Biking Gear Stores Review

Depending on where you live, quality, reputable brick-and-mortar bike stores that offer a vast product selection can be few and far between. On the contrary, the internet offers access to dozens of first-rate biking gear stores that boast high-quality biking gear from top biking brands. Whether you need a new jersey or custom cycling shoes, you’re bound to find just what you need online.

What Makes a Great Online Biking Store?

While there are a variety of factors that can determine whether or not an online biking store is an excellent source for biking gear, we decided to focus on five items we felt were the most important: product selection, help and support, return and exchange policy, site features and ease of use.

Product Selection
From head caps to toe covers and everything in between, there is surprisingly a wide array of gear designed specifically for cycling. While most biking gear websites offer biking basics like jerseys and cycling shorts, the best ones (which include our top-ranked sites) offer much more including cycling shoes, outerwear, reflective gear and kids’ and women’s gear. In addition, the more brands, colors and styles of biking gear offered on a website, the higher it ranked. Since the product selection of any e-commerce website – biking gear retailer or otherwise – is central to their success, we heavily weighted product selection in rating each biking gear website.

Help & Support
The best biking gear websites are those that offer several customer service options that make using and shopping on their website easy and even enjoyable. For instance, they offer customers a wide array of methods to contact them directly including a toll-free telephone number, email address and online contact form; some even have live online chat. Other factors we noted included whether or not there was a FAQs section, detailed search options and order tracking.

Return & Exchange Policy
Purchasing something as particular and personal as cycling shoes or a biking jersey can be tricky; how do you know if what you are buying will fit right or is the exact color you want? Some biking gear websites offer very accommodating return policies (with no return or exchange time limit) while others are a bit more stringent (merchandise must be unused and returned within 30 days with tags attached). Generally speaking, the more flexible the return and exchange policy of a biking website, the better!

Site Features
Site features include any additional site resources or tools offered to customers, such as biking articles or guides, customer loyalty programs and product reviews. On each site we reviewed, we assessed how many and what types of site features they offered.

Ease of Use
One crucial but often overlooked factor of any good online biking store is how easy it is to use. Does it offer intuitive navigation and high-res, sharp product images? Is the site design aesthetically pleasing and does it provide easy and quick searching? The most successful biking gear websites provide all of this and much more.

The biking gear websites that scored high marks in each of these criteria can offer the best overall shopping experience. Whether you are an avid cyclist or beginning biker, be sure to check out all of our top-ranked biking gear stores, including REI, Performance Bicycle and Real Cyclist for all your biking gear needs. Also, be sure to look at our articles on biking gear stores.