Dive Brief:

• Walmart on Tuesday offered a preview of its revamped website, featuring a cleaner digital shopping experience that will roll out to the public the beginning of May. 

• The site has an entirely new look and feel, (including a new color palette and larger, more appealing photography) and specialty shopping experiences starting with home and fashion, according to a company blog post from Walmart U.S. e-commerce chief Marc Lore.  

• The site takes full advantage of Walmart's vast brick-and-mortar footprint, with more pointed local and personalized elements, including a new section showcasing top-selling items in a customers' location, their local store profile and the availability of omnichannel services.

Dive Insight:

The images released on Tuesday reveal an aesthetic that's a vast departure for Walmart, with muted tones and a soft, pale, blue sky color that replaces the retail giant's characteristic medium blue.

"We’re expanding our color palette and adding fonts to bring more vibrancy and depth to the site," Lore said in a blog post. "To bring a more human element to the site, we’re featuring relatable photography that showcases real-life moments. Beauty and design extend across all items. Our goal is to make it compelling for customers to shop for whatever they are looking for — whether diapers, laundry detergent or a new dining room table."

But it's not just a stylistic change, Lore insisted. The "redesign is about more than form, it’s also about function," he said. "In fact, the majority of the homepage will be personalized in some way. We’re introducing a new section that showcases top-selling items in a customer’s location (did you know that air mattresses recently trended in Dallas?)."

That area of the site will also feature a customer’s local store profile, including the availability of services like online grocery, order status and easy reordering, which lets customers quickly repurchase the items they buy most frequently in stores and online.

The retail giant is also making changes to product categories, adding to the revamped pages already introduced for its new furniture and home effort. Walmart is also taking a similar approach to fashion, Lore said, with "relevant, bold imagery and seasonal stories."

The furniture pages include a "home destination" with curated collections guided by design trends and in-house stylists. The nine shop-by-style options including modern, mid-century, traditional, glam, industrial, bohemian, farmhouse, transitional and Scandinavian. Editorial-style imagery and design tips further enable discovery of various styles and complete looks. Over the past year, Walmart has nearly doubled its home assortment, the company said earlier this year.

The Lord & Taylor flagship store announced late last year will be a part of a similar new fashion destination. "We want each category to feel like you are shopping a specialty store and we plan to build out these specialty experiences for other categories starting later this year," Lore said. Walmart in February unveiled four new private apparel labels, available March 1 nationwide in Walmart stores and online, that the company said "elevates" its offering in clothing, footwear and accessories, "making itself a destination for apparel."