NYACK SNOW PARK
Emigrant Gap, California

The Challenge

Nyack in Emigrant Gap is near Donner Summit and Lake Tahoe, California, and has been, for more than a half a century, a vital stop on for travelers, including railroad passengers, buses and automobiles. Nyack was home to the summit’s first motor lodge and restaurant, and this historic building still welcomes travelers at its Shell service station, convenience store, and fast food restaurant.

During the snow season, motorists drive to Nyack take advantage of the nearby hills, wooded areas and slopes for family snow-play.

With no website for the Snow Park, motorists were calling the nearby Nyack Shell station to make inquiries. This results in significant staff time to answer the numerous telephone calls received, asking for directions, parking, costs, weather and snow conditions, chain controls, season open and close dates, bathroom access, and to ask if snow play equipment was available for sale or rent.

The Solution

Because many visitors passing by the Nyack Snow Park are “on the road” while using smart phones, tablets or laptops, we needed to create a mobile-friendly and responsive website with front page access to the most important tools: directions, map, costs, weather alerts, and chain controls.

We created a website presence for the snow park, to reinforce that it was a separate business and entity from the nearby service station, restaurant and general store. We marketed the website by submitting the website to the State of California’s list of snow play areas, and, we submitted it to various recreational resources. We also created a profile for Yelp, because many users were writing reviews or asking questions about the snow park, but on a profile for a neighboring business. With it’s own profile, visitors were able to find out more information.

The New Website



Built From the Ground Up

We built the entire website from the ground up, with a simple responsive theme, plug-ins, caching, proper widgets, and fresh graphics. By using a simple theme with “modules” that can be easily be moved, duplicated, copied and changed, we made it easy for the business owners to make updates.



Mobile Refresh

The responsive website immediately boosted online visits by motorists using cell phones, smart phones, tablets and laptops.



Increased Revenue

The responsive website was launched for the 2015-2016 snow season. Despite a relatively mild and short winter season, the number of new visitors as the result of a website presence soared, and the sales from parking passes was very profitable for this season. The neighboring general store saw an increase in the sales of snow saucers, snow play toys, gloves, mittens, snacks, hot chocolate and more. The snow park will now expand to an more expansive property in the next season.



Increased Productivity

The website takes care of the most common questions. Where are you? How do I get there? Are you open? Is there snow? Do I need chains? Before a website was created, many of the most frequently asked questions were directed to the cashiers of the neighboring service station. By having a dedicated website, the calls to the service station decreased, but the inquiries to the right staff members, using the website’s contact form, was significant.



Maintenance

As part of our all-inclusive plan, our agency checks and maintains the website every month throughout the year, updating themes and plug-ins, monitoring contact forms and comment fields, clearing cache and testing page load time.