From Powder to Pixels - Perfectly Planned Ski Vacations, Now Perfectly Digital

The challenge

Ski.com’s legacy system was outdated, limiting their ability to scale and compete in a fast-evolving digital space. They faced challenges including:

• Complex content management: Reliance on developers for updates slowed marketing initiatives.
• Performance bottlenecks: Slow load times and poor SEO rankings.
• Fragmented user experience: Inconsistent design and a lack of responsive functionality across devices.
• Integration issues: A cumbersome booking process that did not fully align with their Expedia engine.

Ski.com faced a significant challenge: their legacy CMS had become a bottleneck for their content marketing team and overall digital strategy. Originally built many years ago to meet the needs of the time, the system had not stood the test of time. What was once a functional solution had turned into an outdated platform that hindered both efficiency and growth.

The legacy CMS lacked the flexibility and scalability needed in a modern digital environment. Content teams were frustrated by its rigid structure and reliance on developers for even the simplest updates. This slowed down marketing campaigns, delayed landing page rollouts, and limited Ski.com’s ability to respond to opportunities in a competitive industry.

Nicholas Rowe, CEO & Co-Founder of Saigon Digital, saw this as an opportunity to completely transform Ski.com’s digital infrastructure. Working closely with his technical team, Nicholas and Saigon Digital designed a new architecture built for speed, scalability, and future-proofing. At the core of this transformation was Prismic CMS, paired with modern technologies like Next.js and Tailwind CSS.

The old system’s inefficiencies became glaringly obvious during this transformation. Similar to managing two disconnected systems, the marketing team often faced obstacles that required duplicating efforts and leaning heavily on developers. Every new campaign or website update took far longer than necessary. This fragmentation caused delays and created unnecessary complexity, leaving the team to question whether issues stemmed from the CMS or the architecture itself.

With Prismic CMS, the new architecture eliminated these roadblocks. A slice-based structure empowered content teams to manage and create pages without developer intervention. Meanwhile, the modern tech stack — featuring server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG) through Next.js — ensured the website was fast, SEO-friendly, and future-proof.

The result? A seamless, scalable platform that not only aligned with Ski.com’s premium brand but also positioned them as a digital leader in the ski vacation industry. This modernized approach gave the content marketing team the agility they needed while freeing developers to focus on innovation rather than maintenance. Ski.com now operates with a digital infrastructure built to meet today’s demands and scale for tomorrow’s opportunities.

The solution

Saigon Digital collaborated with Ski.com to:

1. Leverage Prismic CMS and Page Builder: Empowering the marketing and content teams to build, edit, and manage pages independently without technical knowledge.
2. Adopt a modern tech stack: Implementing a JAMstack architecture with Next.js for improved performance and Tailwind CSS for consistent, responsive design.
3. SEO optimization: Utilizing Next.js features like server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG) for enhanced search visibility and faster load times.
4. Reimagine key pages: Redesigning key areas like resorts, regions, packages, and marketing pages for a more easy to use user experience.
5. Streamline Expedia booking engine integration: Creating an intuitive journey from browsing to booking.

The previous content management system (CMS) that was used relied heavily on page builders, which, while offering a vast array of features, were ultimately too complex and provided an excessive degree of freedom. Initially, this flexibility appeared to be a benefit, as it seemingly allowed for greater customization and adaptability. However, in practice, it became clear that this was not the case. 

The overwhelming number of options and the lack of clear guidelines led to confusion and inefficiency. Instead of streamlining the content creation process, the page builders made it more convoluted and time-consuming.

Non-technical team members struggled to maintain consistency. Every attempt to create a new landing page turned into an ordeal of endless options, toggles, and tweaks. This led to mismatched designs, pages that strayed from the Ski.com brand, and constant errors that required developer intervention to fix. The inefficiency slowed down marketing campaigns, leaving Ski.com at a disadvantage in a fast-paced, competitive industry.

Enter Prismic CMS, the solution that transformed Ski.com's workflow. The slice-based architecture of Prismic empowered the marketing team to build pages from pre-designed components, ensuring a consistent, on-brand look every time. With slices, Ski.com's content creators could simply choose, arrange, and publish content, all while previewing changes in real time. The need to edit styles or understand HTML became a thing of the past, freeing up valuable time for creative work.

What made this transition even more seamless was the way Saigon Digital and Ski.com collaborated. While Saigon Digital’s development team worked in parallel to migrate the website to a modern JAMstack architecture, Ski.com's marketing team was empowered to adapt to Prismic. The pre-built slices and preview environments provided structure, simplifying the learning curve and enabling them to start creating pages almost immediately.

This parallel approach ensured that both teams worked cohesively without bottlenecks. Developers focused on optimizing the backend and implementing a scalable, high-performance tech stack, while the content team gained the autonomy they needed to update and expand the site as required.

Reflecting on the transformation, Ski.com’s CEO, Harry Peisach, shared:

The results speak for themselves. Prismic not only eliminated the marketing team’s frustrations but also empowered Ski.com to move faster and stay ahead of competitors. The new website is more than just functional—it’s a dynamic, scalable platform that reflects Ski.com’s premium brand and enables their teams to deliver perfectly planned ski vacations to customers with ease.

Bonus tip from Saigon Digital: slicing through the slopes of web development with Prismic

With Prismic slices, Ski.com can shred through website creation like a pro skier carving down fresh powder. This approach keeps their projects agile, consistent, and always ahead of the competition.

Working with Ski.com, Saigon Digital discovered the immense value of Prismic’s slice-based architecture not only in empowering the content team but also in scaling and iterating on new website projects quickly. With Ski.com’s business model relying on creating multiple geo-targeted and resort-specific websites, the ability to share and reuse slices across projects became a game-changer.

Prismic slices are modular, reusable components that act as building blocks for web pages. These slices can be easily shared between projects, meaning once a slice is designed and developed, it can be reused to create consistent, on-brand layouts across multiple sites. For Ski.com, this meant that new resort-specific websites could be built using the same slices, ensuring a cohesive look and feel while drastically reducing development time.

The process:

1. Building a library of slices:
   Saigon Digital created a comprehensive library of slices tailored to Ski.com’s needs, including components for resort pages, packages, and interest-based content. This library served as a toolkit that could be deployed across various projects.
2. Training the content team:
   By focusing on familiarizing Ski.com’s marketing team with the available slices, Saigon Digital ensured that they could quickly and confidently assemble new pages without technical support. Since the slices remain consistent across projects, the team didn’t need to relearn tools or workflows for each new site.
3. Streamlining development:
   For new websites or updates, developers could focus on refining and adding functionality rather than rebuilding components. This streamlined workflow accelerated development and reduced time to market.
4. Rapid iteration and testing:
   The ease of creating pages with slices allowed Ski.com’s marketing team to experiment with layouts and test new ideas quickly, providing a dynamic platform to meet their business goals.

With Prismic slices, Ski.com’s new website projects moved from concept to completion in record time. The shared slice architecture not only reduced development costs but also enabled faster launches for new campaigns and geo-targeted content.

To maintain efficiency, Saigon Digital also emphasized the importance of reviewing and refining slices. By phasing out unused or outdated slices and replacing them with improved versions, the system remained clean and easy to navigate for the content team.

Nicholas Rowe, CEO of Saigon Digital, shared:

This agile, slice-driven approach has positioned Ski.com to not only meet today’s demands but also to expand their digital footprint efficiently as they continue to grow.

Final takeaway

Ski.com’s revamped website reflects their premium status as the go-to provider for ski vacations worldwide. By migrating to a modern tech stack and empowering their teams with Prismic CMS, they now deliver a faster, SEO-optimized, and user-friendly digital experience that positions them ahead of competitors. Ski.com is ready to guide customers toward perfectly planned ski vacations in the digital era.