{"id":23849,"date":"2025-06-20T11:45:51","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newblog.siteground.com\/en\/?p=23849"},"modified":"2025-09-04T06:56:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T06:56:44","slug":"client-story-lindsay-colbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteground.com\/blog\/client-story-lindsay-colbert\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Smarter Hosting Partner Helped Japan Ski Experience Increase Traffic by 162%"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When our client Lindsay Colbert first fell in love with Japan’s legendary powder snow in 2004, she had no idea that her passion would turn into a thriving international business. Today, Japan Ski Experience<\/a> serves customers across Australia, the US, Asia, and Europe \u2013 mainly thanks to its well-developed online presence. With a steady year-over-year website traffic growth on SiteGround, Lindsay’s proving that with the right online strategy and the right hosting provider, even the most niche business ideas can achieve global success.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Identifying a Market Gap<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lindsay’s entrepreneurial journey began with a simple observation: Japan’s skiing was extraordinary, but international ski tourism there was just emerging. At the time, she was teaching English in Japan, but quickly found a business partner who was already working in Japan\u2019s most renowned ski resort, and they began taking bookings. The timing wasn’t perfect, launching during the 2008 financial crisis, but they had a clear vision: to connect skiers from around the world with Japan’s unmatched snow experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>How \u0430 Slow Website Can Cripple Your Business Growth<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Japan Ski Experience grew year over year, Lindsay discovered a painful truth many successful offline businesses face: their online presence was holding them back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We paid a lot of money for a very slow website. Because we had such a slow, clunky website, which we had so little control over, we were dependent on pay-per-click advertising in order to get business and to drive people to our website.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the beginning, their website was integrated with their travel agency booking software, managed entirely by a third-party company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The whole website was managed and hosted not by anything under our own control, but via the company that we had our travel agency software with. Our team in Japan would be sending panicked emails saying, \u201cHelp our website’s down\u201d. We don’t know what’s happened. We had no control over it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Japan Ski Experience was trapped in a digital death spiral: pouring money into expensive paid advertising to compensate for a slow, unreliable website that drove customers away. Then the pandemic hit, Japan closed its borders to international tourism for two and a half years, and the business faced complete collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Turning a Crisis Into an Opportunity<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic forced Lindsay to completely rethink their digital strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I realized we were going to need to try to find a way to get business without paying huge amounts for pay-per-click advertising. For that, I wanted to improve our SEO.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But with their existing slow, uncontrollable website, SEO improvements were impossible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When you have a clunky website that’s really slow and you’re not doing well in SEO, there wasn’t much else I could do to the website. We tried optimizing images and everything like that. But with that hosting and that technology we had at that time, it wasn’t possible.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lindsay made a bold decision: to completely rebuild their online presence from scratch.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I made the decision during the pandemic to completely start with a brand new website and brand new hosting. Because we had no business for two and a half years, we could put some time, effort into doing that.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Switching to SiteGround: Dramatic Performance Improvements<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Lindsay decided to use the pandemic downtime to build a completely new website with full control, she partnered with a web design and development agency that recommended SiteGround as their hosting provider. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On SiteGround Japan Ski Experience’s website started showing consistent performance improvements on both desktop and mobile. During their first year as a SiteGround client, their traffic increased by 162%, which converted directly into more bookings<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

SiteGround is obviously designed to get websites working really fast. It’s got lots and lots of features we were able to tap into to make our site’s performance 88.6% faster.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n