Special Blend Gravel was a fairly new women's gravel cycling camp that empowered female cyclists to push their limits in a supportive environment. They were ready to create a stronger community and support that community beyond the 2 camps held each year.
"Working with Megan to ensure our site was providing the correct content, in the correct places, at the correct time, was an eye-opening journey. She not only helped me understand the value of the revisions, she walked me through her process and provided suggestions and examples of how we could improve it, resulting in a website focused on allowing us to reach our target customers and our goals."
We sat down with Serena Bishop Gordon, the founder of Special Blend Gravel, and her team to figure out what assets we were working with. They had a website but were partnering with their main partner and sponsor for the mailing list, which meant Special Blend Gravel did not have their own list or their own unique voice. Their website was lacking a clear user flow and branding that matched their uniqueness.
During our user interviews, we learned from past campers that making the decision to sign up had been really hard. They felt like they had a lot of questions about what was provided, if they were strong enough to take part in the physical aspects of an intermediate to advanced cycling camp, and they were worried about leaving their family for a few days. Most also desperately wanted some way to stay in touch with the founder and with the other campers after the camp ended.
It was quite clear that the cost of doing nothing was the slow stagnation and eventual end of Special Blend Gravel.
We discussed different ways to create impact for their audience and decided to focus on updating the website and creating a mailing list.
We worked with Serena to figure out a mailing list schedule that worked with her schedule and excited her. We decided on a monthly newsletter around four content buckets. The content topics were chosen based on the many emails she received from past and potential campers. We helped her create a way to batch her newsletter writing so that she could keep to her send schedule and not burn out. We also discussed the branding of her business and what a new website would look like, with a focus on the user flow to get new viewers to sign up for a camp. We looked over survey responses to learn what mental and emotional barriers stopped people from registering so we could address them with the new website build.
We plotted out a super tight roadmap due to the spring camp opening for registration in a few months. Serena's vision was a redesigned website with much stronger branding and an intuitive user flow, a new mailing list, and a sold out camp.