yo guys not trying to have a dig here at darren, but seriously i think bedford would be so much better if they had a proper website and online catalog with proper pics laid out like a shop like municycle.com for example.
at the same time have tons of detailed pics and descriptions for each product and service available! bedford would be awesome in this respect cos they have so many different powdercoated colors for everything.
im more than 100% that sales would boom from this and bedfords popularity would sky rocket even above its current populairty. Maybe introduce online card payment too direct from the site?
I agree 100% with the poster of this thread! Good, effective marketing is essential for a successful, growing business. Sorry but I think the current website needs a great deal of improvement; it’s basically only a pricelist. Totally insufficient, especially to the novice who really needs pictures and descriptions of the products and services to make any kind of an informed purchase decision.
I would like his site updated too, as with UDC and Compulsion cycles.
For UDC I would like it to be more up-to-date with things. Somethings not displayed on their site for weeks, will be available when you call. Some of their pictures dont match the product… Other than that, their sit is fine, thouh their shipping could be better on their smaller products.
For Darren, id like to see an updated price list at least. The one he has right now is from March 28, 2006. What would be best if he got a site like UDC, cause when you read ‘20" BEDFORD HARD CORE AIR’ most people dont know what that is, so pictures and a discription of what components make that uni would help lots of people.
For compulsion I would like to see more than a white page with one banner, and two e-mails.
I offered to design him a new website but he declined and said hes got something in the works. This was around August I believe. From what I’ve heard though this is what hes been telling people since around 2000.
If he is choosing to keep his website small I can understand though, one man can only process so many orders in a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe his intention is to create a more personal service by forcing people to call him rather than just click a few buttons. People always seem keen on Darren because you can just call him and talk it all out if you’ve got a tricky order. Of course you can do that with UDC too but people don’t think to, they use the online system instead and then sometimes don’t get what they wanted.
But to be honest word of mouth and the many people in unicyclist.com are his best advertisement. Not sure but I believe most people would have good things to say about him.
He runs the Toronto Unicyclist club and contributes time in the unicycling community. He’s also involved in the 800km Ride the Lobster race.
Darren is probably focusing his energy on the unicycle community rather than a fancy web page. That’s probably a good thing for us.
yeah but it wouldnt hurt to have some pics and a few descriptions here and there…
all it would take would be a couple of hours photo’ing every single product on offer… (bedford don’t even carry that many brands as UDC so it’s easier)
and being a shop owner for the many years he’s run the business… darren should find descriptions damn easy, so descriptions could easily be done in only 1 hour’s hard work. Then just chuck all that onto an updated webpage and you’re done! I’d be more than happy to put up adequate descriptions for the majority of products on offer form Bedford.
…and especially for bedford tshirts! everyone wants one! but its so hard to find pics of them anywhere, so definitely an updated site would do good in this sense.
I’ve been wanting to get some of those shirts for quite a while and not nowing what each of them looks like is the main thing that has kept me from ordering.
Good, effective marketing is essential for a successful, growing business. Sorry but I think the current website needs a great deal of improvement; it’s basically only a pricelist. Totally insufficient, especially to the novice who really needs pictures and descriptions of the products and services to make any kind of an informed purchase decision.