Walmart just added new features to its mobile application including wish lists and payment consolidation to ramp up sales and streamline shopping experiences in time for the holiday season.

The big retailer is ramping up for the holiday season, like many others, to get the most out of the busiest commerce sector of the year, and is leveraging mobile to do so. With so many consumers taking to their mobile devices for the holiday season, Walmart is making sure to serve them an experience that will make shopping more convenient with its new Wish Lists and merging all payment methods to a single location within the app.

“Walmart is all over it, setting standards with downloads with its appealing PriceGrabber feature, and now expanding its mobile offering with wish lists,” said Jeff Hasen, co-founder of Gotta Mobilize, Seattle. “This takes away the guessing on presents, and fits perfectly with a mobile strategy of making it easy to get the best deals in the shortest amount of time.”

Updating importance
Mobile users on Walmart’s app will now be able to congregate a list of their items of interests which can be accessed as a shopping list or to give family and friends incite on purchases. Users will be able to see friends’ lists through the app to determine what to buy for the holidays.

The option allows Walmart to drive sales for the holiday, by prompting users to play it safe for family and friends. For instance, if one user saves an item to their wish list, another user will see that and knowingly buy the product at Walmart, as the consumer knows their loved one is interested in the gift.

Walmart also streamlined checkout process through mobile, which can be helpful to the retailer during the season to secure purchases with less cart abandonment rates. The payments section of the app now stores all forms of payment such as credit, debit and gift cards in one place.

App innovation
A slew of retailers are ramping up their mobile apps to prepare for the upcoming season, which is highly important in the retail world today as mobile and technology is constantly moving forward and shifting consumer behavior. Retailers need to accommodate for customers’ changing operation to stay on top.

The retailer also invited bright minds in the tech industry to hack into its ROI, spawning an idea for an innovative shopping companion for in-store customers that leverages SMS to broaden reach to those who do not own smartphones (see more).

Walmart also expanded its grocery pickup service, which enables customers to shop their lists online or on mobile and retrieve items at a pre-selected time, bringing it to eight new regions as mass-market retailers compete for a larger share of consumers’ wallets (see more).

“The holiday sales through its app will make its marketers and execs smile on Christmas morning,” Mr. Hasen said.

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Commerce Daily