NEW YORK — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's biggest retailer, relaunched its online store on New Year's Day with an expanded selection of clothes, books and appliances and personalized options like e-mail reminders about anniversaries and birthdays.
Though Wal-Mart has had a Web site for several years, the revised version is expected to help the company take away business from other retailers.
Wal-Mart has several advantages over online-only rivals such as Amazon.com and eToys.com.
Foremost, Wal-Mart will be able to leverage its tremendous size by advertising its site in its stores and shopping circulars.
Also, consumers that want to return goods bought online will have the choice of doing so at any of Wal-Mart's thousands of stores. Some online retailers, including some with offline stores, force consumers to pay shipping costs to return items for refund or exchange.
Wal-Mart's redesigned Web site include more than 600,000 items, twice as much as the company had online a year ago. The site also allows shoppers to book airline reservations and refill prescriptions. It includes a section to help people shop for toys for children or gifts for adults. The site also lets consumers compare items by price and features.
In addition, photographers who get their work processed at Wal-Mart now have the option to have pictures delivered via e-mail.