How to Create the Perfect Trail on GoTrails.org: Step-by-Step Guide

Create a high-quality trail on GoTrails.org that users will love

Want to stand out? This step-by-step guide will show you how to create a high-quality trail on GoTrails.org that users will love, while maximizing your engagement rate. We'll cover everything from titles and tags to routing tips, so more riders discover and share your route.

Contents

Step 1: Create an Account with GoTrails

Create a high-quality trail on GoTrails.org that users will love

To create your first trail, you will need an account. This allows you to organize your trails and securely view their stats. If you don't already have one, you can click this button:

Step 2: Navigate to the Create Trails Page

Create a trail by clicking the plus sign in the top-right corner of the trails page

You can access this page by selecting the plus sign on the trails page and my trails page, or by clicking this link.

Step 3: Trail Title

Your trail title should be concise but descriptive. Conventionally, the final word of the title should be the trail type (ex: Copenhagen Heritage Loop), but this isn't required.

Step 4: Trail Location

The trail location should include two parts: the region (City or Administrative Region) and primary division (State, Province, etc.). These must be spelled correctly and separated by a comma.

Step 5: Difficulty

GoTrails offers many tools to help users determine the trail difficulty. When deciding on a difficulty, it's important to factor in distance and terrain, both of which can be found on the GoTrails map page for a given route.

Pro Tip:

Elevation data can be a power tool provided by GoTrails

Looking at the elevation graph in the expanded info section of a route can be a very useful tool in determining a trail's difficulty.

Step 6: Trail Type

The trail type is simple! Loop trails have the same start and end points, and linear trails do not. Think of them like the difference between a line and circle.

Step 7: Trail Visibility

Decide who gets to see your trails

The trail visibility lets you decide who gets to see your trail. Public trails will be visible to everyone, via search and recommendations. Unlisted trails will only be visible with a link, so you can show them to your friends.

Step 8: Trail Tags

Common tags on GoTrails

Often overlooked, using up the space given to you for tags can boost the number of impressions your trail gets by a significant margin.
For more information, view our guide on writing tags effectively on GoTrails.

Step 9: Trail Description

The trail description tells users what to expect when riding your trail, which will help them decide if it's for them. You should keep it short and to the point (1 - 2 sentences). The information section is where you should really go in depth.

Step 10: Trail Image

Images attract user attention more than any other section

Arguably the most important section of the create trail page, this is the biggest thing users will see when choosing which trails to click on. Make sure the image is a good quality, but remember that the image cannot be more than 2 mb.

Pro Tip:

The create trail image looks similar to the one users will see, so make sure it looks good on the page you're viewing it on. If you're on a computer, try resizing the window to see how it looks at different screen sizes.

Step 11: Trail Information

Although optional, adding a good information section can add user incentive to ride your trail. It can include anything from more description to points of interest. Once you're done this step, you can click begin routing.

Step 12: Trail Routing

Trail routing is a simple and effective way to create your dream trail

This is similar to regular trail routing, but instead of a maximum of two points, you can add as many as you want. This means that you should add points wherever you think our routing system will defer from your intended path, such as at major intersections. If the path gets routed differently than the way you intended, you can always click the undo button.

Remember:

The greater the density of a settlement, the greater the density of your markers. This means that when routing in a big city, you will usually need more markers than in a small village.

Pro Tip:

If there's a part of your trail that you aren't sure how to route, you can rely on our algorithm to do it for you: just click point a and b and we'll route it.

When all this is done, you can click the big green save route button, and watch the rides roll in!

Next Steps

Start creating your first trail today and share it with the GoTrails community!

Create your first trail

More helpful guides:

You're ready to publish your first trail, now explore these next guides to boost visibility.