Loyal blog readers!

Powder7.com and Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center are teaming up to bring the latest Matchstick Productions ski movie to Golden!

When: Friday October 30 at 7pm

Where: Colorado School of Mines Campus (Colbaugh 209 — click here for a campus map)

What: The Golden premier of Matchstick Production’s latest ski movie: “IN DEEP: The Skiing Experience”.  There will be free swag (from Powder7.com of course!), burritos, and a costume contest!

How much: $10 per person/$5 for Mines’ students with valid school ID — all revenue goes directly to the Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center

Watch the “IN DEEP” teaser here.

Come check it out and support a great program.  For more information call 303-237-7547 or email us at info [at] powder7.com

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

Yesterday Jordan and I headed up to Vail for a day o’ skiing with some friends.  The snow was falling most of the drive out I-70 and when we arrived the mountains were sporting a nice fresh layer of powdery goodness, not exactly a powder day, as the snow was pretty heavy, but it was the next best thing.

3 or 4 runs in Ofer and I were scooting down Northstar when I bit it.  Hard.  I went over the bars, sailing headfirst down the mountain.  From what I’ve pieced together from the evidence, my head hit right above my forehead, then my face slid along the snow, smushing my goggles into the bridge of my nose.  My arms were out ahead of me as though I were diving into a pool while holding onto poles.  I slid for what felt like forever, but was probably just a few feet, before coming to a stop with my head still aiming downhill.  My first thought was that at least my skis are fluorescent green so Ofer will see me and know it’s me.  …not realizing that the only thing visible were the bottoms of my skis.  A snowboarder came over as I was untangling myself and asked if I was ok.  My arms hurt and I knew I hit my head really hard, but I was ok…I think.  Ofer had been in the trees so had missed the action, but came over when he saw the aftermath.  He quizzed me on the obvious: “Who are you?” Amy  “What day is it?” sometime in February  ”What day of the week is it?”  Thursday.  Everything was as usual (it’s rare I know the date off the top of my head), but the answers took a little longer to come around into my head.  And my head hurt.  

We skied down and met back up with everyone, did another run, then went back to the top to venture into the back bowls.   At the the top Ofer convinced me to go see the mountain patrol to just get checked out really quickly.  After some time I gave in and we went over.  The patroller asked me questions similar to what Ofer had and I answered them all just fine, though I could sense with a little delay.  He urged me to go down to the base to talk to a paramedic and I said sure, as long as I can ski down.  No no no…I would have to ride in the toboggan.  No way!!  Toboggans are for the unconscious and people with broken limbs.  He did his best to coerce me to go,  but instead I high-tailed it out of there and headed to the China Bowl.  

As we headed down along Poppyfields I knew I was in trouble.  The visibility was awful and it was impossible to see any variations in the snow’s surface.  I got dizzy.  It felt like I drank a bottle of wine at the top and was trying to get down.  Only not as fun as that sounds like it might be. 

I had been laughing a lot since the fall and thought that was a good thing because it obviously meant I was fine.  Then, out of nowhere the laughter turned to tears for no reason at all.  Except for the headache and sore arms, I was totally fine!  What was my deal?!

After another run I called it a day and killed some time at Two Elk’s.  The headache and emotional instability lasted through this morning (special thanks to Jordan for not killing me!) but now I’m feeling a-ok…except for the achy ribs, arms, neck, and head.  

The take-away from this unnecessarily verbose entry (which I will blame on still being slightly out-of-it)?  ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET!!  I’m sure I would’ve left behind some nasty innards had I not had mine on.

All smiles post-crash.