SportCrazy.net

Indie Bike asked me for a review of their website or products, so I’ll concentrate the website and what I think they’re doing right and on a couple of key things I think they could improve.

What’s right?

Most of the elements of a successful e-commerce site are there, from the shopping cart to deal of the day, to the category layout, privacy and shipping informational pages. All the building blocks are in place.

What’s wrong?

Ok, so here’s a couple of things that I feel could be looked at. It’s an e-commerce site - you live and die by what customers think about your site, and this is mostly influenced by appearance. It looks like you have put a lot of effort into your back end structure in getting the infrastructure sorted out.

Where’s the bike?

But you’re missing a striking front end to the site - the current look and feel is lacking. One notable point- there is no picture of a bike anywhere on the homepage! I also think you could review the entire look and feel fairly easily.

I strongly recommend spending a couple of thousand dollars with a good web design company to get your cart template looking snazzy. Remember - e-commerce site - your website is not where you try to save money. I recommend finding a designer locally that you can meet in person and who you’ve had recommended by your peers.

Go international

Indie Bike does not ship internationally. International shipping will be offered in the future, but is not currently available.

Get it set up as quickly as possible. US based e-commerce companies are often surprised at how much of their customer base is international. For many countries in Europe, US prices are still the cheaper than local alternatives, even with high shipping costs!

Best of luck with it - if you’d like me to go into more detail than this 5 minute review you can contact me here.

Update: this Indie Bike Review was in dispute after ReviewMe.com refused payment despite it meeting all of their review guidelines. If you use ReviewMe.com I strongly urge caution. Tom from Indie Bike contacted me about this review and I understand that refusal of payment was not the fault of Indie Bike.