Brush Creek Ranch: A Front Door for Each Property
A resort with several properties needs navigation that makes the differences between them clear. For Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, our redesign led with the land and then split the navigation by property. A fly-fisher, a couple and a wedding planner could find different routes from the same homepage. The screens below document that design decision; we do not have booking data to quantify its commercial effect.
The property, in one sentence
The ranch brings several lodging experiences and outdoor activities under one brand. When this design shipped, its destinations menu carried the Lodge and Spa, Magee Homestead and French Creek. The current operation also includes Platte Canyon Glamping. Historical screens show the three-property design; current capacity, awards and availability should be checked with the property before planning a stay.
What the previous site did instead
The previous design mixed several audiences on one homepage. Leisure activities, group events and property differences competed for attention. A couple interested in adults-only Magee Homestead had a different question from a wedding planner. Our priority was to separate those routes before refining the visual treatment.
The decision: make the map of the ranch the map of the site
Our role was creative direction, creative strategy, and UX and UI design. The central call was to organize the site the way the ranch is organized.
Lead with the land. The hero is full-bleed wilderness: the horses, the elevation, the river, the 1884 brand mark centered like a cattle brand. We used that photograph to establish the landscape before the room cards. It communicates a feature of this property, not proof of a scale no competitor can match. The awards line sits small under the hero.
Split by property at the navigation. Destinations opens three full-height cards, one per property, each with its own mark, photography and sub-navigation: overview, accommodations, experiences, rates, activities, gallery, map and travel request. A guest exploring French Creek can take that route directly; a couple considering Magee does not have to navigate the Lodge's wedding pages first. Each property is a small site with its own audience, sharing one brand.
Activities and dining as layers, not silos. The Farm's farm-to-table program, the wine cellar, Orvis fly-fishing, shooting sports, horseback riding, the Trailhead spa, and yoga live as a cross-cutting layer under every property, so a guest can plan an adventure-first, a wellness-first, or a culinary-first trip without fighting the structure. The experiences row on the homepage is a la carte on purpose: Fall Romance, Fishing Adventure, the Lil Wrangler packages, each one image, one line, one action.
Weddings, groups, and retreats on their own side of the logo. The right half of the primary navigation is Weddings and Events and Meetings and Groups. Those are different purchases from a leisure stay, often the whole Lodge for 155 guests, and the person buying them does not want the leisure funnel. They get their own path from the top of every page.
Heritage as texture, not a chapter. The ranch has been working since 1884, and the temptation is a long Our Story section that travelers skip. We used the heritage instead as visual texture: the brand marks, the log architecture in the dining photography, the historical framing of the marks on each property card. The story is everywhere and the section is nowhere.
Help guests plan a remote stay. The historical navigation includes a ten-day weather panel, a stargazing line and a booking link. These are design examples, not current forecasts. The reservation flow shown is a travel request, intended to route an enquiry to the relevant team across the three properties in that design. It does not establish how every stay is booked today or which reservation software processes it. Our hotel booking engine comparison treats that integration as a separate decision.
The result
A site that represents the estate without making the visitor read every property page. French Creek, Magee and the Lodge each have a visible route; wedding planners have another. These are observable design outcomes, not measured booking gains. The ranch's current website is a later build and not our work; the screens here document ours.
What carries to a property that is more than one thing
- Give different audiences clear routes. A shared homepage can work if fly-fishers, couples and wedding planners can recognize their next step. In this design, that separation begins in the navigation.
- Lead with a distinctive property fact. For Brush Creek it is the landscape and the range of stays. For The Resort at Pedregal it is the tunnel arrival. If your hero could belong to a competitor with a logo swap, it is describing the category. This is the same argument as understanding user intent on travel websites, applied to one property.
- Shared layers, separate funnels. Dining, activities, and the spa belong to every property; weddings, groups, and retreats belong to none of the leisure funnels. Model the site on that distinction and the structure stops fighting the guest.
The way we sell this work now is on a fixed price, published: the tiers are on the hotel website design page, from a build on our Aurelia template to a custom design from the property up to a platform for a group with several properties, which is the Brush Creek shape. If you want the arrival read from the inside first, that is Property Discovery. The full case study is at Brush Creek Ranch.
On the commercial side, see why Booking.com looks cheaper than the hotel website and how to compare equivalent rates. For a property whose differentiator is a program rather than the land, see Hotel El Ganzo.
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Designed, built, and shipped in about 5 days.