From “Store Locator”
to “Pickup or delivery?”

The December 29, 1996 page is grey marble wallpaper, Times New Roman and that globe. The browser title reads WALMart Web Site - Online Shopping Made Easy, with an odd capital M. A loud banner for parents and teachers flashes CLICK HERE; its alt text names Remedia Online. Then comes E-Mail Us Today! in big blue letters, and one line of small print: © 1996 QMedia Document Imaging.

There is nothing to buy. No departments, no prices, no cart.

Who ran it? We couldn’t find out. Walmart’s own history page dates the founding of Walmart.com to 1996.^[1] A company release from 2017 says Walmart launched Walmart.com in 2000.^[2] Neither mentions World At Large.

The April 1997 capture is the same page with two changes. The counter now runs since Friday, March 21 1997, and the AOL link is gone. For 1998 the archive hands back this April 1997 page, so that year has no capture here.

By November 23, 1999 the page belongs to the chain. The browser title says Shop Wal-Mart Online, and the small print reads Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Most of its pictures don’t render in our capture, so the still is a column of blue links on white.

The links are a department store written as a list, from Appliances & Home Accents to Video Games, with Hickory Farms and Floral in between. It is Thanksgiving week, and three toys carry prices: a Barney Magic Banjo at $23.97, a Little Tikes SuperGlow Electronic Kitchen at $58.88 and a Wigglin' For Honey Pooh bear at $28.88.

The right-hand column points away from the web. Under the company links it lists Store Locator, SAM'S Club, Pharmacy and Tire and Lube Express. The last line of the page gives a phone number: call 1-800-966-6546 to speak with a Customer Service representative. Keep that number in mind.

According to Computerworld, walmart.com shut down on October 3, 2000. The store stayed closed for 28 days for a complete makeover, the magazine reported, and came back on October 31 at 3:51 a.m. Eastern time, “without any great fanfare”. Walmart.com was then a company of its own, owned jointly by Wal-Mart and the venture firm Accel Partners. By Computerworld’s account, the new site ran on software bought that July from HomeWareHouse.com, a defunct online retailer.

Computerworld also reported that some analysts criticized closing the store just before the holiday season, and one called it “insane”.^[3]

Our capture is from November 17, 2000, about two and a half weeks after the reopening. A WAL★MART logo sits in the corner, the browser tab says Walmart.com - Always Low Prices!, and a photo strip greets you with Welcome to Walmart.com! Twelve departments each get an icon and a row of links. The sidebar sells the season: a Backstreet Boys box, Home for the Holidays, a Handspring shop for Visor PDAs and one featured item, Pokemon Gold Game Boy Color, at $27.88.

Below them a grey box asks for a ZIP code: To find a Wal-Mart store near you, enter a zip code.

The March 31, 2001 page opens with spring: Get More Bike for Your Buck, a Mongoose bicycle at $116.67, a Bell helmet and a Kryptonite lock. A pink NEW Items! box on the right starts with a Kodak Digital Camera at $499.68 and ends with a Garmin eMap Deluxe GPS at $349.97.

At the bottom, a grey box asks How may we help you? Its third line is Order by Phone, then Call 1-800-966-6546, 24 hours a day. It is the customer-service number from the 1999 footer, now an order line on the homepage of a web shop.

That July, Wal-Mart bought out the rest of Walmart.com. Until then the minority stake had belonged mostly to Accel Partners.^[4]

The August 2002 page turns yellow. Find 300,000 Textbooks leads, next to Back To College and K-12 boxes, and a blue-and-white box advertises Unlimited Internet & Email from Wal-Mart Connect for $9.94 a month. Small pink notes sit beside three departments in the menu: 12,000 Movies!, 80,000 CDs! and 500,000 Titles!

In June 2003 the biggest box on the page is a movie ad. Now Playing: DVD Rentals! it says, with Unlimited Rentals From $15.54 per Month and a short list: No late fees, Free shipping, Over 13,000 movies.

Under it is a link, Start Your FREE 30-Day Trial Today, and a blue bar, Express Shipping is Only $1.87. The logo has grown a tagline, Always Low Prices. Always., with the last word in red script.

The June 2004 page moves the rentals into a strip under the search box, where they ask $22 to rent flicks? The middle of the page is Father’s Day, Don’t Delay! It’s Almost Dad’s Day, and its box sells DVD rentals, Online Shopping Cards and a Music Downloads Gift Card: Just 88¢ per song, Every Song. Every Day™. The left menu has Music Downloads under Music and DVD Rentals under Movies.

June 2005 keeps both in the menu and gives Father’s Day its own feature, Dad’s the Man.

The June 2006 page leads with electronics: Brand. New. in white on blue, Latest Electronics, Biggest Brands, and the logos of Panasonic, Kodak, HP, Toshiba and Sony above a camera. A box on the right still wants a ZIP code: Find a Wal-Mart near you. The Father’s Day reminder now reads Father’s Day Is June 18.

In June 2007 the middle of the page is a pale blue panel with GREAT VALUE, NEW PRODUCTS in capitals and an instruction: Download Flash Player version 7 or later for the ultimate Walmart.com shopping experience. That is the panel’s fallback text; the banner itself was Flash. An alt text in the page’s code speaks to blind visitors: To avoid interruption of software designed to aid visually-impaired people, please turn off your Flash player.

The left column lists SPECIAL OFFERS, from Site to Store to 97-Cent Shipping. A tile under the banner explains the first: Our Site to Store service has expanded. Check to see if you can now ship for free to your store. Walmart dates Site to Store, buying online and picking up in a store, to 2007.^[1] Near the bottom, the Rollback list starts with an Image 15.5 S Treadmill at $349.57. Remember the treadmill, too.

By June 13, 2008 the browser tab carries a new slogan, Walmart.com: Save money. Live better., and so does the logo, which still has its star. Walmart says it has used the next logo, the one with the spark, since June 2008.^[2] Our June 13 capture still shows the star.

The Flash panel still asks for Flash Player 7. Below it, three summer tiles sell a Verizon Chocolate phone, bikes with free Site to Store shipping, and GPS units. Hidden in the code is a pop-up template that thanks you for choosing a store: you'll see information about the products carried in the [city name] store.

The number was a picture, and the copy the archive kept doesn’t match the page’s own text. Which figure visitors saw on June 13 we can’t tell, so we show the picture and quote the other.

In June 2009 the star is gone. The new logo spells Walmart in lighter blue, with no hyphen and no star, and a yellow spark beside it. The banner sells Great On-the-Go Gadgets, Garmin GPS units from $108 and Apple iPods from $75, with Free Shipping with site to store, and a smaller box announces New Jonas Brothers! In the department list, Grocery and Health & Beauty carry a tiny BETA.

The footer of the same page still reads © 2009 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The logo had dropped the hyphen. The company’s legal name kept it until 2018.^[2]

Two months after this capture, at the end of August 2009, Walmart opened Walmart Marketplace: nearly one million new items, sold by other retailers through Walmart.com’s checkout. The first sellers it named were CSN Stores, eBags and Pro Team.^[5]

Our 2010 to 2012 captures keep a department sidebar beside a big banner, and the banners follow the calendar: a TV for game day in 2010, Have More Summer Fun for Less over a pool in 2011, and in 2012 Summer fun now costs less above a strip for Vizio laptops.

The June 15, 2013 page is wider, with a dark blue header that holds Trending Now and Your Store Set It Now beside the search box. The main banner is green and belongs to Microsoft: Reserve your Day One Edition today. A strip above it says Make Dad’s day – order gifts online, pick up in-store.

The closed menus hold two small finds. The department list’s code includes Grocery Delivery - Beta, and the account menu offers My VUDU Libary, typo included.

That November the prices went wrong. On November 6, 2013, a glitch on Walmart.com listed computer monitors and projectors at $8.85, ABC News reported.^[6] Reuters saw treadmills that normally cost hundreds of dollars at $33.16.^[7]

Six years earlier, a treadmill had sat in this homepage’s Rollback list at $349.57. ABC reported that Walmart canceled the affected orders and promised full refunds and a $10 e-gift card.^[6]

The June 2014 page puts its promise at the top in orange and blue: FREE SHIPPING on nearly everything. The main banner area under it is blank in our capture. Farther down, Get set for summer and save sells coolers from $7, and a tile offers Rollbacks on select no-contract smartphones. Rollback is the store’s word for a price cut, and it has been on the homepage at least since the smiling Rollback box of 2001.

In 2015 the header turns solid blue and the logo turns white. The big picture is now one slide of a rotating banner. Ours, from June 15, says COOL DOWN with hot savings next to air conditioners advertised from $129. The 2016 slide is Newly featured patio sets, over a row of laptops and computer parts.

Several later captures show one slide of a rotating banner, so their big picture is partly chance; our 2023 to 2025 captures open with a grid of tiles instead. The 2016 page also has a small tile that will grow: Free Grocery Pickup.

On January 31, 2017, Walmart started free two-day shipping on more than two million items, with no membership fee, and cut the minimum order for free shipping to home from $50 to $35.^[8] Our June 2017 capture wears it in the browser tab, Walmart.com: Free 2-Day Shipping on Millions of Items. The links under the search bar read Warehouse Clearout, My local store, Pick it up TODAY and Introducing Pickup Discount. The banner was caught between two slides, one about investing $250 billion to create 1 million jobs and one for a yogurt smoothie.

The March 15, 2018 page spells the deal out: FREE 2-Day Shipping | No membership fee! and, in smaller type, *Min. $35 order. Eligible items only. Three icons under the banner add Free Same-Day Pickup and Free Grocery Pickup.

The footer in this page’s code still says © Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., six weeks after the company’s legal name became Walmart Inc. on February 1, 2018.^[2] The 2017 page’s code had already written © Walmart Stores, Inc. Doug McMillon, the chief executive, told employees the missing dash wouldn’t change the company cheer: where it “calls for the squiggly, keep doing it!”^[9]

On April 17, 2018, Walmart announced a new Walmart.com that would start rolling out in early May. It promised photography of “real-life moments”, more colors and fonts, and a homepage mostly personalized. Its example of a local trend: air mattresses had recently trended in Dallas.^[10]

Our first capture after it, from August 16, 2019, looks the part. The banner is a photo of children in school clothes, Back-to-school style.

A line above it says New! NextDay delivery and Free on $35+ eligible orders. No membership fee. Under the banner sit three tiles: Free Grocery Pickup, Trending on Walmart.com and Get free NextDay delivery.

The code carries the rule for mixed carts: NextDay + NextDay = NextDay! NextDay + 2Day = 2Day on entire order. Its footer lists the company’s other shops, from Bonobos and Jet to ModCloth and Vudu, and ends © 2019 Walmart. All Rights Reserved. The hyphen is gone from the small print too.

The September 2, 2020 capture, School go-tos for less, came 13 days before Walmart+ opened to all customers, at $98 a year or $12.95 a month.^[11]

In June 2021 the page shows a tile headed Pickup or delivery with a store already filled in: 1400 Hilltop Mall Rd, Richmond. Nobody in our capture chose that store, and we couldn’t establish why the page picked it. Above the tiles a Walmart+ strip offers Free shipping with no order minimum required, and the banner, a tent and a watch, says Get it by Father’s Day!

The New Year’s Day 2022 capture moves the location into the top bar: Richmond Store and San Francisco, 94118, over a Home essentials bedroom and an End-of-year clearance tile. In August 2023 the page is a grid of back-to-school tiles, with Best in class, uniforms from $5 and Weekly Deals. In June 2024 a yellow bar counts down to Walmart+ Week (01 : 16 : 22 : 28 in our capture) above Use pickup & delivery and To Dad, in time.

Our June 16, 2025 capture has a white wordmark and spark on a brighter blue header, and the search box says Search everything at Walmart online and in store. A strip under it asks How do you want your items? The tiles below sell haircare, pet food, Suncare is self-care and a New Jurassic World movie, 7/2.

Five months before this capture, in January 2025, Walmart announced a brand refresh for Walmart.com and its app, with two named colors, True Blue and Spark Yellow, and a new wordmark that Walmart said was inspired by Sam Walton’s classic trucker hat.^[12]

By June 15, 2026 the question has moved into the header, beside the logo: Pickup or delivery?, and under it SF, 94118 • Store. A pop-up announces Spanish / Español now available! The banner says Father’s Day is June 21 and Last-minute gifts to wow Dad, and the first row of products is hair styling gear, priced down to the ounce: 73.1 ¢/oz.

2000 · ZIP box2026 · Pickup?

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The 1996 page asked its visitors for one small thing, in the alt text of the picture that held its counter: Make your visit count, load this image. That picture doesn’t render in our capture, so we don’t know how many people came, or who was counting.

Thirty years later the homepage starts from the visitor’s side. Before anyone types a word it has a ZIP code, a store and one question with two answers. The store was never far away in between: a locator in 1999, a ZIP box in 2000, Site to Store in 2007, a Free Grocery Pickup tile in 2016, and in 2026 a header that asks Pickup or delivery?