Lately its been all good! I was in a numbers crunching mode on Saturday and found it very interesting that HighCountryWeather.com and the network of ski resort community stations such as canaanvalleyweather.com, sugarmountainweather.com, etc actually pushed MORE page views that the resort content. In other words at least in the last couple of days, more people were interested in the weather than they were looking at the resorts pages for the ski area they were going to visit.
On Saturday alone we delivered more than 141,000 pageviews on HighCountryWeather.com and 56,000+ on SkiSoutheast.com. ResortCams.com which hosts all of the LIVE CAM STREAMS saw 105,852 pageviews. (That's a lot of camera looks!)
WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT WEATHER?
7" of snow fell in the last 24 hours here at Snowshoe Mountain and 24" in the last 7 days and now 73.5" on the season. The equals POWDER! Perhaps THAT is what is generating all of the fervor about the weather? We KNOW it's creating a lot of looks at the webcams!
While on the subject of cams, Snowshoe hasn't been in touch with us about the cams in several days. They're obviously swamped with the Holiday crowd and we anticipate they will devote some resources to getting those running right after the 1st.
Beech Mountain's new LIVE CAM is down. We are certain that it's an internet connection thing, and that will get resolved shortly. More than 3500 of you tried looking at that view on Saturday and we're sorry for that inconvenience.
24 HOUR NATURAL SNOW:
9" – Wisp Resort
7" – Snowshoe Mountain
6.8" – Canaan Valley & Timberline
5" – Beech Mountain Resort
4" – Appalachian Ski Mtn.
4" – Winterplace Resort
4" – Sugar Mountain Resort
3" – Bryce Resort
1" – Cataloochee Ski Area
1" – Ober Gatlinburg
Trace – Wintergreen Resort
No Report from:
Sapphire Valley
Wolf Ridge
Massanutten
The Homestead
THE SLOPES ARE DOTTED WITH HAPPY TRAVELLERS…
It's December 30th and Resorts are Looking at Good Numbers for the Holiday week. I've heard it from pretty good insiders that some of our ski areas are nearly 100% booked up and their lift lines are showing it. Some might complain, but don't. Be happy. If you're one of the ones standing in lines this weekend and through the 1st or 2nd, you chose to be there AND you can be proud to be a part of a success story. It takes every one of your skier visits to pay the bills. …and we want all of our ski areas to pay the bills.
So – again – it's busy out on the slopes and this cold and snowy weather that we're all seeing across the region is keeping everyone busy. I do promise to post some awesome photos that I've seen and hope you guys will send me some of YOUR best photos and videos from YOUR trip. Send them to [email protected].
OTHER NUMBERS…
I was making laps this morning on Snowshoe's Basin (Main mountain) trails and then it got so busy that I left the slopes at 11am after turning 8-10 good runs. After lunch I headed to Silver Creek and NO LIFT LINES and made 8 or so more runs top to bottom. All of the busy lift lines and dotted slopes made me wonder about traffic of another kind.
Bear in mind that SkiSoutheast's parent company is a top web design firm nationally. I know I'm tooting my own horn and perhaps sharing information that some of you didn't know and most could care less about – but AppNet is ranked NUMBER ONE in numerous states on Google and NUMBER ONE for the most important ingredient into any website's success – top ten search engine ranking.
Our MAIN business is working with clients in 34+ states and a few countries to increase their traffic and search engine ranking. In my 17 seasons I've commented about our ski areas and their different levels of marketing. Obviously when you throw 16 snow resorts into a pot – somebody will be the best and someone not so much. That pertains to the websites that pertain to each of our ski areas. For good measure I also threw in a few of the "Official Websites" for the ski resort associations. In the case of the associations, it appears that many people are putting in a lot of time to get information in front of less than a 1000 visitors per month.
Bear in mind that this is an unbiased look at the websites THAT YOU the skier and snowboarder are visiting. Also bear in mind that as a web design firm with more than 1100 clients and in business for more than seventeen years – we do have the knowledge and tools at our disposal to provide the rankings below.
I started to share the actual PERCENTAGE of traffic that each website attracts but thought that might be a little bit of a slap to a couple of websites that simply get VERY little traffic. That said, HERE are the rankings of the sites in our area that pertain to skiing and snowboarding that you visit from most to least. I WILL say that the top three resorts on this list DO attract an inordinately high percentage of the overall traffic.
Drum roll please…
1. SkiSoutheast.com
2. Snowshoemtn.com (SnowshoeMountain.com)
3. MassResort.com
4. TheHomestead.com (Is this a surprise to anyone!?!)
5. WintergreenResort.com
6. SkiSugar.com
7. OberGatlinburg.com
8. WispResort.com
9. BeechMountainResort.com
10. Cataloochee.com
11. Winterplace.com
12. CanaanResort.com
13. AppSkiMtn.com
14. TimberlineResort.com
15. SkiWolfRidgeNC.com
16. BryceResort.com
17. DCSki.com
18. GoSkiNC.com (Official website for NC Ski Areas)
19. GoSkiWV.com (Official website for WV Ski Areas)
20. SkiSapphire.com
21. SoutheastSki.com (Official website for the Southeast Ski Areas Association)
* ResortCams.com would rank number ONE however we don't consider it a ski website per se so we didn't include it in the list!
It's Sunday and I'm on "Holiday" so I'm going to chill today and do some powder runs with my buddy Ed Galford of Snowshoe Mountain. See you guys in a few minutes!
Email me your thoughts and reactions at: [email protected]