Walmart V5 item specification is beginning to roll out and is currently available to a subset of merchants.
For all new sellers / listings - users will be presented with the OmniSpec 5 taxonomy and the requisite fields that come along with that. We have attempted to ease some burden on the new field requirements so as to not make listing so overwhelming.
For existing sellers / listings - the listings remain assigned to the OmniSpec 4 product type and end points. There is an extension to the user experience where sellers can opt in to OmniSpec 5 for these listings by choosing the new category. Again, this can be overwhelming due to the field requirement delta that appears on the selection of the OmniSpec 5 product type.
For existing sellers / listings that have been assigned to OmniSpec 5, we provide a way back to OmniSpec 4 for sellers that struggle in the move forward to OmniSpec 5.
What does this mean for merchants?
Merchants will be able to select from a larger set of hierarchical categories with more relevant attributes for those categories. These categories are now also searchable.
The current set of categories will continue to be functional for the foreseeable future, so there is no immediate need for merchants to change their currently selected categories.
The existing set of categories is still available in the UI under the top-level ‘Legacy’ category section (see attached image)
A search function has been added to facilitate the use of the larger set of available categories.
For further assistance, please reach out to marketplace-connect@shopify.com