How do you migrate an iconic brand’s website to a new platform? Very cautiously and with great reliance on user testing. That’s what Brighter Side did to move Snowbird’s website to the POWDr Corp platform. 

It all started with a comprehensive audit of the current site. We indexed all the site’s URLs and ranked them on factors such as traffic, dwell time, and conversion paths. This allowed us to identify content that was most valuable to both guests and Snowbird. 

Once we understood the site’s content, we then moved to architecting the experience. This involved taxonomy studies and site maps. We performed tree testing to identify the most successful information architecture and navigation. 

Alongside the UX strategy, we performed a brand audit to understand how to elevate the experience using the classic Snowbird brand. At it’s heart, the Snowbird brand is a solid representative of the Swiss design vernacular. 

To understand Swiss design, we went to the source and read the work of Josef Muller-Brockman, one of its founders. And from that research, we concluded that the best way to communicate the experience was to focus on the grid system, as a hallmark of Swiss design is negative space.

As we explored UI design options, we performed numerous preference tests along the way to confirm that our UI supported our UX. Once we optimized grid systems, brand systems, and navigation, we got to work designing the rest of the experience.

While we leaned heavily on the existing POWDr design system, we also found opportunities to enhance components and, in some cases, to design new components altogether. The value is that the new components become available to the rest of the resort portfolio. 

After months of UX, content strategy, and UI design, we were pleased to see the site launched in October of 2024. Check it out at Snowbird.com.

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