simple from there to actually start selling on Walmart,” said Dan.

To help you get started, Zentail is offering your first month of platform access for $0, with no setup fee. Simply connect your existing catalog, and Zentail will build a dashboard showing which products are Walmart Customer Favorites and whether they're live, unlisted, or experiencing listing issues.

From there, you can use Zentail to list, fix, and republish products on Walmart, with inventory and pricing synced across channels. After the first month, platform access is $300/month, plus usage-based fees when you list or sell. The plan is month-to-month, so you can cancel anytime.

Find your Walmart Customer Favorites today.

Want to watch the full discussion? The on-demand webinar includes more advice from Walmart and Zentail, a live product demo, and answers to questions from marketplace sellers.