The client
Crabbe Mountain is New Brunswick's premier ski resort, located in Lower Hainesville outside Fredericton. A family destination for alpine skiing, snowboarding, night skiing, rentals, and lessons — operating each winter season. The resort needed a modern website both the Crabbe and Brand Butter teams could manage, alongside a full technical SEO and analytics foundation.
What we found
The existing site had noticeable latency, heavy page loads, no SSL certificate (penalised in search), dated layout with inconsistent typography and visual clutter, an overloaded menu with unclear hierarchy, and a completely restrictive editor that the Crabbe team could not update. Trail conditions and key info were buried and hard to find on any device.
The website redesign
We built a new site with faster loading, automatic image optimisation, code minification, and built-in security. The design features bold headings, full-width imagery, and refined typography. Navigation was simplified with hero CTAs (Get Tickets, Trail Conditions) front and centre. Block-based editing means both Crabbe and Brand Butter can manage content with ease. Trail map updates dynamically via a live Google Sheets integration.
Technical foundations
The full measurement and discovery infrastructure we installed:
- Google Business Profile — fully claimed and optimised with correct categories, service areas, photos, and hours
- Google Analytics 4 — advanced configuration tracking phone clicks, form submissions, and all key conversion events
- Google Search Console — monitors search rankings, flags technical issues, and reveals top queries driving visits
- Bing Webmaster Tools — extends search visibility to Microsoft's ecosystem, important for Windows and Edge users
- Structured Data (Schema Markup) — tells Google, Bing, and AI systems exactly what Crabbe Mountain is and offers
- Google Ads & Meta Pixel installed — remarketing and lookalike audiences already building for future campaigns
AI and future discovery
More visitors now discover ski resorts through AI tools — ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Copilot — rather than traditional search alone. These systems surface recommendations based on structured, authoritative content. Without it, Crabbe may not appear even for exact searches like "best ski resort New Brunswick" or "family ski day near Fredericton."
The structured data foundation we built tells AI systems exactly what Crabbe Mountain is, what it offers, and who it's for. In the first full season post-launch, ChatGPT.com already referred 211 real sessions — before most competitors have a foundation in place.
The results
Tracking period: June 2025 – May 2026 (first full operating season post-launch):
- 130,540 total sessions
- 64.3% engagement rate
- 67.6% organic search traffic (Google + Bing)
- 2,500+ peak daily sessions during ski season
- Google/organic: 64.0% of all traffic
- Direct: 22.1% — strong brand recall
- Social (Facebook/Instagram): 6.2%
- Bing/organic: 3.1%
- AI platforms (ChatGPT etc.): 0.2% — and growing