Case Study: Telluride Academy

Drizzle Digital Brings Telluride Academy’s Website Into the Digital Age With Superior User Experience

The summer of 2023 marks Telluride Academy’s 43rd season. Part summer camp, part outdoor education program, it’s a long-standing Telluride community nonprofit with inclusion at its core, a robust tuition assistance program, and a mission to inspire children and teens.

With 100+ programs in and around the region’s breathtaking San Juan mountains, the camp includes day, overnight, and travel options. The locale is only part of its appeal, with families returning year after year to experience another Telluride Academy adventure.

Run by a small and mighty group of four, Telluride Academy entered a period of growth following the pandemic. Increased interest and an old website that had limited functionality led their team to look for an agency to help them modernize, save time, and enable parents to more easily find information.

THE CHALLENGE

As more and more families outside the tight-knit Telluride community became interested in its programs, Telluride Academy realized their old Wix website was too clunky to keep up. They needed a site optimized for mobile, an option to translate into Spanish, and better search functions to serve their audience. They also needed unique customization for organizing camps, so administrators could import and manage camp data more easily — a tedious and manual process in the old Wix website.

As they began the search for an agency to create a more intuitive, user-friendly website, it also became clear that they needed to modernize the look of their brand while paying homage to their historic roots.

“We’re kind of unique,” explained Sonja Ames, Communications & Enrollment Director. “At this point our focus isn’t on increasing the number of campers — but on creating functionality that allows us to offer detailed information without further taxing our small team.”

An off-the-shelf site couldn’t meet their unique needs. Telluride Academy hoped to improve the overall user experience, add password-protected pages, and most of all, streamline the management of e-signed permission and policy forms by parents.

THE SOLUTION

Telluride Academy turned to another Colorado-based team — Drizzle Digital — to create a new WordPress website that dramatically improved functionality.

Because of the seasonal nature of their work, Sonja and her team had a hard deadline and needed an agency that could meet their timeframe. And as a nonprofit, they were also looking for an agency that understood their budget constraints.

“We chose Drizzle Digital because they understood our needs and could be flexible on deliverables. It was also a nice piece of symmetry that they, like Telluride Academy, were founded by women.”

When creating the new WordPress site, Drizzle Digital added a Find Your Adventure tool that allows parents to use filters to find camps that match with their kids’ interests, age group, and camp dates. They also updated the look and feel, creating custom — not cookie-cutter — graphics and a mini brand book that gave the Telluride team a touchstone document for consistent fonts, colors, and images.

“I know other agencies, I didn’t want a giant agency from the city that didn’t care about my little website. Drizzle Digital was just the perfect mix to get it all done. They were a dream to work with — professional yet casual. It felt like working with friends.”

As part of the project, Drizzle Digital recommended transferring their email marketing platform to an easier-to-use yet more powerful software, and helped with the transition to MailChimp. Using the brand book as a guide, they were able to launch a cohesive look across their marketing channels with ease.

“Telluride Academy is such a unique program in that we’re outdoor education, not just a sleepaway summer camp. So they did an amazing job of meeting exactly who we are. Our board is thrilled!”

THE RESULTS

While the new site has only been live for a few months, it’s already reducing grunt work for the team.

“A mom emailed me asking for all the rock climbing programs and I can now simply send her a link to our new camp finder tool. Before, I’d have to go through every rock climbing program and create a list for her.”

In the meantime, with the busy summer camp season coming up soon, the team has been enjoying a more helpful user experience for parents, spending less time on admin tasks, and presenting a unified look and feel for their heritage brand. PLUS! Some real quantifiable gains when compared YOY:

50%

increase in Page Speed load time

44%

increase in Pages/Session

25%

Increase in Average Session Duration