The secret behind Wal-Mart travel

When you’re the mastermind behind one of the year’s biggest travel site launches, what do spend your time thinking about?

In Wal-Mart’s case, consultant Richard Giuliani didn’t just concern himself with issues like vendor relationships, software compatibilities and corporate politics — although there was enough of that to stay busy, to hear him talk about it.

He also had concepts like Feng Shui on his mind.

How do ancient Chinese principles of harmony and balance apply to a travel site? Very well, says Giuliani, the chief creative officer of Chicago-based Quantum Leap Communications. The ideas not only are helping attract new customers to the online mega-retailer, but they’re also keeping them there. It’s a formula that has apparently worked so well that the consultants are using it again, when they help bring the new Sam’s Club travel site online later this year.

“When you’re running a leisure travel site, you can’t have all kinds of bells and whistles. It just confuses the customers,” he says. “And it leaves you with hundreds of abandoned (virtual) shopping carts.

It may be difficult to imagine incorporating Feng Shui – with its somewhat abstract notions like Ch’i and Yin and Yang – into a commercial Web site. But the application turned out to be almost as simple as the ideas behind them:

Build a reliable booking engine. The need for a robust foundation on which to build a site like Wal-Mart’s can’t be understated, according to Giuliani. “We made sure that we could ~block and tackle’ – that we could not only perform the core functionalities flawlessly, but that we could lead our customers through it,” he says. The consultants helped choose one of the most versatile applications, the Broadvision one-to-one e-commerce system, which runs on industrial-strength servers (which Wal-Mart, a company that doesn’t like to divulge much of anything, declines to be more specific about). Giuliani is perhaps the closest thing you can get to a Broadvision groupie, having used the software when he helped overhaul the American Airlines Web site.

Resist ‘feature-itis’. Quantum, which constructed both the front-end interface and the fulfillment infrastructure in conjunction with Wal-Mart’s internal information systems group, saw to it that a concerted effort was made to keep the design simple and intuitive. “We wanted it to be friendly, clean and inviting,” says Giuliani. “Look at sites like Travelocity.com, where you’re overwhelmed by the amount of choices. It’s like going into a restaurant and there’s a hundred dishes on the menu – you don’t know where to start.”On Wal-Mart’s travel site, there are no such problems. If you don’t know where to begin, you probably shouldn’t be using a computer.

Get to the point. Giuliani and his design team also pushed for the travel portion of the site to use few words, but to make each word count. Unlike many of the popular business travel sites, novice users will find a simple explanation of e-tickets at Wal-Mart, for example. And the ever-handy ‘help’ feature, when clicked, opens a window that explains how to use the page you’re on, rather than bringing up a glossary of help terms that must be searched. Even the FAQ – the Frequently Asked Questions – are intelligent, with the page itself being rebuilt constantly based on the most frequently accessed query. That kind of attention to detail and personalization, while largely unappreciated by users, gives the site an edge over competitors, if for no other reason that it wastes less of a customer’s time.

Let the site evolve. When upgrading a site, Giuliani’s philosophy is to go slow and to never lose sight of the customer’s needs. “When you’re doing something on a grand scale, you have to do things slowly and incrementally. You can’t shock your user – you need to gradually introduce your customer to features,” he explains. “People develop a personal relationship with their Web site. The timing has to be right before a change can be made.” Accordingly, the Quantum consulting team resisted an urge common to many technophiles: To load the new page down with every new travel tool and application, and to put the competition on notice.

“We had to strive for balance,” Giuliani adds. “Wal-Mart is very patient. They wait and they build their product and then they move in quickly. They can afford to take their time and get it right.

One final note: Giuliani believes the pundits are making a grave mistake in their analysis of the startup site. Wal-Mart’s concept of selling travel on the Internet, he says, doesn’t imitate other Web sites. Like the brick-and-mortar warehouse stores operated by the Bentonville, Ark., company, the online storefronts are intended to change the very way in which travel is bought.

“I think people are underestimating them,” he adds.

Maybe there’s something to Feng Shui after all.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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