I am smitten by Squaw’s new website. Yes, it’s beautifully designed. Yes, it’s wonderfully responsive. Yes, it’s easy to get around. But what I want to highlight this week is the marketing BEHIND all that. Because that, my friends, is the best I’ve ever seen. Huge kudos to Squaw and Origin.

A while back I made myself a challenge: design the simplest resort website possible. This is what I came up with.

The plus signs below each of the three areas at the bottom were basically hidden input fields so, upon submitting the form, I could know who they were.

“So instead of cramming 100 things into one page, I’ve turned this into a squeeze page with the sole focus of getting as many people to opt-in as possible. And, along the way, getting them to opt-in with (hopefully) a bit of insight attached to their email.”

And knowing what type of visitor they were, I could then place all subsequent communication into relevant, personalized emails.

In a much more advanced and well-designed and executed and conceived way, that’s what Squaw has done.

The New Duds
Here’s Squaw’s new website. See if you can find what part got me so excited.

See that area, about 40% of the way down? That…is…genius.

When someone clicks on one of those areas they are essentially raising their hand to say, “hey, SqauwAlpine.com, I am this type of person, this is the type of thing I’m most likely to buy.” And SquawAlpine.com, well, SquawAlpine.com listens. And listens well.

The Best Part
Because below the surface, the website takes that click and remembers it. Remembers it when they opt in, remembers when they come back, and remembers on every page they visit.

Right now, just the basics are being implemented, but with that feature in place, they have opened the door to do some really, really, really powerful stuff. And, because the launch isn’t the end but rather the beginning for this site, they will.

To be fair, you could have put this listening into any website, but this site is designed to funnel people toward these actions: dramatically increasing the value of such functionality.

Amazing work, but that’s only the beginning… (more on Wednesday)

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.