YETI

YETI Year In Preview

Look forward instead of back

General Websites and Mobile Sites - Events / Webby Winner

Year In Preview created an engaging, simple way to get the best wild moments on your 2023 calendar.

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Q: Can you briefly describe your project and the concept behind it?

A: At YETI, we find that many people want to spend more time in the wild, but simply don’t know where to start. So, when the time came for brands to launch the expected Year In Review, we decided to flip the script and start looking forward instead of back. Year In Preview created an engaging and efficient way for people to instantly add the best outdoor events to their 2023 calendar, providing them with a blueprint for their wildest year yet.

Q: What were some of your biggest learning and takeaways from this project?

A: While it may be cliche, one key takeaway is that sometimes less is more. As we dove into the development of the experience, we kept pushing to make things flashier. Whether it was adding more question cards into the experience, adding more interface elements, or adding in additional motion throughout, we often ended up reverting the experience back to its more simple form to prioritize simplicity, efficiency, and impact for the user.

Q: What web technologies, approaches, tools, or resources did you use to develop this experience (WordPress, headless, AI, Sublime Text, HTML5, Adobe XD, etc)?

A: In order to facilitate collaboration between teams, designers, and developers, we utilized Figma as our primary tool. Our digital experience was supported by a range of other technologies, including React, Framer, Firebase, Google Cloud, and Analytics. Speed was critical and these tools helped us create a seamless and effective experience for our users.

Q: How did the final product meet or exceed your expectations? What results did you see?

A: Considering we only had 8 weeks to concept, design, develop and launch, we were very happy with the result. Along with that, we had an even more condensed timeline to curate the 135+ calendar events and cut the 635 possible video options for the experience. But in the end, it was worth it. Our main metric for success was calendar downloads, and out of the thousands of people who built their Year In Preview, we had an amazing 9% calendar add rate.

Q: Why is this an exciting time to create new digital experiences? How does your team fit into this?

A: These days, more people than ever before are embracing digital tools to help organize their lives. What excited us was creating a digital experience that could help people organize their outdoor lives. And while we know that a large part of being outdoors is escaping the screens, we didn’t want to shy away from them, but rather embrace them, utilizing a digital experience as a way to help you spend less time on your phone in the long run.

Q: How did you reach a good balance of your own creative ideas and technical capabilities with a fair representation of the client’s brand?

A: YETI may not be the first brand you’d expect to create a digital experience like Year In Preview, and because of that we ensured that the strengths of the brand were on full display throughout. In order to do this, we continued to push the development of the experience in order to include things like video cards, dynamic video renders, and seamless calendar integrations.

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Q: Once you settled on your idea, what influenced your decision on the chosen technical approach? How did it differ or go beyond approaches you’ve taken in the past?

A: When we landed on the name Year In Preview, we had two goals. First, create a digital experience that would rival the most popular Year In Reviews out there. Second, although it was digital, it needed to act as a conduit to getting people off their phone and into the wild. In the end, two simple questions generated both a personalized calendar and hype video, giving people the means and the motivation to get out there.