It’s that time of year when things drop. Things like:

• The temperature
• The leaves
• Sassy new resort websites

And as much as I like the first two, the third can give those a run for their money.

One of the resorts that recently updated their was Granite Peak. A clean, colorful sticky left-nav design, here are three things I dig about it.

#1) CTAs in the Nav

I really like this one. Yes, our booking engines and CMS are typically separate, but I’ve always felt we make this a little harder than it needs to be for our guests when we force people who just want to buy a pass to click “Tickets” then “Pricing” then “Buy Tickets” and then one last “Buy Now” before hitting out booking engine.

Granite Peak makes it super easy for folks who are just looking to get the common stuff to do exactly that by putting links to their booking engine directly in the nav.

#2) Sticky Promo Footer

I’ll tell you what, one of the handiest, most effective things I build into virtually every website I touch these days is some CMS-controlled sticky header or footer promo area. They get a ton of eyeballs but don’t interfere with page flow and make it super easy to drive a lot of awareness to a specific page without hurting performance of visitors coming for other things. Such a smart addition to the Granite Peak site.

#3) Hours in the Main Nav

I like sticky left navs for a handful of reasons. They certainly have limitations, but I love how they give a little more room to add hierarchy while keeping a nice, linear flow that’s super easy to browse. It creates the space to better feature stuff that a ton of people are looking for like…yep…hours. Love this move from Granite Peak.

There’s a lot more than that, but those are my top 3.

It’s a clean, colorful site that’s got a great interface and a lot of nice features that add value without adding noise or complexity.

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.