Lee Jeans, one of the most recognizable apparel brands in the world faced the challenge of capturing and analysing the huge volume of information being generated by a variety of sources before any merchandising decisions could be made on its website, Lee.com. 

By adopting analytics technology, Lee employees now have the capability to quickly make informed decisions that will improve the consumer's shopping experience.

Now, all the information that merchandisers need such as how well items sell, what is currently in stock and what consumers are saying through social media channels is organised into simple visuals that are shown over product thumbnail images on the Lee website.  With this visual layout that mirrors Lee.com, the merchandisers can easily move products around based on popularity and availability.  Merchandisers are able to see which products are being viewed most often and most importantly, which ones are being purchased most often.  This ultimately allows the Lee team to display the site in a way that provides the best shopping experience for consumers.

Lee is now also able to obtain all product view data, online sales, abandonment rates and conversion rates to give Lee merchandisers a quick snapshot of product performance.  Lee is also capturing consumer sentiment data generated from social media channels such as Facebook and brand rating website Bazaarvoice.  Facebook 'Likes' and Bazaarvoice ratings are also included in the tool at the product level and these insights are used to help with marketing and merchandising decisions.  Using social media and analytics Lee can now make faster and more informed merchandising decisions targeted at its customers with a simple click of the mouse.

See: Social media, mobile devices creating brand loyalty challenges for mid-size businesses: IBM study

See: Case study 2:Analytics helps European retailer, wehkamp.nl shift casual online browsers to committed shoppers