Warren Miller Entertainment
OPPORTUNITY
Since its inception in 1955 by Warren Miller, Warren Miller Entertainment (WME) has led media innovation in the snow sports industry. Throughout the years, WME has grown into a prominent online publisher creating blogs, hosting podcasts, and becoming a source of snow sport news, all while continuing their long tradition of producing worldwide tours for their yearly ski film. Overtime, WME’s website had grown stale, and they came to 970 Design in need of a website that not only serves as the backbone to their film tour and movie schedule, but one that created a streamlined user experience through their multitude of online publishings.
Despite being the online portal for one of the most aesthetically-pleasing and innovative production companies on Earth, the company’s website was extremely outdated and its multimedia capabilities were limited to only hosting photo carousels. In addition to the anachronistic design, the site’s functionality was obsolete when it came to hosting the influx of annual users to its coupon and film tour pages–the two most actively engaged areas of the site. The Warren Miller Entertainment site was losing web traffic due to a lack of navigational ability, and, in short, needed a massive overhaul.
APPROACH
Understanding the client’s needs, 970 built a highly functional and navigational website, capitalizing on intelligent, organized designs that helped users navigate in a streamlined fashion. The site was designed as a place for exploration, a resource for all things ski-related, and to showcase the remarkable archives of Warren Miller’s media collection.
With a large portion of the company’s income coming from web advertising, 970 created a webpage flow that made advertorial posts appear organic to users.
970 Design also built new film tours and coupon websites for WME. Using a modern filtration and geo-locating functionality to negate the user to locate nearby Warren Miller tour stops, online ticket sales and tour attendance significantly increased. In addition, 970 created a streamlined coupon site that remembered its customers and their registration and allowed vendors to have a single point of contact to upload special deals throughout the year. The streamlined coupon site reduced the number of fraudulent codes used for gaming WME sponsors, increased user satisfaction by allowing them to see the multitude of ski industry deals they were privy to, and revolutionized WME’s data capture capabilities.
Finally, the branding was created to conjure similar feelings of simple ski bum days of yore while still paying credence to the world-class skiing showcased in Warren Miller’s films.
WME came to 970 Design in need of a website that not only served as the backbone to their film tour and movies but created a streamlined user experience through their multitude of online publishings.
Customizable looks were created for both the coupon site and the parent site so that the imagery, look, and feel could be updated with each new film.
Après
When working with 60 years of archives and media history, creating a new website is far from cut-and-dry. 970 Design set about creating a website that not only served as a guide to–and repository for–all of Warren Miller’s films of the last six decades, but that also allowed visitors to quickly and intuitively access the company’s robust online publishing operation.
Beyond that, our largest goal with Warren Miller was to build a tour landing page that enabled the scores of devoted international fans of the brand’s films to easily locate tour stops near them.
The end result of our efforts honor the legacy of the godfather of ski filmmaking while simultaneously serving as one of the largest, and most visited, online publishers in the snowsports world.
