Highway bicycles are not timid or wearing casual people. Enter 11 velo’s Gerard Thomas, and we met him through his insight comments on our blog. Gerard operates a Woocommerce store to customize the Meru Nu cyclone service for the bicycle with rich vision and experience.
In further conversations with Gerad, we found that he is a quite outstanding Australian entrepreneur who has more than 15 years of experience in the field of e -commerce. This is about the time for e -commerce resumes.
Continue reading the story about how 11 Velo became the leading online destination . You will also get Gerard’s online sales techniques, including SEO adjustments that reduce natural traffic, product page recommendations and innovative methods involving Instagram mix and match content.
E -commerce starts from behind
Gerad’s e -commerce journey began in 1999. At that time, he intervened as one The client of becoming an old friend saved a poor website.
At that time, the e -commerce scenario was different.
Forgot how to sell online, do this is a feat! Gerard took over the website of selling high -end computer bags. They eventually inserted a \”box\” back end that completed all transactions -the front end was a HTML website -and gradually figured out what to promote online sales, including high -quality photography and decent texts. Do it very well, a lecturer at Stanford University uses their website as a case of e -commerce!
In these early experiments, GARARD had a firm idea of \u200b\u200bwhat he wanted to get from a platform, and began to cooperate with a friend who used to (now) ASP developers to develop a customized customization The back -end solution to support his own online store. The payment gateway in 2001 is bulky and expensive -it is almost discouraged unless you are doing big things.
They successfully developed an inventory shopping cart system together and can run for a long time, but with the growth of the business, the platform cannot be done. In 2003, Gerard began to use WordPress as a blog platform and quickly realized its potential in e -commerce. They switched from their customized shopping carts to CART66 in 2007, and then began to study Woocommerce they had transferred in 2008. Gerald said:
This is a very interesting journey, the entire e -commerce affairs. It has changed from a very difficult thing from a person to a relatively easy thing, even if there are not many technical backgrounds. If you use WordPress, you may open a store without any problems.
Eleven Velo website was born all the experience lessons from all the way: a WordPress website using WooCommerce to sell complex self -design products, only
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11 Velo’s homepage now.
Design+ ultra -fine Meroen wool, the key to unique productsAs a small design studio focusing on the bicycle field, Eleven Velo is committed to every one The order orders are unique and for the owner. Everything we do must be personally, and every product we design and manufacture go through our own hands, and then give it to its new owner.
Although they started selling mountain drivers and bicycle equipment, Eleven Velo is now focusing on the highway cycling market. From about 2005, with the market’s head -up, competition with big players has become increasingly difficult, they adopted a new method:
We realize that if we can make kits on demand, we can make kites on demand for kites on demand. We will do something different. We will let people create what they want under a series of restrictions, so that we can develop a business that is difficult to touch in competition (no need to copy the same pipeline).
The pipeline is not a pipeline that is easy to copy. In fact, Gerald said that if anyone sat downTry to develop a business plan based on Eleven Velo’s working methods and methods, they will think they are crazy! This is a delicate production process that needs to establish a solid relationship with various stakeholders and producers.
11 Velo adopted a delicate way to sell each piece of customized equipment for sale.
Whether we buy 3M or 100M, the price of the substrate is relatively relatively priced, the prices of the substrate are relatively relatively relatively relatively prices. Same, therefore provides us with a fair competitive environment. That’s why I pursue the 11 VELO model, which is quite safe, because if someone tries to compete with us in terms of price, they will not kill us. So far, its work!
Eleven Velo’s products are durable, with high -quality components with known sources of all sources. Essence Their sewing shops are in Sydney. The ultra -fine Mero slave wool they use comes from Victoria (southern Australia). The high -quality line they use comes from Germany and their Leica comes from Italy. Production is sustainable and adhered to strict environmental practice. The key? Customers can design the kit completely in accordance with their wishes. Each order is unique, and it is unique to the owner. Each product must pass their own hands before shipping.
From the custom color selector to the animation that is used in the box
Online sales customized bicycle equipment -when people cannot try on -it is a difficult task. Stores that solve this problem include detailed size information and color/style \”constructors\” to make order easier. The builder has experienced two iterations, and the second is Hype’s magical plug and play.
Initially, when they proposed this idea, they hired a developer to build a jQuery Build a device. Except a bit complicated -involving three separate files to make it run and a large number of CSS -itIt runs well, but unfortunately there is no response. For those who shop on iPad and mobile devices, this is increasingly a problem. Gerard encountered HTML5 animation builder Hype and realized that he could use it to build a color selector. They soon turned to a complete customized solution. Gerald said that it is necessary to do a lot of work to integrate into Woocommerce, but it is now working hard.
It has obvious benefits to the order experience to add personalization by custom email
, but it is not without cost. Here, it appears in the form of a difficult five -step production process. Eleven Velo has been looking for the opportunity to please customers, and cleverly incorporates them into the production process by custom email
.
The team customized and supplemented the standard WOOCOMMERCE order email to draft messages for each production step Let customers feel participating. The message includes processing, assembly line, cutting, sewing and orders to complete .
In a short email, customers will get a link to view the Instagram picture of their orders -This is an excellent Example.
Check the current orders on Instagram to let customers understand their products and let potential shoppers see behind the scenes.
If there is a way to let customers participate in behind the scenes, it is always a victory! Especially if it takes a period of time: an order from 11 velo takes one month to complete, so in this process, including customers to maintain their participation creative way.
Over the years, 11 Velo has been trying to find the most effective way of marketing resources.
The printing is very expensive, and the indicators are bad. You spend a lot of money, you don’t know how effective it is. Traditional online media is not much better. It is also very expensive, and the return on investment is often quite low. They tried online banner advertisements and comments on small and medium blogsOK, they started trying SEO and Adwords in mid -2015 and reached the best point: within six months, their natural traffic flipped!
Search engine optimization in action.
Because they have a lot of target audience, Adwords is proved to be an excellent and effective means to contact potential customers. Three things.
In our live review this year, we decided to adopt the principle of less. This method is a battle of SEO -although all our pages have received YOAST green light rating. Our market is \”educated\”, so give them one or two sharp sentences, and then it is proved to be the best way in a clear and simple way.About the consumption Those are saturated by information, and the bicycle industry is no exception. Everything that sells online is largely promoted by marketing. Everything has a huge publicity about how great it is. Gerald believes that when people are so saturated, even a well -written text is written well. There is no effect. No matter how good your copywriting is, how much efficiency is your sales copy compared to another company that is also a carefully designed company in one paragraph? How do we remove all marketing exaggerations, only give them a few very simple sentences and a bunch of highlights of the highlights, and then leave it in that place? Call all the copywriting -Gerald said it should reduce the lengthy writing! Or better, leave it to you! Knowing what your customers want to have a significant impact on your sales.
The bullet point serves people riding a bicycle.
If you plan to adopt content marketing strategies, Gerald’s suggestion is to prepare hard to do it, because it may eventually be as many as operating your business. No shortcuts are worth going.
Your content represents your brand, and you need to treat it with faith and dedication.
You need to carefully weigh the return on investment. In other words, how much time does it take to calculate to create some good content (text, image, etc.) to convert it to currency value ($/hr), and then bring it to youThe return you see is weighing. You may find that paying for more traditional online marketing is more effective for expenditure.
When you have a clear target audience, the content marketing effect is the best. The effort to make scattered shotguns and try to attract everyone will not attract anyone in the end. Gerald recommends that you first solve your clear and clear audience, and then see if you can provide something that can attract them. In other words, Gerald also reminded the owner not to be afraid to say no. Content marketing is not suitable for everyone -sometimes this is not a real choice. In this case, he suggested to return to the foundation and find a more \”traditional\” market channel.
Gerald said content marketing is not suitable for everyone -they found that this is a kind of enjoyment for them, but it may not be good for your own company.
11 Velo’s blog has a rich article history that can be traced back to 2004, all written by Gerard and a friend. The partner spent a lot of time riding a bicycle, so the tone of the content is very real. They cover everything in the sun, all of which can add value to the life of customers. For example, how to bundle it.
The consistent sound behind the blog is consistent with the social media of Eleven Velo. When people consume any content of their content, it feels like interacting with a real person.
11 VELO pays more and more attention to pictures and illustrations
, and even start selling printed or art libraries they made over the years through cultural mixed -matching sub -website. Their pictures are often rolled and reposted, and they have the benefits of unlimited life. Don’t miss Japanese animation and bicycles, who would think of!
Adding betting on Instagram is also proven to be a good move. Gerard uses HootSuite to arrange daily posting time and attribute most of the brand’s growth to continuous posting.The brand’s Instagram page, if you are a fan, please follow it!
Although he believes that getting attention on Facebook becomes more and more difficult,
Gerad found that the coverage of sharing the post on the Facebook page through Instagram has always been five times the natural release. [ 123]. He even tested it, and the performance of exactly the same image released manually was five times worse. Hot tips! Wooocommerce, as a platform, expanded and custody techniques used
Obviously, we are glad that GrarD runs 11 velo on Woocommerce. We asked him about his views on our platform and its help over the years:
Like most shopkeepers, Gerad initially used many plug -in or extensions, and refined his choice
. Samples in the store:
Expand the bundled coupons
Mailchimp integration
Mijireh payment gateway
for common problems The knowledge base plug -in
Woocommerce points and rewards TablePress, handle all the size table of the product
- Wordfence security -Gerad said, \”If the website you run, there is no any For security measures, then you are crazy. The number of hackers trying to invade the back end is really disturbing! \”
- In terms of custody, 11 VELO hosted outside a data field of Chicago. Gerard has a server that can accommodate 100 sites and pays about $ 120 per month. He said it was important:
- This is a packaging
- . I hope he can serve you well in e -commerce in the past 15 years, because you can start a business by yourself.
Spending money on a special server may be as important as anything else, because we need 100% time to provide services to the server.
Talking to Gerad is very inspiring and interesting
Is there any special impressive reminder? Is there anything you disagree or want to intervene? Let us know in the comments.
