2008 was a tough year for many online retailers, but not so for Motorcycle Superstore Inc. The retailer of motorcycle gear, which generates almost all its sales online, posted a 79% increase in revenue to $43 million in 2008 from $24 million in 2007.
More traffic from natural search results is the main reason, says Erick Barney, vice president of marketing at Motorcycle Superstore, No. 295 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Close to 40% of the retailer’s revenue now comes from consumers who click on links in natural search results, more than double the percentage before the deployment of a new e-commerce platform in August 2007, Barney says.
That e-commerce platform, developed in-house like the retailer’s previous e-commerce infrastructure, “gave us a lot of tools and flexibility to go after organic search,” Barney says. The new platform can dynamically produce pages in response to common search terms. For instance, if someone goes to a search engine and types in “Joe Rocket motorcycle boots,” the link that appears in search results takes the searcher to a page that displays the boots in the Joe Rocket line that Motorcycle Superstore sells. That page is generated dynamically by the site, drawing on all the Joe Rocket items that the retailer currently sells. Items are tagged with identifying terms, so that a searcher looking for “Joe Rocket street bike boots” goes to a page that features items specific to that search.
In addition, the retailer manually created about 1,500 pages for common search terms. For instance, it created a page showing all the motorcycle boots its sells, whether they are for men or women, or for dirt, street or other forms of biking. All told, Barney says, the number of pages on the site has increased at least 10-fold since the new platform was introduced. With pages more relevant to many search results, including long-tail terms such as “Joe Rocket women’s boots,” Motorcycle Superstore frequently shows up near the top on search results related to motorcycle gear, Barney says.
While the biggest improvement has been in natural search results, Barney says Motorcycle Superstore also gets good results from comparison shopping engines, affiliate marketing and paid search ads. It’s also put more effort into segmenting its e-mail list and targeting promotions. “We have a two-part strategy,” he says. “Get the customer through the door, get them on our contact list, communicate well with them and offer them the best service. It’s all coming together and we’re seeing really good growth numbers.”
Motorcycle Superstore also benefited when a major competitor, RideGear.com, stopped selling online in September 2008 after its parent company went bankrupt. RideGear.com assets were purchased by CruiserCustomizing Inc., which relaunched the site in March and now operates four 3-commerce sites.
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