CASE STUDY: VASA Fitness Website
Company Overview
VASA is a mid-market gym brand with nearly 40 locations spanning 5 states, with a majority of those locations found in Utah. They have a commanding lead in market share throughout the Salt Lake Valley, and a robust value proposition at low-mid price points. In addition to the typical weight lifting and machine training areas, VASA also offers a variety of daily classes--from yoga to aquatics to cycling, all included in their memberships. Overall, VASA is an impressive company, which is why it’s surprising that their website is so non-user friendly.
Problem
I use their website regularly to see the cycling class schedules at different locations, and finding the schedules is painful! The schedules are different at every location, so on any given day, a different location may work best for me, yet there is no easy way to check the cycling schedules for multiple locations. It takes five clicks to find the schedule for just one location, and the user interface is difficult to navigate. If I want to check a different location’s schedule, I have to click almost all the way back or go back to vasa.com to start over, then dig five clicks down again to find the different location’s schedule. The site navigation is so cumbersome, I’ve resorted to saving three separate links in my iPhone notes that will simply take me to the cycling schedules for my three favorite VASA locations. Here’s a better look at the five clicks it takes to get to just one schedule:
Solution
I want to make it easier for VASA members to find and attend a class that fits their schedules, which means being able to toggle between different class types and VASA locations quickly. VASA could simply fix this by creating a filtered search where members can filter schedules by class type (cycling, yoga, aquatics, etc.) and by location. Putting this filtered search on a single page with a calendar interface could eliminate the pain of having to click so many times, especially to look at different locations. Here’s an example of how this interface could look:
*Photoshopped screenshot of vasa.com
The Bottom Line - Why is solving this problem important?
VASA has poured a vast amount of resources and capital into their robust class offering, and made classes a key part of their value proposition. It’s important to make it simple for members to take advantage of this offering.
I would assume a large portion of vasa.com repeat site visits come from members looking for class schedules, yet with the current website navigation, finding class schedules is just annoying. This barrier to entry could have an affect on class attendance and membership satisfaction. VASA is competing in a space where companies like ClassPass make it easy to find and attend a fitness class, which may lead to members (like me) using ClassPass more than VASA’s class offering.
We want to make it easier for VASA members to find and attend classes, which can increase class attendance and allow VASA to better compete with companies like ClassPass and other studios, which in turn will strengthen VASA’s value proposition, increase member satisfaction, and improve the bottom line.