Let me start by saying I'm a member of Performance Bikes' newsletter. I get an email from them on average every two business days. What a perfect example of how marketing can be overdone. With this frequency, readers will get sick of nonsense emails and eventually unsubscribe. In an attempt to get their specials in front of as many eyes as possible they generate less interest to a certain degree.
After determining my want for goods was greater than my frustration with their marketing, I bought some things. However, while checking out a few more things raised my left eyebrow.
I was near the end of the checkout process when I left to change the color of a product. It was disappointing to find it was my duty to reenter all checkout information again. No one likes doing this. This would be the first thing that I would fix.
Next I noticed the most predominant number labeled total on the next-to-last checkout page was incorrect (as far as I see it)! This total didn't have the coupon applied. To find out what you're actually being charged, you'd need to know enough to subtract the grand total from the discounts listed below in a different colored & aligned area. How many support calls does this generate, or even worse, how many customers leave silently at this point?
Performance bike seems to always have a promotion; they offer free shipping or a percentage discount on all items. Personally it's a little strange. I'm either used to better prices all the time, think Trader Joe's, or sales on a few select items every week, think Whole Foods. Having discounts at all times that claim to be “limited time” reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. I feel less incentive to buy today knowing their “soon to run out sale” will be back again in two.
I don't doubt that Performance Bike does tons of business online, they claim to be the #1 retailer of bikes. I only think that they can do much better if they were to straighten some of these issues out.
On a side note, I was going to link “Trader Joe's” above to a page of theirs that had something about Philadelphia on it, but I defaulted to a home page link. They decided to hide their location listings in a PDF. :(
