Identifying a local emerging company: considering briefly what they offer and what the customer experience is like when using their website.
The emerging company.
Cadence Performance is a well renowned friendly cycling hub. The key features that sets them apart from other cycling shops and hubs is their industry leading focus on bicycle fitting, the warm and inviting atmosphere (Which isn’t often from bicycle shops) and the connections with all manner of professionals within cycling industry. Cadence started in 2012 with a single premises and now has expanded to four different sites across the south of the UK. Cadence Performance also offers other services and testing that go along side bicycle fitting which are: VO2 max, Lactate threshold, blood test, body composition analysis and Wattbike studio cycling classes.(Cadenceperformance.com, 2018)
In today’s modern technology fuelled competitive business environment, having an effective website is crucial to stay competitive. This is due to consumers’ daily relationship with digital media platforms that are used to find solutions and information.
It would seem apparent that Cadence Performance utilises digital media platform which can be found on the internet via their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The different media platforms have varied benefits depending what the ‘customer persona’ needs and wants are. Therefore, utilising the different platforms for these personas is invaluable. Kristi Hines gave a great example in a blog post that stated ‘when you’re looking for something, such as a plumber, MOT centre or physio, you tend to use search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on to find them. Whereas, social media is fantastic for recommendations, peer reviews and fast contact methods’(Hines, 2018). Social media has the great benefit that as an organisation you can reply and resolve issues in real time efficiently, reducing any negative feedback to the organisation. Conversely, on search engines, negative feedback can affect your online reputation with the results/reviews high in the listings depending where the review has been left, which can spiral out of control with multiple inputs from other online users.(Hines, 2018)
The role of the website.
Cadence Performances website is designed to inform users of what the company offers, entice customers and to assist with online booking availabilities for events and services. The website neatly links up to all four stores showing real time availability for events and services, making it user friendly for comparing availabilities across stores rather than the need to open up four separate tabs and flick between them.(Cadenceperformance.com, 2018)
Customer segments.
Identifying your customer segments has always been a tricky area, and finding the ‘ideal’ way to separate your customer base is challenging (Rouse, 2018). It seems like a relatively simple idea, and if only it was as simple as cutting a cake into quarters (Rouse, 2018). In fact, you have to take the customer specification such as: socio-demographics, background and gender, all into account to make valid and justified categorisations(Rouse, 2018). Making a brief guestimate at what Cadence Performances customer segmentations criteria could be: age range, location, spending data within the shop and purchase history (Chitharanjandas, 2018). Customer segmentation can be used to identify who the customer is, what they will like and how to effectively market to them.
Customer persona.
A Customer personas is effectively a fictional representation of the perfect or ideal customer that the given organisation wants(Chitharanjandas, 2018). There are four key sections to identifying a customer persona: Who, What, Why and How. Please see Appendix 1 for an elaboration on ‘Customer persona’. Each of these sections entails a couple of sub sections. Taking a quick look at Cadence Performances customer personas:
Customer A: Who Middle age. What Currently interested in taking part in social cycling. Why interested in ways to improve one’s cycling performance and likes to take part in the social side to cycling. How Cadence is a cycling hub aimed for all abilities with a range of social activities from weekly rides, seminars and even a coffee shop to sit and have tea and cake. Please see Appendix 2 which highlights another more in depth customer persona which interrelates to Appendix 1.
Analysis and suggestions.
In my opinion, with the services that Cadence Performance offer reaching out to new customers who know what they need, such as a bicycle fit, necessitates having an effective and high ranking website. However, social media platforms will be most effective for regular customer interactions, marketing and influencing purchasing decisions of additional purchases such as VO2 max testing, bicycle servicing or Wattbike studio events.
Cadence Performance seem to utilise Google paid ad boosting as when searching a few key words relating to the services Cadence Performance offer, which is an extremely competitive market within their location, Cadence Performance come in as the top ‘ad’ result the majority of the time. Although this identifies that Cadence Performance are utilising paid for search engine optimisation, their seems to be a lack of organic search engine optimisation (SEO) as within standard search results they are not on the first page unless searching for the company name.
Are there any recommendations for improvements on the website? Well, fairly minimal and maybe subjective recommendations.
The key suggestion would be to update the ‘testimonials’ section. There are no testimonials on there; it is blank but still has the website banner which brings down the sleek and impressive perception of the website. Testimonials, in my opinion, are always great because they are useful and encouraging to see customer feedback, especially if one of the customer personas is someone who may not look at other sites where reviews are such as Facebook.
The location of the testimonials also seems to be in a slightly obscure location, I feel it would be well placed on the home page below the three key banners as it would be in a prime location being easy to view and should benefit the organisation.
My final recommendation is to link their shop sales website, Giant Crystal Palace, to the top section where the three banners of the Cadence Website are. Although, lower down it is stated bicycle sales, that section of the website is quite busy, and within the bicycle sales section it is missing one of their shop locations. If you were someone new to cycling and it was your first time landing on their website, it could be hard to ascertain that they sell bicycles, but also the amount of services that are offered could be overwhelming.
Overall, Cadence Performance have a fantastic website: it is informative and easy to navigate for all diversities of consumers. The majority of pages have nice clear images, minimal but concise writing which is informative, but not mind blowing, and a user friendly layout for a good customer experience.
References:
- Cadenceperformance.com. (2018). Homepage. [online] Available at: http://cadenceperformance.com [Accessed 18 Oct. 2018].
- Chitharanjandas, C. (2018). Website Analysis.
- Hines, K. (2018). Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown. [Blog] Social Media. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/search-vs-social/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
- Rouse, M. (2018). What is customer segmentation?. [online] SearchSalesforce. Available at: https://searchsalesforce.techtarget.com/definition/customer-segmentation [Accessed 18 Oct. 2018].
Appendices:
Appendix 1
Who?
Background – job, career, family, key hobbies and interests.
Demographics – gender, age, location and income.
Identifiers – demeanour and communication preferences.
What?
Goals – primary and secondary goals.
Challenges – primary and secondary challenges.
What we can do – to help our ‘persona’ achieve their goals and overcome their challenges.
Why?
Real quotes – about persona’s goals, challenges, etc
Common objections – why the persona would not buy the products/services.
How?
Marketing message – defining the solution to the persona, enticing them.
Elevator pitch – selling the solution to the persona.
Appendix 2
Who
Middle age, currently working in an office job in London, Family with two children 18+
What
Wants to get fit, enjoy socialising or gain cycling related knowledge
Why
‘Road cyclists always seem to be very snobby, I feel intimidated and don’t know where to start’ ‘I haven’t tried it, I just feel it’s not for me, it all seems far too serious racking up 10s and 100s of kilometres.’
How
‘No matter what your ability or knowledge, everyone is welcome and we are here to focus on and help you.’ ‘We have set out to be a friendly cycling hub, we want everyone to enjoy themselves. We are more than a cycling shop and more than a cycling club, we are a cycling hub. If you don’t own a bike and have limited knowledge around cycling, or you compete at a high level, you are all welcome.’
