Background and challenge
A nationally recognized casual shoe brand engaged L.E.K. Consulting to understand recent sales softness and identify what would most effectively restore growth. Performance had weakened after a period of faster growth, with declines visible across channels and uncertainty around root causes. Potential drivers spanned both marketing (targeting mix, channel mix, messaging) and ecommerce execution (site experience, digital merchandising, product newness).
Approach
We built an integrated fact base across channels — aggregating sales, web and digital marketing data — to create a unified, executive-level view of commercial health. With that foundation, we quantified the sales miss versus plan and prior year, and examined customer value trends, including declines in customer lifetime value (the projected long-term value of a customer based on expected repeat purchases and retention). In parallel and using brand tracking alongside digital and social signals, we assessed how effectively the marketing strategy was driving awareness and consideration among priority customer groups.
We then profiled recent purchasers against the ideal customer to pinpoint targeting opportunities, executed a performance-marketing audit to diagnose lower or less-qualified traffic and refine channel mix and tactics, and evaluated the end-to-end user journey across key retail marketplaces and the brand site to isolate conversion frictions.
Finally, we synthesized insights through a holistic lens across traffic, conversion and order value, and operationalized the work via a Power BI proof-of-concept dashboard. The dashboard monitors core key performance indicators — companywide sales performance and channel deep dives — along with views into customer and silhouette trends, marketing/awareness effectiveness and engagement by demographics.
Results
By turning a fragmented fact base into one source of truth and pairing it with an executive dashboard, the team shifted the conversation from “What’s happening?” to “What we do next,” yielding the outcomes below:
- Executive alignment on drivers and priorities. Clear synthesis of the sales miss and why performance lagged across segments and product types, along with a prioritized action plan.
- Always-on performance visibility. An executive-view dashboard for ongoing monitoring — covering companywide sales performance, channel deep dives, customer trends, marketing/awareness effectiveness and engagement by demographics.
- Data foundation for targeted improvement. An integrated, executive-level view and diagnostic framework (traffic → conversion → order value) to focus improvements where they matter most.
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