Master for Webs

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hoping that the third time's the charm as it once again launches a retooled Web site, with the emphasis now on speed and ease.

The new site (www.wal-mart.com) promises to be less dazzling and more efficient, "less of a shot out of a cannon than an old-fashioned store remodeling," says Jeanne Jackson, chief executive of Walmart.com, a joint venture of Wal-Mart and Accel Partners of Palo Alto, Calif. "We are striving for simplicity. We have relentlessly focused on making it fast and making it easy," Ms. Jackson says. Wal-Mart's entry into online retailing has been rocky. The Bentonville, Ark., retailing behemoth launched a

bare-bones site in July 1996 and let it languish for the next three years as it waited for more customers to get online. The company began reworking the site last fall, in time for the holiday shopping season, but had trouble delivering items on time. In January, Wal-Mart unveiled a makeover, which boasted products from toilet paper to toothpaste, plus special features such as a travel center that sold airline tickets and hotel reservations. But the new site debuted to disappointing reviews. It was criticized for being clumsy and hard to navigate. Days after the site launched, Wal-Mart said it would join forces with Accel, a top Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, and it moved the operation to Northern California from Arkansas. In March, Walmart.com named Ms. Jackson, the former CEO of Gap Inc.'s Banana Republic division, to head the online retailing program. This summer, the company bought some assets of HomeWareHouse.com, a defunct home-improvement site, to speed technological changes. Walmart.com has been shut down since Oct. 3, while the new site was built and tested. The new site has about the same number of products as before -- about 500,000 items. But gone are the consumable products such as toilet paper and Windex. Toys, sporting goods and electronics have been expanded. In place of the travel site, there is a direct link to Southwest Airlines Co., where tickets can be bought directly.

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