Back in 2008 I started a small company I call Chronic Cycling. Chronic Cycling designs and markets original cycling wear as well as custom cycling jerseys and shorts.
What has followed since those early days has been a holistic brand and web development exercise. From creating the brand concept, identity, collateral and forms, to a website with full e-commerce capability and SEO, as well as social media marketing strategy.
The Work (Branding, identity, logo) for Chronic Cycling
The Brand
The brand started with the goal of “dropping the attitude” many competitors in the field are perceived to have. In other words “approachable cool”. The basic “chain star” logo and word marks are meant to be used together or separately, depending on the media and the desired brand presence.
Chronic Cycling Website (Click to enlarge)
The Website
Creative Journeyman designed the information architecture for ChronicCycling.com to:
- Reduce the description of the ordering process down to the smallest number of steps, and highlight a “how to” page by simplifying the navigation
- Identify and address the most common questions by clients with dedicated pages
- Address other questions in a dedicated FAQs page
- Provide a comprehensive gallery of past work that updates automatically
- Highlight recent work on a rotating panel
- Keep “News” items on the first page for as long as they’re relevant
Chronic Cycling website screenshot with commentary (click for larger image)
We used several technologies on the back-end to accomplish this: Strategic taxonomies, Custom navigation menus (including navigating to a dynamic page, created on the fly, based on a category).
The magic’s in the details: a different header image shows up with every page load.
Low-cost, high-end
e-Commerce Solution
For the e-commerce part of the site we used a great third-party solution by Wazala. This online store solution has the advantage of being unobtrusive to any website’s current layout.
Social Media
We determined Twitter and Facebook would satisfy the needs for social media marketing (with no physical store, the need for places to “check-in” just isn’t there, for instance).
Chronic Cycling Social Media Channels (click for larger image)
The social media presence is simple, and the strategy has been to keep contributions to relevant topics within the cycling community. The Chronic Cycling Facebook page is used to showcase all custom work (as opposed to a selected few on the website), while also showing previews of new merchandise. This way, followers enjoy an “insider’s” first look.
The website has drawn a lot of positive, unsolicited feedback. “Information is so easy to find” is the most common statement. The small following on social media is highly responsive (very desirable), and we’re getting very good conversion rates on referrals.
Let’s talk about how we can make this happen with your business!
