Discovery
The Wet Seal, Inc. is a leading specialty retailer of fashionable and contemporary apparel and accessory items. The company currently operates a total of 582 stores in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico , including 475 Wet Seal stores and 101 Arden B. stores.

Motivation
The Company was looking to build an online presence, increase site traffic, grow average order size and boost sales for its retail websites www.ardenb.com and www.wetseal.com. Because Arden B. has only a few locations, the website would be a major step in bringing merchandise to areas without brick and mortar stores. Wet Seal’s main role, aside from e-business, was to market and drive traffic to stores in the malls.

Approach & Implementation
We found an opportunity to improve the site’s usability by implementing and utilizing Web Side Story’s HBX web analytics. High traffic areas were re-positioned to allow easier access. The shopping experience was heightened with size filtering and best seller sorting. Sell out risk assessment was implemented for each item. Cross-selling and up-selling techniques were applied.

E-mail addresses were collected to distribute promotional discounts via targeted ‘opt-in’ e-mail campaigns. We also found that offering $1 shipping rather than free shipping yielded higher conversion rates. Tiered shipping promotions were launched to bump up average order size- resulting in a 40% increase in sales. It was further discovered that e-mail campaigns sent every 2 weeks yielded the best responses.

The homepages took on a product-oriented layout. Weekly style updates took form in “What’s Hot” and “ Arden ’s Pick.” We worked closely with e-commerce merchants for both Wet Seal and Arden B. to coordinate new merchandise pushes with e-mail campaigns and shipping discount promotions.

Wet Seal’s marketing campaigns were supported online using interactive flash technology. The look of the website was heavily influenced by the current marketing creative. Ardenb.com reflected the sophisticated nature of the brand’s target audience and introduced many fashion retail website firsts.

Impact
Fiscal Year 2003 Highlights
• Successfully re-designed wetseal.com 3 times and ardenb.com 2 times.
• Fall 2003 sales for ardenb.com grew tenfold.
• Average monthly page views increased from 11 million to 15 million (36% growth).

From Spring 2002 - 2003:
• Wet Seal.com goes from 45,000 unique visitors per week to 100,000 unique visitors per week.
• WetSeal.com revenue increases 100% (sales double).
• ArdenB.com revenue grows 44%.

Feedback
"Medium Sized Monster has proven to be a tremendous asset to our e-commerce team. Their recommendations to improve our website have been invaluable. They have helped us create a customer-centric website resulting in an increase in average order size and conversion rate."

Mike Africa
E-Commerce Manager, Operations, Wet Seal Inc.

“Kudos on the site. It looks amazing. Thank you for all of the extra time spent on the new look with me. A lot of the staff at Wet Seal have been coming to me with compliments about the look and feel. I even have people coming to me from the allocation team asking to make sure certain styles are on the site that were not part of the original planned distros. They are all getting on the bus... and away we go.....Great job.”

Jeffrey Davis
E-commerce Manager, Merchandise, Wet Seal Brand