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Propeller specializes in custom desktop, responsive, and mobile websites for ski resorts and unique brands nationwide. According to Dave Gibson, Owner and Creative Director: “We attribute these awards to our strong collaboration with great clients, and our team’s 16 years of experience delivering highly technical and creative custom websites.

Bromley Wins Gold + Silver

Bromley Mountain’s website won a gold in Consumer Information and a silver in Travel & Tourism. The redesign delivers a more energized visual experience with greater emphasis on driving online revenue.

Project Case Study
Website

Shawnee Wins Silver

Shawnee Peak’s website won a silver in Travel & Tourism. This site seeks to present the brand and the on-snow experience in a fresh light to increase both visitor engagement and conversions.

Case Study
Website

Propeller Wins Silvers

Propeller Media Works won 3 silvers in Business to Business / Corporate, Responsive / Mobile Design, and Self Promotion / Portfolio. This single “responsive” website is designed to adjust to the visitor’s screen size, and eliminate the need for both a desktop site and a mobile website.

About The Awards

The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers. Each entry is judged on solution creativity and originality, overall user experience, communication of message, technical merit, and the effectiveness of solution.

Winner List : Propeller Media Works: https://www.horizoninteractiveawards.com/winners_list_2012_p

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Back when the vast majority of users were at a predictable resolution, we could entertain the discussion. In most design presentations, the inevitable “where is the fold” question would surface and we could point to it with relative certainty. Today, I just pull out my phone or tablet and demonstrate both how the fold is now different on every device, and how swipe scrolling is just so natural.

It’s time to think beyond the fold. We need to think mobile-first in both design, content, and how touch pads/screens are changing the nature of how users interact with web pages. The Four Season’s site is a great example of where we’re going > Longer pages with deeper content that cascade vertically in panels.

Mobile Web Killed the Fold

I love mobile for so many reasons, and this is certainly one of them.

Back in the day, we generally knew where that fold was. It started at around 420 pixels when I started and ended at around 970 the last time I cared. That was desktop thinking. Today we can see where the trend is headed and it won’t be long until the majority of web content will be consumed on a mobile device. With so many devices at so many resolutions, the fold is indefinable and irrelevant – and simple doesn’t exist anymore.

Scroll On!

The finger swipe has overtaken the mouse, and making scrolling even easier (was it ever hard?). Swiping is natural and kinda fun on a touchscreen. Conversely, the process of using a menu and navigating from page to page on a mobile is not all that fun. Slow mobile connections compound the issue. With that in mind, I think we should expect to see longer pages loaded with deeper content that provide the user with an abundance of information with a swipe versus a click.

Content Pyramid

The pyramid structure for content (and design) is still completely relevant today. The tip of the pyramid expresses the key message at the top, and deeper and broader supporting content cascades down below. If content is engaging and relevant, users dig deeper. Users move from “scan & search mode” at the top of a page into “engaged consumption” mode as they dig deeper. It’s in this zone, where users slow down and absorb content and a recent study from Chartbeat found that ad recall improved in this area below the fold where users spent more than 15 seconds – which boosted ad recall up to 70%.

Four Seasons Website Case Study

Although its not responsive, this is a great site. I welcome you to go to the site and pick a destination – such as Costa Rica. That first destination page is key. Consume it as if you are planning to go there. Move all the way down to the bottom – panel by panel.

First, the tip of the pyramid is nice and simple. It captures the traveler’s interest with great imagery of the destination first (versus the resort). Their customer is a traveler first – eager to discover. By focusing on the destination, they’re aligning themselves with the interests of their audience.

As you scroll, they continue the theme of the destination with weather, maps, and things to do outside the resort. The page is segmented in panels, which are very tablet friendly. The content continues to bate the traveler’s curiosity and craving to discover. Of course they do sell the resort too – and of note, they include (selected) guests’ review with a Trip Advisor widget.

Once you get to the bottom of that page, you have a pretty good overview of both the destination and the resort. The traveler has a much better base to move to the next level and is emotionally primed for conversion.

Conclusions

In my opinion (take it for what its worth) what we – both clients and web designers need to do is design pages that focus on content and mobile first. We need to know our target audience very well and on these key pages – especially the homepage – we need to take them down a path that informs the visitor just enough to pique their interest. The content and design needs to connect the brand with the visitor emotionally. When we do this, then we have primed the visitor for conversion to customer. This simply isn’t possible if we think with a fold mentality.

 Additional Reading

• KissMetrics: Why “The Fold” is a Myth – And Where to Actually Put Your Calls to Action.
• MarketingLand: Chartbeat Demonstrates Below-the-Fold Ad Placement Is More Valuable Than Originally Assumed”
• Opposing view from Gregg Blanchard @ Slopefillers: “DEAR RESORT MARKETERS, THE WEBSITE FOLD IS NOT DEAD – HERE’S WHY”

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Its a mammoth operation with very unique digital marketing challenges. Over the past two years, we’ve tackled the challenges of Mountain Creek and its family of amenities. Our success there has now earned us the opportunity to take on Mountain Creek’s big sister: Crystal Springs.

This project will include the development of a custom responsive website focused on increasing leads and sales conversions across each property. Not a simple task, but we have a number of innovations planned for this project that we’re very excited about.  The website of this world-class resort will look the part when it launches.

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ONE. Mobile + Desktop In One: Responsive Design Website

Duh right? I know its rhetorical, but in the 16 years that I’ve been doing this, this ranks among the most significant evolutions in web design. Its adoption is also break-neck. This time last year, we had one responsive design in production – and it was our own. Right now, about 60% of projects in production are responsive. Every lead that we’re following calls for responsive design. That’s impressive. I doubt we’ll ever create another mobi site.

The influence of mobile stylistically is largely based on usability. Interactive features need to work with fat thumbs now, so buttons and navigation are larger. Usability is taking yet another leap.

As mobile came in, Steve Jobs pushed Flash out. The freedom to create interactions anywhere on the screen. The scalability. The end of boxes and right angles. That’s over for now. The challenge with responsive is to avoid slipping back into the box.

TWO. Longer “Engagement” Pages

Fold. Schmold – I’m done listening to people squawk about the fold. The fold is for newspapers and both are dying. Two things are ending this discussion. The first is mobile. Mobile users love to scroll – what’s more fun than flinging down the page. Mobile users would rather scroll the page than deal with navigation and wait for pages to load. The second thing is content. If the content is good, users will scroll.

The conflict though is for those sites that need that page load to enable an impression-based ad unit to make them money. This article in Ad Age about Chartbeat reveals that good content drives eyeballs below the fold. These eyeballs stay on the page longer -they call it “engaged time” and its in this zone that ads perform better. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see an ad unit priced on “engaged time”.

What I’m seeing now are longer pages that draw you in and provide a full story without loading a new page. One of my favorites is the Four Seasons. Check out the homepage for any destination… here is Costa Rica.  What I dig about this is the sequential panels of info that draw you deeper and deeper and provide you with key visuals, information, and regional context to assess the destination. These panels are very tablet friendly – but sadly, the site isn’t responsive.

THREE. Single Page Websites

This is really a cousin to the previous Long-Page trend, and I really can’t tell whether its trending up or down but its still worth looking at. Here, either sections or an entire site’s content all live on one page. The page is broken into panels one either scrolls or links to via anchors. These tend to work well on simple sites – web designers love this approach for portfolio sites. Due to SEO and the risk of performance issues with the weight of the large page and all the javascripts and such to pull off the effects – its not a path to be taken hastily.  Rarely is it a path for a resort, but here is an fine Resort Website  - The Waquassett Resort on Cape Cod.

Each section of this site is a single page. Elegant transitions using parallax scrolling effects deliver the sense that this resort is of another level.

FOUR. Photography & Endless Scrolling

Pinterest became addictive because you could never reach the end. With every swipe of the tablet more and more shoes, jackets, edible yummies, and architectural wonders. Everyone has jumped on to feed our our addiction for visual stimulation. I love it. We’re starting to redesign our photo galleries now and will be pushing out larger photos.  So long lightbox!

FIVE. Enhanced Content

Before I read this story, Snow Fall – The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek by John Branch of the New York Times, I’d have said that I’d always prefer paper over screen. This amazing story of this terrible tragedy provides a glimpse into the future of online content and story telling. This piece of art incorporates multimedia and transitional effects that brings the content alive on the screen. I’m sure this will win awards on both technical and journalistic merits.

This and most of these example incorporate advanced HTML 5 and javascript techniques that enable developers to push the craft. However, what any client-side folks need to remember is that this won’t work on all browsers. On older browsers, what we aim for is for the primary content and functions to all work. It may look different than the approved comps, but they work. We call this progressive enhancement (or inversely graceful degradation) such that as you progress up to the most recent browsers, the experience becomes more enhanced.

Last thoughts

There are two pervasive themes throughout all. One is mobile. The other is content. The mobile-first approach focuses on content as much as design. It forces us to prioritize and focus on what really moves the needle. While I miss Flash so very much for the freedom it granted us, we have incredible new tools that are shifting our focus from the design of the shell towards what matters more – the content that users consciously consume. Any site that does that right will win on all levels.

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[ Note, my account has yet to be upgraded, so I'm referencing images from this post on InsideFacebook by Brittany Darwell. Its a good read, and I recommend you check this article as well ]

Facebook’s Newsfeed is arguably the most valuable advertising property out there, so you’ll quickly recognize improved ad disaplay marketers. A key change in the layout is a wider area for the posts themselves and their photography. G+ has earned accolades from photo lovers and Facebook has been wise to borrow there. This translates to larger images for Page Post Ads with images as you can see here below.

Source: InsideFacebook.com

Another very influential ad type is the Page Like Ad. This simply unit is a money maker and now gets an extra boost pulling the source’s horizontal cover photo.

Source: InsideFacebook.com

The crux is that Facebook continues to be an advertiser’s very good friend.

Image sources : Inside Facebook : How ads look in the new News Feed layout

More Reading

• Mashable : Is Facebook the New Google+?
• TechCrunch :Facebook’s Riskiest Bet Yet. Can It Uproot A Billion People’s Behavior? – Includes before and after comparisons.

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We’ve been Bromley Mountain’s interactive partner for over eight years, and this past year Bromley’s marketing director, Michael van Eyck, wanted a website redesign but was fearful of the cost. Our solution was a website reskin instead of a ground-up redesign, where we retain the overall layout of the site, but address color, typography, graphics, and background photography. Because today’s websites rely on templates with shared elements, its now possible to give a site a whole new look and feel by adjusting templates. Many websites use just a few templates such as the homepage, landing page, content page, and product detail page for example, and they all share CSS files which determine many aspects of the site’s look and feel.

Now in this case, we did rebuild the homepage template because the overall layout needed to accommodate new needs. However the layout of most of the site was fine, so we were able to deliver what any visitor would assume was a complete custom redesign to the site with a fraction of the cost of a website rebuild.

A side note worth pointing out, is the growing emphasis on online sales. This is growing across all of our ski resort clients. For Bromley, this reskin enabled us to put greater emphasis on their number one revenue generator. Buy Online and Save!

For ski resorts on a budget a redesign of your homepage coupled with a reskin of the rest of your site is a cost-effective solution to deliver a fresh look to your customers.

Visit Bromley.com : Vermont Family Ski Resort

Learn more about solutions for ski resorts

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Before

After

The unique nature of each resort is what I love to discover and then showcase through the custom websites we design. I also love the transformative effect that we gain from coming in with a fresh perspective. For Shawnee, as you can see from the before and after screenshots here, that transition was most dramatic. The site now is in-line with the brand vision of Shawnee Peak’s marketing director, Rechael Wilkinson. She has done an amazing job of establishing an attractive, honest, and unique visual identity for the resort, and has applied it consistently to every touch point in a very short time.

The success of this project started with connecting on person to person level and learning these important nuances of the resort. Rachel and Josh – with Chet looking over our shoulders, provided us with a very honest view of what the resort was really about. Who their customers are today, and who they want to attract tomorrow. We listened very closely, added our own thoughts, and together designed this website to accurately reflect what is great about this brand, and connect with their customers of today and tomorrow.

As Rachael generously offered: “I have really loved working with Propeller. From the first on-site visit where we did a tour of the Mountain on ATV’s, through to the site launch – Propeller’s reativity, responsiveness and ease to work with has made this process smooth.”

The before and after in this case is significant. Now we’re telling the true and honest story. We’re also making it easier for visitors to find this gem through improved SEO. By making it easier to buy online, we’re contributing real ROI.

Visit Maine Ski Resort Website

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Enjoy.

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