One of the coolest things about our company is that we do almost everything in-house.  It’s pretty rare to find a small business with a decent amount of sales that has built their own site from scratch, without the aid of any templates or content management systems (Joomla, ZenCart, OSCommerce, etc.).  It’s like making brownies with Duncan Hines mix — it gets the job done, but can you really be proud of it since the brunt of the work isn’t your own?

Jordan built the first MileHighAthletic.com using some very basic HTML.  It was just for informative purposes, you couldn’t buy anything on the site.  Over the summer of 2007 he learned PHP and the site took a huge leap: customers could buy skis directly from the site and skip eBay altogether.

MileHighAthletic.com circa December 2007. Table-based layout, no CSS.

Aesthetically the site was still primitive, and so in January 2008 I started learning XHTML and CSS, and with our forces combined we churned out a pretty decent looking site.

An improved, CSS-based site. Circa February 2008.

Since then, Jordan’s PHP skills and my HTML/CSS skills have far improved.  Jordan’s PHP has allowed us to have a one-of-a-kind CMS designed specifically for  selling used skis.  From a design and user interface perspective, we knew what worked with the old site and where we needed to make improvements.  Thanks to Google Analytics, we know that a lot of our customers use our “Ski Finder” feature, a wizard that narrows down products we have available to what they are looking for, be it a price range, ski length, ski type, etc.  The overall navigation worked well too, the menu was easy to find and since it was chunked into smaller pieces, easy to find what you’re looking for.

One of the biggest problems with the old site was the landing page, or the page you first arrive on when you visit Powder7.com.  Instead of displaying our products (what we sell, what we do, a very important message to get across to customers, especially online where attention spans are very short), I had rotating graphics of some skis we sell.  The graphics were pretty dense, and though I meant well, there was no way I could keep updating them to coincide with what we have in stock at that exact moment.  I grabbed photos of of some of our best-selling skis and created a visual spread that placed each ski within a classification.  Jordan wrote some code that randomly selects three skis from each category and displays them under the category.

One of the categories, displaying our most popular women's ski: the K2 Burnin Luv.

The new landing page.

We also updated the item display page, making it easier to find the ski’s specs and replacing two medium sized photos with one big photo of the tops of the skis and a smaller one of the bases.  Clicking on the photos takes you to a giant-sized photo of the tops and bases that you can zoom in on.

Item display page - notice the navigation is consistent throughout the site.

Finally, since a site that is too bland can look a bit unwelcoming, I perked it up with a background:

Might be a bit hard to tell in this small image, but the background is our logo.

Next up: Part III - Our First Ad Campaign

If you only do one race this summer, make it this one.

The Great Colorado Triathlon will be held for the first time in Evergreen, Colorado on August 16th.  The Olympic distance race will be a unique event with a swim in Evergreen Town Lake, a hilly two-loop bike leg on surrounding roads, and a flat and fast run.  It’s an ideal race for Front Rangers/Denverites looking to get in a late summer race and make the most of living near the foothills of the Rockies.  Check it out, it will be a good time.

Link: greatcoloradotri.riptidemultisports.com

Yesterday morning the Table Mountain Triathlon website launched.  Table Mountain Triathlon (herein referred to as TMT) is another great event put on by Sean Wendt and Riptide Multisports.  It’s a super-sprint event, with a 500yd pool swim, 12.5mi bike, and 5k run.  …I know a lot of people who would be happy about such a short swim!  It’s based out of the Duncan YMCA in Arvada, Colorado with the bike and run portions taking place on surrounding neighborhood roads.  It’s a great race for beginners and a nice fitness check for veterans.

The site design is similar to the other Riptide sites, but I added bullet-proof tabbed navigation to this one to create a better user experience.  It’s always nice to know where you are on a website, and the tabs provide a nice sense of direction.  The best part?  No Javascript, no Spry, just standard HTML + CSS.  What does that mean for the user?  A super-light design that loads faster and is highly compatible across all browser types.

Table Mountain Triathlon site screenshot

I went with an old-school recreation softball team look for the site theme, for no other reason than it will look great on a race shirt (and wait until you see the logo I’ve been dreaming up).  In my opinion, race shirts are the single best marketing tool triathlons have: make a shirt look cool and you ensure that the athlete wears it around and it doesn’t get tossed in that wretched old rag bag.  It might just be me, but if I see someone wearing a sweet race shirt I instantly become interested in the race; my logic being if they make a cool shirt, they probably put on a pretty cool event as well.

Check it out! tablemountaintri.riptidemultisports.com

Introducing my first race website!  The Littlefoot Triathlon is a sprint distance event (750m swim, 15mi bike, 5k run) held in Bear Creek Lake Park by Sean Wendt and Riptide Multisports.  The 2009 race will be the third running of the event.  Last year I had the opportunity to compete in the event, and despite frigid water temps (~55F), I can’t say enough good things about the race. Overall a really well organized event with a delicious hot breakfast afterward.  What more could you want?

Designing the site I had two goals:

1. Strong branding that easily links Littlefoot and Riptide Multisports.  I wanted the Littlefoot site to have the same basic layout as the main Riptide site.  Littlefoot also needed strong branding for the race specifically.  While I am still developing the logo, it was important to design the site with a unique and strong feel,  provided with the black and lime green color scheme coupled with a rugid, but modern look.

2.  Ease of use.  Triathletes range in age from 14-80+ (seriously).  The site has to look cool, but also be highly functional.  Nothing is more frustrating than hunting around forever trying to find how much the race costs or the link to register.  All information can be accessed within 2 clicks from the Littlefoot home page.  This is very key when designing in general, but even more so when you must appeal to a variety of ages and demographics.

Coming soon for the Littlefoot Triathlon:

• race logo
• race shirts

Coming soon for other race sites:

• Table Mountain Triathlon
• The Great Colorado Triathlon

Please visit (better yet, register for it!) the Littlefoot Triathlon site and let me know what you think.

http://littlefoottri.riptidemultisports.com

After working on my own site for over five months, it’s finally presentable to the outside world.  Since August I’ve been fortunate to have my plate full of other sites to design, so this one has taken a backseat.

So here we go!  This blog will be more work-focused than my old one, but of course with the occasional triathlon and skiing posts mixed in.

Please share your comments!

Enjoy =)