You’ve just received a shipment of sweet 29ers and can’t wait to put them on display in your store.
You’re convinced people will go nuts for your new range of cycling shirts.
Not to mention that range of high-tech bike computers you’re waiting for.
You love everything about cycling, and you love everything about your cycle shop.
But is your cycle shop getting the attention it deserves?
Are you missing out on clients?
Maybe you’re a true social media warrior, and you post to Facebook all the time.
When you get in a new product, you take a picture and upload it to your personal Facebook profile immediately.
Or perhaps you run a Facebook page and add your latest products there.
But what are those likes and shares worth?
Have you ever asked yourself how many likes and shares it takes before you sell a bicycle, for instance?
What if there’s another way to get more people to see your cycling goods?
Perhaps it’s time you look at getting a website that not only looks good, but works at getting you more leads.
What can you do with your cycle website?
We build websites using the popular WordPress platform.
It gives you a solid foundation for building a professional online presence that’s geared towards getting you more sales.
If you use your website as a tool to market from, you’ll be astounded at the number of inquiries you’ll receive.
One of the best things you can do with your website, and it really isn’t rocket science, is to add content to it regularly.
If you add content to your website the right way, you’ll do several things right.
First off, you’ll look like the cycling pro you are. A website with plenty of good, relevant content makes you look great.
People love experts. It makes sense. It’s better to hear about which bicycle they should get from an expert.
Secondly, you’re giving Google something they can properly carbo-load on, not just a tiny sip of a weak energy drink.
To explain, let’s create a scenario.
You create the following categories on your website:
- Road cycles
- Mountain bikes
- Cycling wear
- Bicycle maintenance
- Bicycle transport
Now you can start adding articles to your website that fit into those categories.
It won’t be long before your website is stacked with relevant, useful articles that people and Google love.
But don’t think of articles in terms of “how-to’s” or cycling news.
Those are fantastic, but you can also add articles whenever you have a new product on the floor, or are running a special on some cycling products.
An article could simply be a picture, a title, an excerpt, and a bit of text to tell people what it is they’re gaping at.
It’s like an alternative ecommerce store. It’s much cheaper and gives people a great idea of what you’ve got.
You might be thinking, “but Facebook lets me post this sort of stuff in any case. Why would I need a website?”
Please read on to see why a website will do your cycling shop wonders.
Ecommerce
If your budget allows for it, you can add an ecommerce store to your cycling shop website.
In this case, you’d still have a news section, but now you’ll also add your latest cycling products to your online store.
We can help you set up an ecommerce cycle store where you can add all of your products and accept a variety of payments.
Plug some social media marketing into it, as well as your consistent website posts, and you should see some sales come in.
Email marketing
Email offers a phenomenal way to reach people with your cycling products.
A person who consents to receiving emails from you is far more committed than someone who likes or shares your stuff on Facebook.
What effort lies behind a like or a share?
It’s like going downhill on an ebike. No effort.
But if someone entrusts their email to you, they want to join your peloton.
We set up an email system for you that plugs into your website.
We also create a subscription page, as well as subscription boxes, on your website. This lets website visitors easily join your cycling list for all your latest updates.
But the real beauty lies therein that you don’t have to spend a second creating email newsletters. You just keep pumping content into your website.
It’s automated marketing at its best.
Search engine marketing
Google is a fantastic tool for finding bicycles, cycling gear and cycling clubs.
People might ask questions about your bike shop on Facebook, but they’ll head to Google, too, to learn more about you and your bicycle shop.
If your website’s not on Google, your competition who does have a website will steal valuable leads right from under your nose.
Some searches people do to find a cycle shop include: “buy bicycle”, “bicycle shop near me”, “bicycle repairs”, or “bicycle online shop”.
You could be featuring for those search terms, getting more people through your door and making more loyal customers.
All you need to do is keep adding valuable content to your website, the likes of Google will love.
And if creating content seems like a mountain you’d rather not tackle, hire us to do it for you.
Whenever you have a new cycling product you’d like added to the website, send us the picture/s and the details, and we’ll add it.
That way, it’s done by the professionals, who know what it takes to make Google’s knees weak.
Emails
A bicycle shop with a Gmail or Yahoo email address doesn’t look professional.
With our web design package, you can set up as many professional email addresses as you want, your hosting space being the only limit.
And if you use POP to set up your email addresses, you won’t be using hosting space for your emails at all.
Analytics
Your bike shop website comes with Google Analytics installed.
You’re welcome to access those analytics whenever you wish.
But you also get a weekly report that shares handy information like the search words people used to get to your website, the pages they visited and where they’re from.
This is super handy if you’d like to see whether your website is doing well.
Your website also comes with a search box that records what people search for when they use it.
It’s a great way to see if you’re market oriented.
Say, for instance, you’re pushing road bicycles really hard in your marketing campaigns, but you notice website visitors searching for mountain bikes.
This is a clear indication that you should be pushing more content about mountain bikes.
Mobile friendly
Your bike shop website is mobile-friendly, of course.
You don’t want website visitors who land on your website to pinch and scroll to see your fantastic cycling offers.
Cost
You’re not getting a Walmart Christmas kiddy bike here.
What you’re getting is a Trek Fuel EX, at least. It’s a premium package set up to help you get many leads over the long run.
This is not some “social media ninja guru” nonsense. This is marketing with a long life.
Conclusion
You could continue to use free social media to try to increase loyalty. But truth be told, it’s like riding a mountain bike uphill, backwards (and unless you’ve got Hans Rey level skills that’s not going to happen).
Or you could opt for our web design package and market to three channels from a single point: your website.
When you start building out your website, you’re investing in your cycle shop’s long-term success because a website is your pride and joy and the content on it is yours.
That content starts drawing more and more traffic because it makes you look like the cycling pro you are.
Book a consultation to see how we can help you sell more bikes. You won’t regret it.