The mass merchant rolls out a cleaner home page with social integrations.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. overnight rolled out a redesigned home page that emphasizes the search box, makes more use of white space than the previous design and lets consumers shopping the site see what products are trending on social networks.

The search box at the top of the home page is larger than in the previous design and incorporates a drop-down menu that lets consumers specify a department in which to conduct the search. Previously, the department menu was on a separate tab. Walmart.com implemented a new site search engine late last summer and recently said that conversions from site search results had increased 20% since then.

The top navigation bar now includes a “trending now” button. Clicking it takes consumers to a page where they can see which Walmart.com products are being shared on Pinterest and which products are selling the most on Walmart.com. The Walmart.com trending information is categorized as best sellers, top-searched, just-reviewed and best-rated. It also includes “just sold” products, displaying the name and photo of the product and how recently it was purchased.

Another button on the top navigation bar lets shoppers see information about their local store. Consumers enter their zip code and select a nearby store. After doing so, consumers see a map highlighting the store’s location, its hours and what products are popular sellers in that city. The page also includes a link to the local store ad and a box that shows the Facebook newsfeed for that particular store. Shoppers can also print coupons for in-store redemption.

The vertical department navigation bar on the left side of the home page remains, but is no longer boxed in. The navigation boxes for new products and special promotions that used to appear under the department navigation bar have been removed in the new design, leaving more white space on the top portion of the home page. Consumers now have to scroll to the bottom of the home page to see these sections.

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“This new design of our home page makes it even easier for customers to search, browse and discover products and information,” a Walmart.com spokesman says.

Wal-Mart says it expects to generate $9 billion in global e-commerce revenue in its current fiscal year, ending Jan. 31, 2014. Walmart.com is No. 4 in the 2013 edition of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide.

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