As said I was going to start digging through past posts and I meant it. So the other day I printed off a document that included every SlopeFillers post title ever written.

Over 20 pages and 9,300 words later, I was chillin’ on the office couch looking for dots to connect. It didn’t take long.

First I remembered an idea I had for browser start page (and how that real estate is so overlooked), then I saw Alex Kaufman’s post about snow report timing (and the challenges of meeting different times/behaviors), after that I remembered how well the first content of the day performs, and finally I saw a post I wrote after talking to OpenSnow’s Joel Gratz about the power of anticipating a snowstorm. Here’s what I’m seeing.

Four Pieces
So, what I’d do is put together a simple page that combines four pieces:

1. A snow report
2. A snow forecast
3. Your best visual content
4. An action then can take

And I’d do this in a way that doesn’t look like a typical page, but more like a dashboard where everything is visible. Perhaps something like this.

Sunday River’s site already has a solid design, so I cheated and pulled that into my mockup…but you can see how simple I’m thinking it would need to be.

Getting Skiers to Act
Obviously, the value of this hinges on getting skiers to make this their homepage. In Chrome, creating an extension that will do that is pretty simple, in other browsers there will be a few steps to take in the settings. But that’s something that can be tested and optimized.

Once it’s set, however, you have a page that they potentially see both in the evening and the morning (adding to the snow-report timing dilemma), it capitalizes on the anticipation of big storms, and gives them an outlet for their anticipation. And if you have a new deal to promote, you’ve got another channel to push it on.

Then, in terms of content, it gives your best photos extra reach without getting buried in a feed or snubbed by an algorithm. They have daily exposure to your brand, content, forecast, and conditions.

Final Pieces
Think about how many start pages you see every day. If you’re on Chrome, how many times do you see the Google Doodle every day?

To me, that’s a valuable piece of real estate that a resort, with so much real-time information, could capitalize on.

But like I said, let’s stop talking and wondering if it would work, let’s build it. If you see any potential, comment below or reach out, and let’s prove this idea right or wrong.

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.