Merging your website to weblog: ATA Cycle Case Study
ATA Cycle is a full-service bike shop, with a first class selection of
bikes, parts, and accessories from kid's bikes to top-of-the-line racing
frames and everything in between.
Their website, atabike.com,
provided customers with a typical brochure of ATA's services and
products, with a simple banner and contact information at the top of
each page.
There were some attempts to further engage cycling enthusiasts through the Racing-Scene and Cycling News
sections; however it was obvious that these resources were being
underutilized. (The last team listed on the Racing-Scene page was from
2003).
Hussam, ATA's owner, knew that his growing, passionate, and
loyal clientele needed a website where they could find out more than
the basic information about the store, location, hours, etc. but felt
overwhelmed by the amount of work required. So, The Otter Group was
brought in to design strategies for a weblog/website to support this
locally and globally dispersed cycling community.
We began the design process by asking questions:
- What are your goals for the blog?
- What elements of the existing website are needed on the blog?
- Which sections of the blog will be updated daily? weekly? monthly? yearly?
- How do you want customers to find you on the web? what keywords, search terms, etc. do you want associated with your business?
Then, we developed a plan for the new ATA blog, which morphed itself into a hybrid blog/site, ATAbikeblog.com:
blog
website
Features:
- Header banner with contact and location information, logo, site navigation, RSS feed
- Left column with Best of Boston logos, weblog categories, “Recent Articles” from weblog, Login
- Right column with Search tool, customizable RSS radar headlines from selected news feeds
- auto-generated photo gallery: “What's New In Our Store”
- Footer with contact information
- Dynamic center column with display for webpages, article posts, images, etc.
New features:
- Weblog with these features
- Search tool
- Subscribe via RSS feed or email
- RSS news components
- Auto-generated “What's New In Our Store” photo gallery
- easily updated web pages and article posts (no need to install HTML editing software)
Benefits to moving to blog format:
- Create new and edit existing content: web pages, article posts, photo albums
- Content is tagged, indexed, and searchable by all search engines
- Built-in full-text search tool
- Each article post has its own unique URL
- Both article posts and web pages fully support HTML
- Article posts can be easily organized into categories, assign keywords, dis/allow comments, trackbacks
- Readers can subscribe to content via RSS
- Easy to upload and manage folders of photos and files
- Moblogging feature allows administrators the option to post to blog via email
- Easily secure categories or components for internal use
By combining content on the old website with new content on the
blog, ATA's new blog/site now functions in both capacities without
sacrificing the “look and feel” of a website. Content is organized
simply and is now easily updated and edited using Pingware's
best-in-class web-based software. Both blog and website are managed in
one place.
Thinking about a blog for your business? Contact us and we'll work with you to create a web presence that meets your goals.
Explore posts in the same categories: Weblogs and Business, Clients
October 13th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
Thanks for sharing this case study. I'd like to have had this a couple of days ago when I was explaining to a prospective client how they could adapt their website and incorporate a blog.
I don't know whether the project is complete, but I had a couple of problems with the site: a) the only post in text, as distinct from pics of bikes with specs, is for May 22, with a comment dated Oct 12 - am I missing something? and b) in the left sidebar, there is a set of links which are in black on navy and only possible to read by highlighting them, at which point you can see them reversed in white (but how many people will even notice there is anything there in the first place?
It would also be interesting to know, if you know and are willing to share, whether the bike shop owner is now seeing an effect of the change, or is it too early?
October 13th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
Hi Desh, Thanks for your comment. We will look into the problems you report with the site. It is just getting launched and we are waiting for the client to get posting. It is still to early to see any direct effects but once they get going, we will be reporting here the change in stats. Here's a good quote for clients on web logs for small businesses. It is from Blog! by David Kline and Dan Burstein: “Blogs are extremely useful for small business, particularly for revitalizing the small business web site. Imagine, for example, a local restaurant posting weekly events and specials and inviting feedback and menu suggestions from its customers…And all that fresh content additionally attracts search engines and other bloggers, making blogs a highly effective marketing tool for small businesses and the self-employed.”