Ecommerce Analysis WM
Digital Tours research study across 16 sessions in Costa Rica and Guatemala, diagnosing why Walmart CA's ecommerce CSAT scores 6.4 vs the 8.9 industry benchmark — and identifying the 4 critical bugs behind purchase abandonment.
Why is Walmart CA's e-commerce underperforming?
The Study
Estudio Experiencia — Tour Digitales 2026 was commissioned to understand real end-to-end shopping flows in two key markets. Sessions were conducted as moderated Digital Tours — guided shopping tasks performed by participants on Walmart's live ecommerce platform, recorded and analyzed for friction points, task completion rates, and sentiment.
Two Markets, Two Stories
Costa Rica (9 sessions) and Guatemala (7 sessions) painted starkly different pictures. While GT users showed relatively positive satisfaction (CSAT 8.1), CR users averaged only 5.1/10 — a full −3.9 points below the competitive benchmark. Understanding why required going beyond surveys: watching real purchases break in real time.
The satisfaction gap
Overall Walmart CA CSAT: 6.4/10 against a competitive benchmark of 8.9/10. The split between markets tells the real story.
Key Insight
16/16 sessions were affected by the associate discount bug — the single most widespread failure across both countries.
Digital Tours — Seeing real purchases break
Session Design
Structured 16 moderated sessions around a standardized task flow: browse product categories, add items to cart, apply discounts/coupons, proceed to checkout, and complete payment. Each session was screen-recorded and annotated for friction events.
Digital Tour Execution
Participants navigated the live Walmart CA ecommerce platform on their own devices. Researchers observed in real time via screen share, noting hesitations, error encounters, and workarounds without intervening — allowing authentic failure patterns to surface.
Post-Reception Analysis
A subset of 5 participants received their orders and were followed up on product quality, price accuracy, and order completeness. This validated whether issues were UX-layer problems or deeper supply-chain failures.
Competitive Benchmark
Parallel sessions evaluated Uber Eats, Amazon, WM USA / Canada / Mexico, PriceSmart, and local competitors across the same task flow. CSAT scores and friction taxonomies were compiled to produce a gap analysis.
Session Breakdown
4 bugs blocking purchase completion
The Digital Tours revealed that low satisfaction wasn't caused by product quality or pricing — it was caused by four specific technical failures at checkout.
Misleading tiquete/factura error message
Users selecting factura (tax invoice) received an error indicating the option was unavailable in Costa Rica — but the message was confusing enough that users interpreted it as a payment failure. CR-only issue.
Associate discount not applying
Employee discount codes failed to apply during checkout in all 16 sessions across both CR and GT markets. The UI accepted the code without error but the cart total remained unchanged.
Coupon 7AHORRO broken
The promotional coupon code 7AHORRO consistently failed validation in Costa Rica sessions. Users who entered it received a generic 'invalid code' response despite the promotion being actively advertised.
Frozen payment screen
During Costa Rica sessions 5 and 9, the payment confirmation screen stopped responding after form submission. No success or error feedback was displayed, leaving users uncertain if the purchase was completed.
The Core Insight
Post-reception results showed 5/5 participants rated product quality as acceptable and 5/5 found prices correct. Only 1 order was incomplete at delivery. The problem was never the product. It was the checkout bugs. Fixing these four issues would address the majority of the CR satisfaction gap without changing a single SKU.
How the market compares
Sessions evaluated Walmart CA against regional and global ecommerce players across the same Digital Tour task flow and CSAT methodology.
Prioritized remediation roadmap
- → Fix frozen payment screen (CR)
- → Fix associate discount logic (CR + GT)
- → Repair 7AHORRO coupon validation (CR)
- → Rewrite tiquete/factura error message copy
- → Add real-time discount feedback in cart
- → Implement payment confirmation toast
- → Repeat Digital Tours post-fix (CR focus)
- → CSAT tracking dashboard (weekly cadence)
- → Competitive parity review quarterly
Expected impact after P0 fixes
What this study taught me
Running research at this scale — live sessions, two markets, real checkout flows — surfaced things a survey would never catch.
CSAT alone doesn't explain "why"
A 5.1 score is a symptom. Only by watching real sessions did we see that checkout bugs — not product quality or pricing — were the actual cause of abandonment.
Market segmentation reveals hidden signals
The CR/GT split (5.1 vs 8.1) showed the problem was localized, not systemic. Without segmenting by country, the aggregate 6.4 would have hidden the severity in Costa Rica.
Post-reception validation eliminates noise
5/5 post-purchase participants found quality and price acceptable. This ruled out supply-chain as a cause and pointed squarely at the UX layer — a crucial finding for prioritization.
Observational research catches what surveys miss
No survey would have revealed a frozen payment screen or a discount code silently failing. The Digital Tour format — watching real users on live systems — made invisible failures visible.
Protected under NDA
Due to legal and privacy arrangements established in the Walmart employment contract, the full research report, session recordings, raw data, and internal analysis documentation cannot be shared publicly. The findings presented on this page represent a curated summary approved for portfolio use.