GORUCK has been talking about splitting their events website off from their gear website for what feels likes now. On August 10th, 2020 they finally did it.
Actually Two New Websites
After digging through the websites it appears that GORUCK has actually created two new websites here: goruckevents.com and registration.goruckevents.com. The GORUCK Events website features general information about GORUCK and the GORUCK events. The GORUCK Events Registration website features the meat of the transition with all of the events and the actual registration information.
GORUCK Events
The GORUCK Events website is, from what I can tell, a static website with details about GORUCK’s events.
The top navigation features Events, Training, Learn More, and Shop. It’s worth noting that the Shop link will take you back to the original GORUCK website where you can buy gear.
Here’s an example of what you’d find on the Star Course page under Events. If you want to you should definitely check out the new website.
The last time I had Jason on the podcast we talked about GORUCK donating their event proceeds to charity. He wasn’t sure if that was going to happen in 2020 or not (thanks COVID-19) because he didn’t know how many events would actually run. It looks like they’re announcing on the new website that the donations are in place!
If you’re curious who the 2020 profits from GORUCK Events are going to then here’s the answer… it’s the Travis Manion Foundation. That means any event you register for in 2020 will be helping them out which I think is pretty awesome.
GORUCK Event Registration
The GORUCK Event Registration website is where the meat of the new functionality is.
The initial view is a chronological listing of GORUCK events. It’s a nice view because you can see what GORUCK has going on but I was really hoping that when you zoomed in on the map it would filter the results.
Here we are looking at Miami however we’re still seeing California and Ohio events in the lower list. You can always click the dot on the map to see the events there but filtering by region using the map would have been slick.
If you click the “List” menu item you’ll get a full list of all GORUCK events in an order I have yet to figure out. It’s not ordered by event name, event type, location name, or date. If anyone can crack the code on how this is being ordered I’d love to know!
The “Calendar” view shows upcoming events on a monthly calendar. This is a tough view because it’s near-impossible to tell where any of these events are actually happening.
Moving over one of the event items will give you more information about it including the location.
The final view is the “Categories” view which organizes everything by event type. This is pretty handy if you’re looking for a specific type of event somewhere. You can filter on the left to only view Heavy Challenges or see where Team Assessment is being held this year.
Once you’ve found an event you can click on it to get to the details page. This has all of the same information that the previous event pages had with one caveat. There’s no longer an area for staggered pricing. I’m not sure if they’ve removed that completely but there’s no indication on any of the event pages.
Moving to the checkout you’ll discover that your GORUCK account and GORUCK Events account are not linked. We also find some new fees associated with events. Right now it appears there’s a Service Fee (3%), Merchant Processing Fee (3%), and Processing Fee (3.26%). I added a second event to my cart and the fees increased proportionally so it appears that the percentages are static.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to unpack with this update. I’m a fan of GORUCK donating all of their event proceeds to charity. That’s awesome. I’m not a fan of having two separate GORUCK accounts (one for the gear store and one for the events website). The additional fees at checkout aren’t the most fun… but the new views and the page speeds are great. The load times are drastically down which is great. Time will tell how this split works but I’m a fan of GORUCK and hope it gives them what their previous platform lacked.
Thoughts on this new website or this one? Let me know in the comments!
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