Watch out – here comes SkiNet!

Photo: Niall Bouzon

The first thing I noticed about the Bonnier office in Boulder, Colorado was the giant ski-resort gondola hanging in the lobby above the reception desk. The second thing was that my work wardrobe of dresses and high heels were out of place in an office where outdoor gear doubles as business attire.

It wasn't until I accepted a job there that I learned about the burrito guy who delivers steaming hot breakfast every day, the idyllic bike trails meandering from the office to downtown, and the fact that it's actually possible to inner tube to work when there's enough water in the creek that bypasses the office.

Fun and excitement were definitely in the cards for my new gig as digital director of Bonnier Mountain Group-but I also had a serious challenge ahead of me. Skinet.com, Bonnier's winter sports Web site, was failing, and we had lost the confidence of the ski industry.  Pageviews were down, advertising was down, and some big changes needed to happen in order to set things right.

Bonnier Mountain Group comprises Ski magazine, which serves an affluent, family-oriented market, Skiing magazine, which caters to a young audience of extreme skiers, and Warren Miller Entertainment, a 60-year-old film and TV production company. In the heyday of Internet portal sites, all the skiing brands had been rolled up into a single online entity, in the style of Condé Nast's popular Epicurious and Style.com (which draw content from the publishing company's food and fashion magazines, respectively). The site was called SkiNet, and the idea was that it would "own" the online space for all things related to winter sports. It was a good idea, but the individual brands got lost in the shuffle, which was confusing to both advertisers and loyal fans.

I was tasked with breaking SkiNet apart into its component brands, forging a unique online identity for each one of them, and increasing audience and advertising across the board. This required some serious strategizing. Along with the Mountain Group's new publisher, Mike Federle, and head of digital sales, Ben Rifkin, I forged a plan to aggregate traffic across the three sites, while keeping each brand identity discrete.

Another challenge? The work had to be done crazy-fast. It was mid-June when I moved to Boulder, and the sales cycle for the 2010 ski season was set to begin in August. In fact, the sales team had already sold one online ad campaign on the as-yet-non-existent site, which had to go live by August 15. That left just two months for the development of the sites-an almost unheard-of timeframe.

So, Bonnier Corp's technical team in Florida worked with me to come up with a common platform on which to build all three sites, with clean code that could be replicated for rapid development. Our superstar interactive art director, Doug Parker, applied each brand's graphic profile to the feature sets we'd agreed to, leaving flexibility for each site to be further customized once the brand-level teams started working with them.

Next, we identified the "launch critical" feature sets. The Warren Miller Films site primarily needs to sell tickets during the annual film tour, with a slick search function to find movie showings all around the U.S. and display them in a Google Maps interface. Ski and Skiing primarily needed to showcase gear, resort and how-to content appropriate to each demographic.

We also wanted to engage the ski community with user photo and video uploads, Twitter integration and excellent interactive features-like a tool for comparing snow and avalanche conditions across the U.S. But we knew that we had some time before the ski season started and people would really start using these functionalities, so we decided to get the sites built and polished first, and launch the community features later in the fall.

The plan worked! So far we've met all of our goals. The three sites relaunched on time, with Skimag.com and Skiingmag.com going live an unbelievable eight days early. (Thanks, awesome programmers!)

Now we're beginning the planning phase for the community features. Our agile development process allows us to bundle work so we're building and launching continuously, and the sites are always getting better. The traffic numbers for August and September exceeded our goals, and we're working with resort and gear advertisers to create some very cool sponsored content, in the hopes of increasing both revenue and the ski industry's confidence in our company's Web skills.

Keep an eye on the Bonnier's skiing sites this season, and I hope you'll see steady improvements in our content, interactive features, and social media integration. In fact, this week we're kicking off one of the biggest and most exciting social media initiatives Bonnier Corp has seen, called "60 Days of Giveaways." This year marks the 60th anniversary of Warren Miller Films, so every day from October 1 to December 1, we're asking users to complete a challenge-a trivia question, a scavenger hunt, or a task on Facebook-for a chance to win a valuable prize. Each day we'll give away something like new skis, lift tickets, or resort accommodations. Sorry, Bonnier employees can't win, but your friends can, so please spread the word!

Bonnier Mountain Group is always looking for feedback, so if you go to any of our sites and see something you like, don't like, or have an idea for improving, please let us know! Send Megan a message on BonFire or add a comment below and tell her what you think.