Running WSS's E-Commerce as its interim executive

WSS sells sneakers, boots and work shoes from brands like Nike, Jordan, adidas and Vans, plus its own Eurostar label, through neighborhood stores and shopwss.com. The stores were the business. Online had no one running it day to day.

Our audit found why the site underperformed. Web orders were filled from one store's stock and checked by hand in several steps, so they took more than a week to ship. The cart held inventory and the email signup form was broken. There was no KPI reporting, no triggered email, no affiliate or retargeting program, and the creative team worked mostly in print.

DYODE stepped in as WSS's E-Commerce executive, reporting to the VP of Marketing, with an E-Commerce manager in the office day to day. The job covered strategy, budget, operations, customer service, marketing and every development project on the site.

We started with an audit of the team, platform, pricing, traffic and conversion, a review of WSS's social channels, and a visit to the store that packed web orders. After the back-to-school season we led a teardown of what worked, then set a phased plan for what came next.

Fulfillment came first. We switched on more stores so the site could sell their stock and took a redundant validation step out of the packing process. On the site, the team shipped was/is pricing, new discount and coupon logic, better brand and category pages, and an overhaul of the email system, design and segmentation.

We reorganized the E-Commerce team around a dedicated E-Commerce Manager and took over affiliate marketing. The roadmap then ran in three phases: fix the cart, checkout and fraud screening with a development partner; add segmentation and personalization from the loyalty database; and run an RFP for a new SaaS commerce platform with ship-from-store and in-store returns.

Web orders that used to take more than a week to ship went out in three to five days, and more of the stores' inventory was sellable online. Conversion rose over the back-to-school season.

WSS also came away with an E-Commerce team built for the job, reporting it could act on, and a roadmap for the platform and marketing work ahead.