Specialized Bicycles rides web analytics to help drive traffic to stores
Specialized Bicycles markets directly to consumers mostly through Specialized.com, but sells bicycles only through its retail store partners. So it uses web analytics to assure that online content drives visitors to its store locator, interactive director Sean McLaughlin tells InternetRetailer.com.
“If we didn’t have this web analytics tool, we’d be blind as to whether our site was performing or not,” McLaughlin says, adding that Specialized.com’s two primary goals are to inform its customers and direct them to store partners.
At Specialized.com, which receives 700,000 visitors a month, the bike designer and manufacturer sells supplementary bike equipment directly to consumers and offers extensive information about bicycles and racing events, but it refers online visitors seeking to purchase bicycles to its retail store partners through its online dealer locator. Specialized upgraded its site earlier this year to accommodate its high summer traffic, currently running even higher than usual due to this month’s Tour de France bike race.
As part of the site upgrade, Specialized has deployed the WebTrends 7 On Demand analytics application from WebTrends Inc. The application enables Specialized to get a more complete picture of site traffic, and how that traffic is affected by particular online merchandising content, McLaughlin says.
“Before WebTrends, we were not able to see the full picture of our online business,” he says. “We previously used a variety of tools that tabulated data in different ways so we weren’t getting an accurate apples-to-apples comparison of marketing ROI and conversions.”
Specialized uses the WebTrends tool to view how visitors use and exit its site, including how many visitors click its dealer locator. The locator provides Mapquest directions to stores and links to dealer web sites.
In addition, the tool helps Specialized see which online content is attracting the most visitors, providing information on consumer demand that it passes on to dealers. By also using the tool to match customer interests with their geographic location, Specialized is able to alert stores in particular geographic areas about products popular among shoppers in their areas, McLaughlin says.
Although McLaughlin says he hasn’t figured out a way yet to directly correlate overall sales with online referrals to stores, he says he’s seen indirect evidence that online traffic closely matches increases in sales. “In our 30-plus years, our most recent fiscal year ended June 30 was our most successful,” he says.
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