Redesigned: web sites and value-proposition
24 September 2006
It was only just back in February that we did a complete overhaul of our web sites (the front-end that is.. we’re always working on the functional “back-end”). Since then, we have hired a new marketing director, Katie Schoeben. Katie is the real-world customer us product engineer types really need. She pointed out several things about how we have been confusing the message we were trying to deliver to the world. We argued, battled and soon realized, she was right.
We started re-tooling our marketing message and that translated into re-tooling our website design. Not a total overhaul of all the pages, just mainly the home page and some product pages. Which brings me to the next “a ha” moment.
Back in 2000, when we launched, our focus was that of prescription. We had Joe Friel and his brilliant coaching mind wrapped up in several features on the site. Basically, our value proposition was that you any athlete could have the benefit of Joe helping them do their own self-coaching. That’s been his mantra in his TrainingBible book series, and it’s what he is amazing at: taking a ton of science, boiling it down, and then telling athletes how they can guide themself to a successful goal.
Since launching, growing, hiring and just generally busting tail for 6 years, we had started to drift away from that core offering: prescriptive advice for self-coached athletes. We had gotten ourself into a rut of being a “training log”.. and oh by the way, we had this amazing intelligence built-in, but we lumped ourself with much of our competition: just a plain ‘ol training log. There are a zillion logs out there, software that lets you laboriously enter data after numbing data, and it collects it fine, but it doesn’t tell you what to do, how to go faster, or hardly even give you any help with your training. Well, no more.
Our Virtual Coach solutions actual prescription, “just tell me what to do” information that has helped thousands of athletes over the years reach their athletic dreams. Oh, and by the way, we happen to have the absolute most fully featured, powerful, useful “training log” in the business too. Nobody else supports uploading data from so many devices like heart-rate monitors, GPS devices and power meters. Our planning calendar is second to none with incredibly powerful features like move, copy, insert workouts, by day, week or month. Integration with Outlook, instant “plan vs. actual” feedback .. on and on and on. But I digress.
At TrainingPeaks.com, the Virtual Coach ™ is really a personification of the planning tools that we offer. We have three categories of products:
- Self-Coached subscription with Joe Friel’s ATP Wizard (we used to just call that the VC)
- Get a Pre-Built Training Plan loaded into your workout calendar
- Find a Personal Coach. A true professional coach to motivate and guide you.
In the past, we just tried to sell a training log with these things lumped on top. In reality, it’s these things we sell and each of them comes with either our premium training log, or our free, basic log-only training log.
We also have a version of TrainingPeaks for coaches: The Coach Edition. Designed to help coaches maximize efficiency and communication with their clients. Hundreds of coaches use these tools, it’s like Adobe Photoshop for an endurance Coach.. your workouts, your methhodology, but our software tools.
You’ll soon see many new features, like an improved ATP Wizard, better device upload support and many other things along the way. Our team is passionate.. repeat, passionate about what we do, I hope it shows, and we all appreciate your willingness to come along on the ride. We are proud of what we’ve done, and excited by what lies ahead.
At CyclingPeaks, our bread and butter is WKO+. With features like the new Performance Manager, there is amazing intelligence to help you better understand your training. Our other products, ERG+, CRS+ and Real3D are all designed to help you get the most out of your CompuTrainer. They give you graphical, drag-n-drop editing and design capability that truly makes your CompuTrainer an invaluable tool
Need some help with your training? We got that. We can help.
From novice to olympian, to world-champion (!!) we have software that can help you reach your athletic dreams (oh, and a training log too).
2 Responses to “Redesigned: web sites and value-proposition”
September 25th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
As a Certified USAT coach who ‘uses’ utilizes http://www.trainingpeaks.com I must disagree with box software that promises to ‘make training easy’. Phooey. No software app can take the place of a certified, experienced coach who will sit down with you one on one and listen to your goals, limiters…and SEE up close and personal how you need help. To go faster, one needs to slow down and listen. By the subscription, THEN hire a coach…d
September 25th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Hmm.. I certainly didn’t intend to convey that using our subscription was better than hiring a coach, in fact, we go out of the way to ensure people realize that the ultimate way to use our software is with a true, human coach. Take a look at this page which explains our 3 products together: http://www.trainingpeaks.com/vc/virtualcoach.asp
I also didn’t use the term “make training easy”.. So, I’m not sure where that came from.
In the end, I totally agree with you. Our promise is to help guide athletes. To give them some structure vs. guessing. Sometimes its quite easy, other times its quite hard.
Ultimately, using a Coach is the best way to go. Using a coach that uses TrainingPeaks, we’ll argue, is the best thing money can buy.