Overview

We partnered with Specialized, one of the world’s most valuable sports brands, to harness digital to empower and connect with women cyclists across the globe.

Idea

Knowledge, advice, conversation and community is what women riders are looking for when it comes to understanding more about bikes and the culture of cycling. And the internet is the first place they turn to. Responding to this, Specialized and Common Good developed ‘Your Ride. Your Rules.’ a new, digital platform to help connect and inspire women riders across the globe. ‘Your Ride. Your Rules.’ is a fully responsive website which aims to grow into the source of trusted information and inspiration for women cyclists. Riders will find focussed knowledge, advice, conversation and community. The platform is designed to break down existing barriers and inform and educate riders and Specialized through valuable content, insight and data.

Insight

‘Innovate or Die’

A culture of innovation at Specialized has generated a long line of bike industry firsts. The company’s 1981 Stumpjumper is enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution as the first mass-produced mountain bike. Specialized are currently the global leader in high performance bicycles and related consumer products with over $1 billion in revenue. Their rider-first engineered Tarmac bike holds two 2014 Grand Tour and World Championship titles, all brought about by the company’s fervent belief in their motto ‘Innovate or Die’. Specialized also have over a decade of experience in making women specific products. They have completely redefined how they build their bikes and equipment to incorporate updated women specific geometry.

The Opportunity

In 2013 Mintel reported that post-London 2012 UK cycling was on a high and that an impressive one-in-two British men were getting in the saddle. But when it came to purchasing a bike, different types of buyers looked for different qualities in a bicycle, with the biggest variations evident between genders. Brand names were not important to most buyers, the report also found. Potential customers were more interested in price, specification and styling, colour or décor than whether a bicycle was a brand name they were familiar with.

Further customer research by Common Good highlighted that while Mintel’s numbers focused on the current state of UK cycling, the conclusions were relevant across many of the global regions Specialized operated in. This represented a clear and valuable strategic opportunity for Specialized.

Approach

We worked closely with the Specialized team and their customers to focus on designing better digital products and services. We demonstrated, through prototypes and user-research, that tangible experiences allowed customers to develop a deeper understanding and connection with a brand. In doing so, we moved away from traditional advertising and marketing and utilised data, storytelling and brand utility to create authentic and meaningful connections with women riders.

“Common Good has been instrumental in bringing the voices and perspectives of our riders to life. They not only obtained critical customer insight, but helped us design digital solutions based on it that have enabled us to elevate our authentic and meaningful connection to our riders.”

Erin Sprague
Global Head of Specialized Women’s

Impact

Old vs New

Creating a new and inspiring digital platform for women riders improved page time from <1min to over 6.5 minutes per page. Representing a huge leap in the amount of time spent with brand and validating that inspiring stories, tools and advice reinforces the strength of the community. ‘Your Ride. Your Rules.’ is fully responsive, enabling users to find and view content on any device no matter where they are.

Rider-First

A key part of our process on ‘Your Ride. Your Rules’ was Customer Development - a method of improving a product’s success by developing a better understanding of its consumers. This involved us talking with, listening to and observing customers in different scenarios to help discover patterns and behaviours. Throughout the course of the project the research team spent long periods of time with cyclists, of all levels and ability, across both the U.S. and Europe – employing a rider-first approach to gathering insight and data. This helped build a picture of the issues surrounding women and sport and in particular women and cycling. Through customer interviews, store visits and constant user research we identified barriers to entry, examples of poor service and repetition of strategic gaps and opportunities.

Informing the Future

Solving the challenges of engaging this huge and under-represented audience is typical of Specialized’s ongoing desire to get more people involved in the sport. The ‘Your Ride. Your Rules.’ platform represents the start of a journey to providing better, more relevant digital products, services and experiences to female riders across the globe. The data, insight and feedback generated from the platform, and a global network of user-testers, are now helping to feed and inform the constant desire for innovation and thinking at Specialized.