Web design for Traverse City businesses

Traverse City is a small city with a big summer. It had 15,678 people at the 2020 census, but the National Cherry Festival alone draws about 500,000 visitors a year. Summer tourism drives a large share of retail and restaurant sales here, and hospitality employs about 14% of the Grand Traverse workforce.

So your website has two jobs.

In season, most of the people on it have never heard of you. They found you on Google, on a phone, often while standing on Front Street or driving up a peninsula road, sometimes on a weak connection. They want hours, location, prices and a booking button, and they want them before the page finishes loading. A heavy site with a video header and a slider loses them.

Out of season, your customers are locals and repeat visitors. They already know your name. They want to know whether you’re open, what’s new, and how to reach you. A site that still shows August hours in December tells them nobody is minding it.

Different businesses in Traverse City need different things from a site. The structure changes more than the look.

• Wineries and tasting rooms. There are more than 50 wineries near Traverse City, and two federally recognized wine regions, the Old Mission Peninsula and Leelanau Peninsula AVAs, sit right next to the city. Visitors compare them on a phone before choosing which two or three to visit. Tasting hours, reservation rules, group policies and directions from town belong on the first screen.
• Fishing charters and boat tours. People book these before they arrive. Trip lengths, what’s included, what to bring, departure location and a booking calendar matter more than anything else on the page.
• Lodging. Room pages with real photos, what’s walkable, and a booking link that goes straight to availability. If guests book around Cherry Festival week, dates and minimum stays need to be clear.
• Restaurants and breweries. Menu, hours and a map, one tap each. If you take reservations, the button goes at the top. Traverse City runs a Beer Week every November, and a brewery site should make its events easy to find.

How fast does my site need to be for visitors on a phone?

Fast enough that the hours and the booking button show up before someone gives up. Visitors search on a phone, out of their home area, and they tap the next result if yours stalls. Speed comes from what’s on the page as much as from hosting. Big uncompressed photos, autoplay video, several tracking scripts and a page builder that loads everything at once all slow it down.

I size and compress every image, keep the first screen light, and test on a real phone before launch with Google’s own speed tools. Your photos of the bay and the vineyard still go on the site. They just get loaded so they don’t hold up the part that gets you the booking.

What happens to my site and listings when I close for the winter?

A closed business that looks abandoned online is a problem in May. Some customers assume you’ve shut down for good, and a listing with old hours sends the rest somewhere else.

I set up a clear seasonal notice that you can turn on and off, with your reopening date and a way to join a mailing list or book ahead. Your Google Business Profile gets the same status, so the two agree. The rest of the site stays up and indexed through the winter, which is when visitors start planning their summer trips. If you sell gift cards, merchandise or next season’s bookings, the winter version of the homepage puts those first.

What do you need from me to build the site?

Your logo, your current hours by season, and real photos of the place, the water, the rooms or the boat. Stock photos of a generic vineyard don’t sell a specific one. Login details for your domain, your current site and your booking tool. A list of what you sell, and the questions customers ask you over and over, because those become the pages. I write the copy if you’d like, and you approve every word before launch. If you take bookings, I’ll also need a test account or a contact at your booking provider, so I can check every button works before it goes live.