Walmart Ups Augmented Reality as Part of Digital Push

Walmart.com and its subscription service Walmart+ are keeping the focus online as holiday shopping season gets underway.

One key new feature gives shoppers the ability to stand in line virtually for a chance to buy a hot new product during Black Friday and other holiday-oriented sales events. While you’re in that virtual queue, you can still go off and shop for other products while still holding your spot for whatever in-demand toy, game, gaming device, tablet, or TV you simply must get your hands on.

Speaking of TV, Walmart is also upping its augmented reality and virtual reality offerings, this time in the View in Your Home service. More than 200 TVs are now available to view on Walmart’s iOS app. Through augmented reality, users can place the TV virtually in their home to see how it looks – or if it fits in the designated space – before buying. The video in this news release shows you how it works. The offering builds on technology Walmart is rolling out to let customers use virtual reality to see how clothes look on them using the Walmart app, a feature we told you about.

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Walmart is also beefing up its Stylitics outfitting section that adds clothing and accessories for men, kids and babies. Stylitics suggests accessories to go with a piece of clothing a shopper chooses. Stylitics is now available for 8,000 items that can make 16,000 outfit variations.

Additionally, a “buy it now” button, similar to one sites like Amazon have had for, well, decades, will allow customers to immediately buy a product from the product page instead of just adding it to their shopping cart.

This is all part of Walmart’s efforts to compete on a more level digital retail playing field with Amazon. Walmart’s been furiously upgrading Walmart.com and Walmart+, the latter especially with the addition of Paramount + streaming, a free benefit for Walmart+ subscribers, much as Amazon Prime is a (mostly) free streaming option for Amazon Prime members.