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News | PG in the 2016/17 season

New winter, new luck

by PowderGuide 10/11/2016
What has been going on at PowderGuide.com over the summer? Do the PGers do anything at all in the summer? What happened to the user survey from last spring? Questions upon questions that we now want to answer!

Winter hasn't really arrived yet, but like every year, the anticipation of the most beautiful time of the year is growing with the first snowflakes, the first trips to icy glacier slopes, all the film premieres, ski tests and special offers. We are also looking forward to the season and are gradually awakening PowderGuide.com from its summer slumber. Of course, the PG team didn't completely sleep through the summer (some of us even followed the winter to New Zealand and South America), but also thought about the coming season and looked at the results of the user survey, among other things. At this point, a big THANK YOU for the lively participation in the survey! Many of the more than 300 participants not only clicked on the multiple choice answers, but also took the time to leave detailed comments - that makes us particularly happy!

Survey results

Who is on PowderGuide.com?

Our users are mostly between 20 and 40 years old and mostly male. They follow PG not only via the website itself, but often also on Facebook. Most of them visit us a few times a week during the season.

What interests the users?

The content on current weather and snow conditions is used and read the most. These are both the ConditionsReports and the editorial features on this topic (PowderAlert, WeatherBlog). In addition to these sections, many users would like to see more content on risk management and safety, as well as travel and tour reports and gear reviews. The interest in reporting on the Freeride World Tour is comparatively lower and, according to user opinion, we can also leave out the "Videos of the Week" section.

From the general feedback, we have learned that the readers of PowderGuide.com particularly appreciate the editorial content and the ConditionsReports. As far as the technical aspects of the site are concerned, many would like a more contemporary design that also works well on mobile devices, more clarity and a better search function.

What do we do with it?

In terms of content, we feel that the survey confirms our decision to focus on our strengths, namely snow and weather topics and other editorial content that is as qualitative as possible. This means that we will continue to refrain from copying press releases without reading them and sharing clickbait videos en masse. There will be fewer, but - at least we hope - more interesting magazine articles.
We are trying to promote "journalistic" content and invest a little more resources here.

It is also clear: PowderGuide.com is financed by advertising. We have been working with many of our advertising partners for many years. If there is relevant news from the partners, we share it. However, we don't recommend partner products that we don't like and only pass on news that we find interesting and useful.

Our weekly features will start again from November. The "Videos of the Week" section will no longer exist in the 2016/2017 season. Instead, Lukas Ruetz will be writing a weekly column about snowflurry and rummaging in the snow. FreerideTouren will no longer be published weekly this winter, but irregularly, but more often in more detail. Contests and other events will be summarized in a weekly event news section, which will start as soon as the first events take place. The weather service will start by the end of October at the latest.

The ConditionsReports are a central part of PowderGuide.com and we are still trying to expand this area. Dear ConditionsReporters: You're great! Without you, PowderGuide wouldn't be PowderGuide!

If there was more going on in the forum, we would of course like that too. If anyone has any ideas on how we can promote this, please let us know! In the poll, someone suggested that we could merge the forum of ihr-wisst-schon-wo and PowderGuide.com. That's a great idea and if we win the lottery, we'll immediately buy ihr-wisst-schon-wen and integrate the forum into ours.

The technology

Of course we know (and not just since the survey) that a lot needs to be improved here. In terms of programming, PowderGuide.com is a, well, let's say, "naturally" grown construct. Over the years, the original in-house development has received more and more new additions, which do not make the whole thing any less complicated. Reprogramming is therefore a very complex undertaking.

After long teething troubles, the "PG 3.0" project was finally launched in the summer. Our brave programmer and his helpers are working on a complete redesign of the site. Of course, this includes long overdue aspects such as mobile applications and responsive design. We hope to be able to launch this in 2017/18. An interim solution for the mobile entry of ConditionsReports is already available this season, CR members should have already received an email about this.

There have been problems with our newsletter for some time, which unfortunately is not displayed correctly for some recipients. If this is the case for you, please send us feedback on this (what kind of e-mail client - with version - do you use) to info@powderguide.com

Finally...

... all that remains for us to say is: we look forward to winter 2016/2017 with you. As always, please send any topic requests, criticism, suggestions and ideas to redaktion@powderguide.com

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This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

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