Review App

Case Study: Singletracks

Singletracks.com has been pushing the Review App envelope for nearly 10 years and has driven much of the Review App framework development. The site is both ad-supported and subscription-based and even sells branded merchandise.
Today singletracks boasts more than half a million monthly pageviews and has 125,000 registered members from around the globe. Ninety percent of the online content is user-generated and site traffic has been doubling year over year. Search engines drive the majority of singletracks' traffic with more than 100,000 pages indexed in Google alone. User-generated content drives a virtuous growth cycle.

What they wanted

  • The ability for members to add and review mountain bike trails and gear
  • Photo uploads tied to trails and user accounts
  • A subscribers-only section with access to mountain bike trail maps
  • Integration with popular forum and blog software
  • Advanced sorting and filtering including zip code searching

How we helped

Singletracks.com already existed as a top-down static content web site so the first step was to open up the site to submissions from registered members. We added the mountain bike trail section and gave members the ability to add reviews and even photos of their favorite trails. Once the trail submission tool was up and running, we tackled the mountain bike review section and gave members the ability to add and review bikes and accessories. This allowed singletracks members to post 450 new trails, 2,000 reviews, and more than 4,000 photos in 2007 alone - not bad for an unpaid work force.

Later, we added a subscriber-only section on singletracks that allowed members to view maps of mountain bike trails around the world. The map subscription section is unique in that members submit map data from their GPS units which is first reviewed by the singletracks staff. Once the data has been reviewed and mapped, the staff then posts the files for paid subscribers to access. Subscription sales are soaring and now make up the bulk of singletracks' online revenue.

Review App also provided custom integration with PHPBB2 and WordPress user databases on a single domain. This means singletracks members can post on the forums, comment on blog posts, and add and review their favorite trails all with a single login. Apparently the integration was a success - in less than a year the blog went from non-existent to the #1 mountain bike blog on the internet.

Singletracks makes use of some of Review App's most advanced filters and search tools including zip code trail filtering and data tagging. We even provided advanced search engine optimization services to give singletracks search engine friendly URLs on mountain bike gear review pages. As a result 80% the traffic singletracks receives comes from the major search engines.