When it comes to offline community building around a brand, there are very few local examples as successful as “The Running Room”:http://www.runningroom.com/. But does this offline success translate into an equally persuasive online offering? Do they really “get” online?
If any of you are runners or even just like to walk your dog early on a Sunday morning, you will likely already know that the Running Room understands community building around a brand. Every Sunday morning at eight o’clock, outside of every Running Room outlet everywhere in Canada, there is a gaggle of hyped-up, spandex-clad runners in nice shoes and water bottle belts warming up for a run with their designated “community”. Whether you’re a slow 5K’r or a marathoner in training, there is a community of like-minded people waiting for you at the Running Room.
The Running Room, it seems, sells more than shoes. They sell a running lifestyle and they back it up by fostering an active community that lives this brand and congregates around their properties. In short, the Running Room is everything that an online social network aspires to be. Which made me wonder, what does their website look like and do they do as good of a job online as they do offline?
First, I need to be honest that I really did want their site to suck. It is always much more fun to write about a smart company caught with their pants down than to have to write about a smart company being smart. Unfortunately, this article will be the latter. With one notable exception, their site does a very good job of reinforcing their core offline values, online, and is a good example of a company leveraging their core strength through their online property.
Let’s look in more detail.
The homepage www.runningroom.com drives you immediately to the key content areas for their community (not their commerce): the “events” page, the community “forum” page, the “photos” page and other important pages designed to get you to put down the cheese doodles and go for a run. The “forum section”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/ is especially impressive with tens of thousands of entries around discussion threads on topics ranging from “running when you are pregnant”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewforum.php?f=6467&sid=b29b49074e0cc99d331ef9288b63f22b to “the right foods for a 10 km run”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewforum.php?f=16. It’s not the slickest discussion forum I’ve ever seen but it is well organized and clearly well used by their core community. Even the marginal runners have a home, where posts like this one entitled “I finally got bleeding nipples again!!”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=25650 chum up the waters for the “run till it hurts” crowd. Everywhere it’s community first, commerce second.
Category: E-commerce
Fabio Orlando is Director & Chief Creative Officer of “The Autumn Group”:http://www.theautumngroup.ca/ a company he founded over ten years ago. Touting the mantra “clarity in creativity”, Fabio is as a highly strategic and adaptable thinker whose philosophy and vision are integral components of every account.
*One Degree: What’s the story behind Here’s My Baby?*
“Here’s My Baby”:http://www.heresmybaby.ca/site/start.htm is this fabulous portrait studio who has emerged from very humble beginnings. They were initially located in a mall in Thornhill, Ontario where they gained some local notoriety. That’s where our paths crossed.
After seeing some of their portraits at an associate’s house, I quickly booked a session to photograph my then one-year-old. Truly, I was impressed by the calibre of talent and professionalism.
Being ever the communications specialist (and solicitor), I approached the owner and lead photographer, Frank Cunha and told him that I had a lot of faith in his talents and that I could see this little studio doing great things. I was right.
Since then, they have moved to a gloriously designed and spacious studio in charming Kleinberg and have expanded their offerings to include Outdoor Lifestyle Studies. Their work is nothing short of beautiful.
*One Degree: Congrats on “winning a Webby!”:http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php#webby_entry_corporate How did a little shop in Kleinberg Ontario end up with such a prestigious international award?*
If you run an e-commerce site, you’ve probably heard about “website usability.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_usability At first I thought this was some buzzword self-proclaimed experts or agencies concocted to drum up more business. How wrong I was. As one lovable cartoon “character”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKWntmFt5ps would say DOH!!!
Our “website”:http://www.searstravel.ca relaunch earlier this year showed me usability optimization makes a difference. Despite an overall reduction of operating expenses (including marketing) year over year, our sales are up especially on higher margin product.
Although a new web-only pricing strategy was a contributory factor in our success, our website redesign (as a result of a usability audit by an agency) was the other major factor that contributed to our improved performance.
It’s naive to think you can improve everything at once, unless your financial and manpower resources afford you that luxury. So my humble suggestion is to pick one key area for your website and focus on optimizing it. Once you are done that, move to the next priority.
For example, if your number one goal is to increase sales, take a look how your website sales conversion is going. Is it good enough? If the answer is no, look to improve the booking flow or purchase path for your shopping cart from a usability perspective. Sometimes it’s a function of simply fixing the colour or size of the ‘Buy’ button. Sometimes it’s more complex.