POWDR

The Client

Powdr Corp. is one of the largest ski resort operators in North America, and oversees 18 resorts from California to Vermont.

The Situation

Any ski fanatic knows that variation in terrain or conditions can call for a different type of ski. The perfect powder ski doesn’t always translate to groomed terrain, and vice versa. To get the best experience, skiers need flexibility in the tools and hardware they bring to the mountain. Powdr required this same fine-tuned flexibility across all of its digital properties.

Powdr asked Acquia, Elevated Third, and Hoorooh Digital to come along for the ride and build the ultimate Decoupled Drupal 8 site for Boreal Mountain Resort. Elevated Third spearheaded the decoupled Drupal development, while Hoorooh Digital supported the website’s front-end design.

The Challenge

A collection of disparate content management systems made it difficult for Powdr to manage digital properties across multiple brands and sites. It needed a digital solution that provided each brand in the Powdr family the flexibility to deliver customized web experience for users. Boreal Mountain Resort claimed first tracks for building a decoupled Drupal site on Acquia Cloud Platform.

The Solution

In the development world, few trends are spreading more rapidly than decoupled Drupal, but what is it? A decoupled CMS allows developers to use any technology to render the front-end experience (“the glass” where a user interacts with an application) in lieu of the theming and presentation layers that come with a coupled CMS out of the box. In a decoupled Drupal architecture, the Drupal back end exposes content to other front-end systems, such as native mobile applications, conversational UIs, or applications built in JavaScript frameworks.

Powdr put Drupal 8 at the center of its digital system to power its flagship site, in addition to brand’s like Boreal. We helped Powdr get all of these sites on one platform with Acquia Cloud Platform. Each resort site can use Drupal as a content repository, which exposes content for consumption by its preferred Javascript framework in the front end. This provides front-end designers with flexibility, and allows them to customize their approach for each brand under the Powdr umbrella.

 

Drupal 8 also ensures that Powdr will be able to handle development today and tomorrow. Our partnership with Elevated Third meant Powdr could develop a new digital strategy. Elevated Third helped Powdr build an architecture with Drupal 8 components. Marketing teams can use Drupal components to easily reuse content types, and quickly compile new page configurations. This means brands like Boreal can continue to efficiently scale their site, and other Powdr resorts can also take advantage. The team at Elevated Third helped Soda Springs, a sister resort to Boreal, spin up its own site in just a week’s time thanks to this approach.

The Results

We helped Boreal build a decoupled Drupal 8 architecture that offers customers an engaging experience, and brings the mountain to any device or screen.

• Powdr can power its flagship site, and its other resort sites on one platform
• 50 percent of users have entered a purchase path directly from the homepage
• Bounce rate: Decreased 45 percent