What they wanted

• Migration of content from Information Review System (IRS) web software
• Multiple review sections with the ability to add additional sections down the road
• Initial running shoe data acquisition (specs, price, photos) from popular online affiliate program
• Automated daily listing import from sister website
• Word Press blog software integration

How we helped

Serious Running started its life as TripleBlaze Trail Runs and over a couple years the site gathered 200+ listings and reviews for trail running - but the site's focus was a bit too narrow to stay sticky. We helped migrate the trail run listings and reviews from the IRS platform and redirected the old listings to SeriousRunning.com. We also helped set up two additional sections - shoe reviews and race details - to give the site more depth and immediately saw results as users lingered longer and became more interested in signing up for an account.

In order to make the new sections useful from day one, we worked with Serious Running to identify foundational information on which to the base the running shoe review listings. Once the data source was identified (a popular online sales affiliate program) we collected, filtered, and imported 150 complete shoe listings. The use of an affiliate program even gave Serious Running the ability to earn sales commissions on referrals generated through their review listings!

Serious Running is just the latest creation from the folks who run singletracks.com and they've been working to extend the singletracks brand to other outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, and running. As a part of the trail review process on singletracks.com, users are asked about other activities available at the trail: trail running, hiking, etc. This information is stored and in the past was infrequently manually exported as a bulk update to sister websites. To keep the updates more regular and speed up the process we automated the link so that when an applicable review is posted on singletracks it is repackaged and posted on SeriousRunning.com as a new listing. This solution was made even easier since both sites are hosted on the same server and running on the Review App platform.

Finally, as with many of our other Review App implementations we were asked to integrate blog software into the site architecture. We've got Word Press integration down to a science and as you can tell the integration is seamless with the Review App templates.

Running is serious business in the United States with more than 37 million participants in 2004 alone spending billions of dollars on shoes, clothing, equipment, and race entry fees. Review App allows SeriousRunning.com to deliver relevant running information and reviews - and makes managing all that information a snap!