| Four weeks after temporarily eliminating itself from the fourth-quarter shopping season by shutting down its site, Walmart.com reopened its virtual store for business. But in improving the site’s ease of use with the redesign, the retailer might have hindered its ability to merchandise individual products.
The online unit of the world’s largest retailer shut down the site on Oct. 3, responding to criticism that its former site — which already marked the Web destination’s second incarnation—was clumsy and hard to use. The sudden shutdown perplexed market watchers who didn’t expect it so close to the holidays and who didn’t understand why the site had to be shut down for the redesign. Typically, retailers who retool their sites make the switch instantly.
The new site is designed to be easier to use, Walmart.com said.
“The idea of the home page in particular was to make it easy [and] to make it fast,” said a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. “That’s why you don’t find a lot of fancy graphics and technology on the front page. We designed it to load fast so customers can get to what they’re looking for.”
But Wal-Mart might have gone so far to improve ease of use that it cut into an cornerstone of retailing: the ability to merchandise. The front page is so loaded with words that it makes it difficult to post promotional items, said Forrester Research analyst Seema Williams. On its first day in operation, the site lacked promotional items on the front page. | 
