STRAVA
🌱 CREATED: 2009
🎯 MISSION AND PURPOSE: Strava has the mission of building the most engaged community of athletes in the world.
👩⚕️ COMMUNITY MANAGER (Yes/No): Yes
📙OVERVIEW
If you know someone who (especially) runs or rides a bike, chances are they have a profile on Strava. This activity tracking platform, created in 2009, currently has +90M members and it is known for being the athletes' social network.
Unfortunately for the brand, since the beginning, they have been fighting with several obstacles, the main dilemma being monetization (fortunately, due to the potential of the product, the team have managed to receive large investments. Although this is not the solution for a financially sustainable solution). Moreover, for the last two to three years, trying to overcome the monetization problem, other problems were created, some of them related to privacy.
Although this is not the focus of the article, even for an analysis of the Strava community, it is important that these topics also serve as a starting point, because when thinking about community as a strategy, we are talking about something that is intrinsically linked to the business and its goals.
📲 STRAVA COMMUNITY TODAY: Product over network
Kudos-driven: at first glance, and as mentioned at the beginning, the main dashboard is “assembled” so that the platform is seen as a social network: like (Kudos: 9.6B Kudos were given in 2021) + comment. That’s it!
Individual journey: For the athlete who has just submitted another workout, there is a range of other features, which vary depending on whether the user is free or paid: activity tracking, check for fast times in a specific segment, performance data, route builder.
Most of the daily activity that is submitted on the platform comes from free users, corresponding to more than 95% of the total number of users. There are still a very small number of paid users who see value in premium features
Social features: clubs (189K Strava Clubs were created in 2021) and challenges. Inside the club, there is the Leaderboard and a discussion panel. More recently, it is possible to create club events. On the challenges side, in addition to the individual challenges, Strava also launched the Group Challenges with the following goal types: most activity, fastest effort, longest single activity, and group goal.
Strava Community Manager: at the end of 2021, a Senior Community Manager was hired to join Strava.
What we have seen over the years is that the main decisions for "growth" of the brand are focused on the product and the launch of new features, in order to bring more members to the premium side. Even with recent strides, presenting those new features, and assuming that they have consulted with some of the members for feedback (something I would question given the activity on the community forum), there is STILL potential here to be explored.
❌ WHAT’S WRONG?
Generally speaking, the social (community-driven) features are still basic to the potential that Strava has (and the data that is on their side). We cannot call “community” to a thing that is hidden in the comments. We know that is way more than this.
Social Features: current options of this platform are not 100% community-friendly. Some people might like the idea of the leaderboard, but that’s just a leaderboard. The discussion panel is not enough and deserves some improvements: you only see the main post and you have to click on the comments section to see all the replies. Then, there is now the possibility of creating events.
Transaction over connection: of course, Strava needs to have more premium members to be a sustainable business. But is the current strategy the right one to make this happen? According to my research, what I feel is that there has to be an appreciation of its members, the feedback they share, and the contribution they make every day. About two years ago, and when most of the data comes from free members, the brand decided to move most of the features to premium. Literally, from one day to another. You must create ways to entice people into paying and blocking all access to the features, is not one of them. Taking away features won’t prompt people to give them money. This leads me to ask...
Can you hear “us”?: we easily find members who love Strava. Potential super users willing to share their feedback, ideas for improvement, point out bugs. Both from an experience point of view and from a technology point of view. By looking to the "Community Discussion" forum we may think that feedback is not a valued asset.
User experience: the experience you have on desktop is completely different from the one we have on mobile. Still in December, managing a group challenge, I had to do some things on the mobile phone and others on the desktop. Additionally, there is no consistency in terms of information. Another example: organization of information in the English language, is different from the Portuguese language. (And Strava has users all over the world).
👁️ MY PERSONAL VIEW: "Strava, network 🤝 product”
Strava must go beyond a solo experience and focus more and more on creating something that is not replicable anywhere else. People are now moving to use other solutions that offer a better experience, but still, in the end, for many of them, Strava is Strava.
But, for what it is right now: is it good enough as a stand-alone product?
Team must now focus on making a product so good that people will be happy to pay for it. And they can do it together with their members. Time to “shake hands” and bring the power of community to the center, helping the brand to have an even higher competitive advantage.
Right now the value proposition may not be clear to members leading them to ask: looking at the difference in plans, is this the reason why a person will subscribe to have the best of Strava? I will be honest, on my side, it is not. It is good to see some numbers after uploading one more workout, but that’s just it.
🤗 Suggestions of resources for the Community:
This is exactly the type of business where Product and Success should be the main outcomes of the community. On the product side, create a space for product development with the customers where it is possible to share ideas, insights, and feedback. On the success, make it a space where members can learn how to use the product in a better way, making it also a tool that helps customers to become better athletes.
IMPACT: optimizing customer support, longer customer retention, better product adoption.
What about promoting/improving, even more, the Community Discussion forum? Here is an amazing opportunity to show support to members, where Strava team, obviously, will help but that, for sure, some members will also be willing to raise their hands and share their experience: either related to training, but also with Strava.
Ready, Set, Engage! - being a community focused on success and looking to have more engagement (going beyond comments and kudos) why not starting to create events and webinars on, for example, “how to use the data?”, “how to set your training zones?”, “how I know that I am getting progress?” and invite athletes and coaches to host the event.
Tips and best practices: associated with the idea presented above and based on the principle "your goal is our mission", start creating appealing content focused on sharing best practices in training. And why not, in life beyond training?
STRAVA Community Analysis - Connect Dots Rating
Given the basic level of features associated with connecting members, for not being (yet) a space that promotes a sense of identity and belonging, a space where people feel they have value in participating (based on their aspirations) but at the same time, will be able to contribute:
1- allowing members to help each other and inspire each other
2- feel that their opinion is heard and contributes to the success of the product as a whole.
Would love to hear your opinion on this analysis. What do you think?
Note: this analysis is based on my personal opinion, as a user of the platform, as well as on research on the platform, articles and forums. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any company, organization or individual.
That's all for the second brand & community analysis. Do you have any other brands you'd like to see a community analysis like this? Let us know!
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