Skydive The Gulf

Striking the Right First Impression

You only have one chance to make a great first impression! When you’re a dropzone competing in a high volume tourist market, you have to look better than all tourism-based businesses, not just the nearest competing dropzone. The management team at Skydive The Gulf realized this and felt that before they invested money to drive people to their website through various ad campaigns, they needed to ensure that the website struck the right chord. Our team was tasked with the following:

• Create a striking first impression that showcases both fun and professionalism
• Based on analytics, pricing is the highest-trafficked page – make it easy to find!
• Ensure the user-experience is clean and easy to navigate informed by data
• Ensure the ‘Book Now’ button is always one-click away especially on mobile
• Connect data conversion tools to measure pay per click ad campaigns.

A High-End Life Experience

Compared to most tourism-based activities, skydiving is easily one of the most expensive things a person can do while on vacation. Because of the high ticket price, it’s very important that the website portrays the company’s value proposition quickly while also providing essential information for the end-user. Additionally, it’s important that the end-user gets a sense of professionalism in order to reduce apprehension related to skydiving. In a high traffic beach market where putt-putt, pier-fishing, and surf-shops selling tchotchkes are prevalent, it’s important to showcase the dropzone as a life-changing, high-end (but fun) life experience as opposed to a cheap tourist carnival ride. Here are the elements we implemented to meet our client goals:

• Value Proposition – Skydive The Gulf offers something that few dropzones in the US can offer – ocean views and beach landings. This message needs to be front and center.
• Developing a Fun Color Palette – Skydive the Gulf did not have pre-existing brand standards which left us with the job of creating the color palette. Our design team curated dozens of color palettes that represented fun as well as the Florida beach vibe without looking stereotypically “hokey” (read: Miami Vice)
• Giving the User What They Want – We use data from dozens of websites across the country to inform us what the client is looking for. This dataset helps us layout the order in which we provide information. In most cases, a potential customer is looking for the price. Because Skydive the Gulf offers multiple packages, we incorporated the ability to slide between the various packages on the home page.
• Proximity – Because many dropzones are not located near major population bases, many vacationers are often unfamiliar with the area. In this design, we included a proximity map to showcase where the dropzone is in relation to the top tourist attractions which negates the need for the end-user to open a new browser tab to view Google Maps.
• Information – With the most important information presented, we highlight some of the most common queries people have about skydiving like “Is Skydiving Safe”, and “How to Plan Your Day.”
• Highlighting the Who – Few dropzones do a great job of highlighting the members of their team, but we think it’s essential for our clients to showcase who they are in addition to what they do. (Classic Simon Sinek). Within the homepage, we’ve highlighted the many smiling faces with clickable links to their bios to improve confidence for the first time jumper.
• Floating Action CTAs – We’ve included a floating Book Now button to always be present on both desktop and mobile. For the mobile experience, this button is always a quick thumb-tap away which reduces the need to scroll to find it.

Optimizing for Search

There is little point in having a beautiful website if it can’t be found. Our SEO development team conducted keyword research identifying high-volume keywords related to skydiving and things to do in Skydive the Gulf’s target markets. Equipped with data, the site was optimized for search which includes targeted blog posts, optimized URLs, the creation of meta-information, the inclusion of alt-tags on all images, 301 redirects, the creation of internal links, updating local citations, adding an SSL certificate, and more. Since its launch, the website’s site traffic has made steady gains via organic search leading to increased sales conversions.