Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Walmart has released a dedicated iPad app designed to make your superstore shopping seamless.
Within the app you can browse all of Walmart.com, as well as see items at your local store, although some categories will only display items available online, which sort of defeats the purpose. But at least you’ll be able to check nearby stock before venturing out. When you’re flipping through Walmart’s products, make sure you head back to the overall site search — I found myself frustrated with such minimal results until I realized it was only because I was searching a particular store.
In addition to all of the usual category suspects, Walmart for iPad features a dedicated rollback section that includes only items on sale, and I’d expect this to be a useful category come Black Friday. I was surprised, though, that the app doesn’t include access to Walmart’s local ads.
I like that Walmart has integrated purchasing in the app, however, not all items — despite their online availability — can be added to your app’s cart. I’m not sure why this is, but if the purchase option says “Buy on walmart.com,” the app will launch Safari and Walmart.com instead.
Walmart for iPad offers the same free ship-to-store options as the .com, but I was disappointed to not see wish list functionality. The app does offer email sharing, but this is only good for one item at a time. Saving items to your cart for later is also an option, but isn’t ideal for keeping track of gift possibilities or family wish lists. Walmart for iPad also only works in landscape mode. This makes the individual product pop-ups larger and the category swipes more fluid, but isn’t the most comfortable for extended viewing sessions.
