Using the tool

Let’s say your goal is to grow to $100,000 from $450,000 this year.

The tool will give you insight into how to get there.

Start with your current data.

Head into your Shop’s Google analytics Account.

Go to the Acquisition > All Traffic > Source Medium.

Start by choosing a time frame that you want to improve over, keeping in mind that it is important to have enough data to be meaningful.

That means you would want to have a timeframe where you’d have lots of numbers to play with (think six months to a year).

Looking at the table header, you’ll see data like:

Step 1. Put Sessions into the Traffic input field.

Step 2. Put the Ecommerce Conversion Rate into the Conversion field

Step 3. Calculate the Average Order Dollar Value

We arrive at the number by dividing the revenue / transactions: $48.97

Step 4. Put the Avg Order Value into the Average Order $ Field

Step 5. Hit Tab or click out of field

You’ll then seen an updated result below the field.

Notice the numbers are a little off from what we see in our analytics table. This is a result of rounding. The purpose of the entire exercise is to show you how to get from where you are to your goal at a high level.

The fun begins

If we want to get to $100,000 next year, we can get there by increasing any / all of the three components.

Any growth strategy will have to address all three areas to find opportunities for improvement.

What is the formula for online Bike Shop Revenue?

The formula for online bike shop revenue is:

Total Revenue = Traffic (sessions) X Conversion Rate X Avg. Order Value.

Explaining the formula and insights to glean

The formula gives us a quick view at a website's funnel.

Users start their journey offsite with a question.

They might look up a certain road bike, and see your ad in search results.

If it speaks to them, they click through onto your site.

They then make a decision in 1-3 seconds if the site might be able to answer their question and either "dwell" on the page or "bounce" back to the search results page.

Along the way, the user decides if they want to buy something with you or not.

Hard Truth Time: Over 95% of your visitors will buy nothing on your bike shop website

When someone buys something on your site, they are converting.

Conversions aren't just purchases. Some other types of conversions include signing up for a tune-up, filling out an employment form to become your next bike mechanic, or heading over to your store location page on a mobile device (which is a super strong indicator that a user is actually going to cone in and buy something).

Our goal with each step of the funnel, is to keep as many people in it!

So how do we keep our funnel nice and wide?

We use SEO to get as many people as possible onto the site.

We do this by optimizing your website's structure, URLS, structured data and meta in a way that is most likely to make Google want to rank the site higher and higher for a number of different keywords.

We also impact your off-site ranking factors by making sure that your citations are rock solid.

We also create long form content and actively promote it to cycling industry thought leaders and online communities to get links and social shares.

As the site ranks higher, more users see your site in search and consequently click through to the site.

Traffic

This number represents the number of sessions or visits to your website from all sources.

Log into your Google Analytics account and go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Source Medium and watch your traffic over time. You'll want to keep an eye on whether they are growing month over month and year over year.

If you see traffic dropping and your other metrics aren't improving, you will see a decline in revenue. Boo!

Conversion Rate

This is the percentage of your website's visitors who decide to convert (buy bikes, bike parts, bike accessories or schedule bike repairs or bike fits).

The benchmark conversion rate for online retail is 1.5%. If you see that your conversion is much lower than that, then your challenges lie on site.

Look at your pricing in relation to your competitors, shipping policies, trust signals, ease of navigation User Experience, and Pagespeed as potential culprits.

Deal with these issues and you'll have effectively reduced the friction for users to buy.

This is something that you probably do already at your shop.

When you have customers test ride bikes, you only want them to try 2 -3 bikes because you know it will make it easier to decide.

Average Order Value

This is pretty self-explanatory too. We want to always increase how many items and the dollar value of each item for every transaction.

If you see this number shrinking, look at your orders to see why that may be the case.

Did you run out of key inventory that drives your bike shop's revenue at higher price points?

Did you change how you display products? Did you remove a "related products" feature on the site?

Total Revenue

This is our favorite number. We get it when each of the above metrics are multiplied by each other.

We love how when you make small incremental changes to each and every metric, the effects are compounded to greatly grow your bike store's top line revenue.

Growing revenues takes concerted effort to improve each piece of the formula. It takes time, but in the long run is totally worth it.

We're here to help! If you can use a hand, reach out