Walmart debuts virtual tours for home furniture shoppers

Say goodbye to clicking through images of products on Walmart’s website. The company is now testing a 3D virtual shopping tour.

The retail giant began testing the virtual tours Thursday, expecting the new online shopping experience to help customers visualize the home furnishing products they are interested in buying.

Through the tour, customers can use their finger on a touch screen or mouse on a desktop computer to look around and move about a room or house. When customers see something appealing, a click on the object will offer more information, according to Walmart

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The program will mainly offer tours of dorm rooms for now as part of a Walmart initiative to get ahead on back-to-school shopping this year. But, an virtual tour already available on Walmart’s website shows a small living space with family room, kitchen, dining, bathroom and bedroom products.

In July, Walmart plans to introduce an option to buy an entire room. There will initially be five collections available for dorm rooms, each featuring 20 of the items college students buy the most, according to Walmart.

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“While we are launching these new features for dorm rooms and small space living, we know that they could have applications elsewhere and will continue to listen to customer feedback to determine how to implement them more broadly on the site,” said Anthony Soohoo, senior vice president and group general manager for Walmart.

The 3D Virtual Tour is part of Walmart's new home experience that launched in February. The company also redesigned its website during that month.

The greater Dayton area has 38 Walmart locations, according to the company’s store locator.

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