Ways to improve Strava

By John Swindells 20 Nov 2015 | Comment
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Strava is a truly excellent company with a reliable product of world-wide appeal. However, there's always room for improvement, and here are some suggestions:

  • I'm happy with it the way it is, because I just want a summary of my rides (how far I've gone, where I've been - map, and annual totals for distance and elevation). The detailed stuff is not for me.
  • Be better at showing history of self and people I'm following.
  • Vary the monthly distance challenges every month instead of 100kms. Not everyone does short rides. Also every now and then make the elevation challenge 10,000mts or so. It's getting boring guys.
  • More advanced photo management. It's currently way too much work to make sure the right photo is picked as the cover photo. The user should be able to select the photo they want for the cover. (Strava just picks the one with the earliest timestamp.)
  • Community-moderation for all public segments and routes, including name and path, as well as rejecting pointless segments. (Users can still do whatever they like with private segments. Maybe also add private segment sharing with specific friends if somebo
  • Automatic detection of non-human-powered efforts. (Way too many people steal my KOMs in a motorized vehicle.)
  • Full Strava experience in both web and mobile.
  • All features free, no pro pro vs basic. (Should generate enough revenue from reselling data and related services to government and big business.)
  • It seems a little hard to navigate at times
  • Better support for other activities than the three that are part for triathlon.
  • Better segment matching and filtering out of junk data.
  • IT would be nice if you could change your bike in the app
  • Adding Eddington numbers? :-)
  • Clean up some segments
  • Picture uploads from pc
  • Some editing and curation of routes and segments.
  • Add more swimming stats
  • Show power TSS and power progression more dominantly.
  • Provide facility to download ride data in MS Excel format
  • Make it an option NOT to see all the challenges people I follow join.
  • More multiple filters
  • Lose the challenge notifications!
  • Track gear more precisely, being able to switch wheels/tyres etc without retiring them.
  • Adding filters or display options to the homepage (e.g. show only "followings" from my country, do not show commutes, sort by ride date / sort by upload date...)
  • Calculating Eddington numbers and being able to compare these with friends.
  • Be able to create routes with queues for turn-by-turn navigation with navigation devices. Ideally being able to create the routes from rides.
  • Better search of previous activities, segments
  • Stop showing all the clubs that people have joined. It's just not that interesting to see that Jai has joined another 20 clubs today.
  • Map/satelite data should be more accurate. Sometimes when you look at a segment on the actual segment page and see satelite images for example you'll get a diffrent result then when you look at the segment in analysis of your ride. That has cost me a few
  • More eye candy a la Veloviewer
  • A default setting for segments rather than going back to the overall leaderboard each time. I generally want to see my times against people I follow, not people I have no hope of catching, or just my own to track my improvement.
  • By stopping the bullshit "other riders you may know" - if I wanted to connect with them, I would find them.
  • Make it easier to extract data
  • I never get updates about my friend's hikes.
  • Ability to make rides completely private to followers approved only, like a halfway house per ride setting.
  • I wish the iphone app allowed some of the features online like adding shoe/equipment.
  • Work on its stop/start algorithm. I dont understand how it is continually less accurate than my garmin, especially offroad.
  • Have better maps. When I plan ride and go to satellite image it just a blob with no detail at all! Complete waste of time...
  • More data analyses possible
  • Better support for hiking
  • Manual time correction for activities
  • Early preloading ALL segments in some radius with results in phone, to reduce start/half/end speaking delay caused slow EDGE connection...
  • Make LOCK on record screen - like it was on old version
  • More filtering options for rides/riders/gear/bikes/everything!
  • Split rides up automatically when they contain significant time/distance gaps (eg, travelling in a car or train)
  • Error-recovery in the app - it's really painful when you lose a ride.
  • Ability to edit routes which are imported.
  • Have created routes private by default
  • Share private segments
  • Sharing private rides
  • It's pretty good as it is.
  • Separate profile pic for each activity type
  • More analytical tools.
  • Ability to upload GPX
  • Have a toggle on the page for miles/km. at the moment you have to go into settings change it, save it, then return to the ride to see what your performance was.
  • Would like to see improvement in segment matching. At times it seems like a segment is matched by means of near proximity and rough direction.
  • Give you power and heart rate analysis for free
  • More in-depth data analysis
  • Fewer clicks to start a ride
  • Add a tool that can split a ride into two separate rides.
  • Add more analysis and agregate plots of data. For example, show a histogram of cadence data.
  • The "2016 PR" feature doesn't seem to exist, in spite of being talked about on the blog last winter, and I would enjoy it a lot!
  • Direct compare with another rider for the segments both riders have done.
  • Add unicycle to categories of bikes
  • During the winter I ride indoors several times a week. Monthly target from Virtual rides would be good
  • Provide stats for swimming
  • On each ride page, skip straight to your next ride rather than go back to Activity or Calendar page.

Strava hosts a support centre and community forum, and one of the things you can do is "Suggest a new feature": strava.zendesk.com/forums.

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5 Comments

by Frank on 26 September 2017
Di-2 stat integration
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by Peter Moline on 30 July 2016
I would love to be able to log punctures / flat tyres. Imagine the value of a heat map of where and when riders get the most flats.

For added value, log the brand and model of tyre, and the road surface

Reply
by John Swindells on 01 August 2016
I've thought about this in the past, Peter; it certainly would be good to know which tyres are better at avoiding punctures! I don't know how accurate it could be though (in terms of location & road surface), as I reckon that most punctures are caused by flints etc picked up a few miles beforehand.
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by Luca on 24 November 2015
Tag segments as gravel, single track, road, have a button to display such categorization on the map (coloured segments).
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by John Swindells on 24 November 2015
I wholeheartedly agree with this one! It would make such a difference if segments could at least be labelled as road or off-road.
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by Andrew on 21 November 2015
I would like the ability to reset segments so that I could get PBs for the year rather than chasing myself from two years ago!
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by John Swindells on 21 November 2015
Yes, I wasn't even that impressed with the "this year" KoM feature they introduced at the start of 2015. Maybe rolling 1-year or 2-year achievements would be better.
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by Dave42W on 20 November 2015
Have you seen Veloviewer? I love the extra features it adds to Strava reporting.
Reply
by John Swindells on 21 November 2015
I've heard of it, Dave, but not yet got around to playing with any of its Strava add-ons.
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