We’ve had a busy September here at Peak, launching new websites, a Local Spotlight feature for Truckee/North Tahoe This Week, a new service for keeping websites legally compliant, and winter reservations at The Shack.

Read on for more!

New Website: Ski For The Love

We launched a new website for our friends at Ski For The Love, the Tahoe-based ski film crew that’s bringing the fun back to ski movies.

The new site brings their films, athletes, sponsors, news and merchandise together, while giving the team a flexible platform they can keep expanding.

Check out the new site and and make sure to keep an eye out for their upcoming trailer and premier schedule.

Does Your Website Need a Privacy Policy or Cookie Banner?

Most websites collect more visitor information than their owners might realize. Analytics, advertising pixels, plugins, embedded videos, booking tools and contact forms can track website visitors and transmit information to third parties.

Our new guide explains what Privacy Policies, Cookie Policies and Terms and Conditions do, why a cookie banner needs to actually control nonessential trackers, and why California businesses are paying closer attention.

Read: Does Your Website Need a Privacy Policy, Cookie Banner, or Terms and Conditions?

We’ve also launched a free Website Privacy & Cookie Audit. We’ll scan your website for cookies, analytics, advertising pixels, plugins, embeds and other tools that may collect or share visitor information, then send you a clear summary of what we find and anything that may need attention. We can help you site up a proper consent management tracking and make sure you’re legally compliant.

Request your free Website Privacy & Cookie Audit

Our Local Spotlight Series Is Live

Last month, we shared that we were developing a new Local Spotlight series for Truckee/North Tahoe This Week. This month we published the first three stories!

• Four Programs, One Club: Inside Auburn Ski Club’s Mountain Community, exploring how the Donner Summit nonprofit creates pathways for everyone from first-time skiers to elite competitors.

• How One Challenging Dog Inspired Skylar Bickart to Help Tahoe Families, sharing how Skylar’s experience with her dog Sterling led to Skye’s the Limit Dog Training.

• What’s Actually in the Bin? María López Godoy Wants to Know, sharing how the founder of Waste Free Tahoe helps businesses understand what they’re throwing away, what it costs and how much could be kept out of the landfill.

We’re publishing one profile each week, highlighting the people, businesses, and nonprofits that make the Tahoe area what it is.

Know someone we should feature? Send them our way.

Work Near Palisades This Winter

We’re now accepting winter reservations at The Shack, our coworking space near Palisades Tahoe.

Six-month winter memberships begin December 1:

• Fixed Desk: $300 per month

• Flex Desk: $180 per month

• Earlier start dates are available

• Early Fixed Desk members receive first choice of available desks

• A $99 deposit reserves your membership and is credited toward your first month

• Early-bird members receive one complimentary guest day pass

Reserve by October 15 to lock in the winter offer. Space is limited, and Fixed Desks are expected to fill as ski season gets closer.

Reserve your winter workspace with a $99 deposit, or email hi@shackpalisades.com with questions.

That’s it for September.

If you need help with a website, ongoing support, design, social media, digital marketing or simply figuring out where your current digital presence could improve, we would love to hear from you!

Cheers,
Matt

Here at Peak, things don’t show any signs of cooling down anytime soon. We’ve been busy launching client websites, expanding our services and creating new content to help you improve your online presence.

A New Website for Auburn Ski Club

This month, we launched a brand-new website for the legendary Auburn Ski Club!

Auburn Ski Club has been part of the region’s mountain sports community since 1928, with Alpine, Biathlon, Nordic and Snowboard programs serving athletes of all ages and abilities.

The ASC team came to us looking to make it faster and easier for families to find and register for the right programs. They also wanted Nordic Center visitors to be able to find current information and updates more easily, while better connecting the work of ASC with its Legacy Foundation, which helps fund and support its activities.

The project included:

• A completely redesigned homepage

• Dedicated sections for all four programs

• Detailed program, pricing and registration information

• Staff and coaching information

• Clearer paths for registration and donations

• More visibility for the ASC Legacy Foundation

• A flexible content system the ASC team can update and expand

The new site also gives ASC a scalable digital foundation that can continue to grow with the organization.

Growing Our Social Media Team

We recently brought on a new social media specialist, Trang Nguyen, to support several new client projects.

This expands our ability to help clients with more than their websites. We can now provide additional support with social media strategy, content planning and creation, consistent posting, ongoing channel management and just about anything else related to social media.

We can also help clients bring their websites, email marketing and social channels together under one strategy instead of treating them as separate projects.

If your social channels have become another thing you know you should be doing but never have time to manage, let’s talk.

Is Your Website Ready for AI Search?

AI is disrupting just about everything at the moment, including how people discover businesses online.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has traditionally been the primary focus for businesses trying to get discovered online. Now, generative engine optimization (GEO), which helps tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity understand and surface your business, needs to be part of the strategy too.

The good news is that many of the same principles still apply. Clear service pages, useful content, real expertise, strong site organization and solid technical foundations help both traditional search engines and AI tools understand your business.

There are still important differences and strategies that can improve your chances of appearing in AI-generated recommendations ahead of your competitors.

Find out more: Is Your Website Ready for AI Search?

Need help optimizing your website for the age of AI? Reach out!

Free Website Health Checks

Peak is currently offering free website health checks.

Each review covers:

• Website design and user experience

• Search engine optimization and visibility

• GEO and AI search visibility

• Website performance and speed

• Opportunities to improve conversions

These are completely free, with no strings attached. We’ll provide clear, actionable recommendations, and many of the fixes are straightforward enough for businesses to handle themselves.

Submit your website or forward the offer to a business or nonprofit that could use a second opinion.

What We’re Building Through TNT

We continue to grow Truckee/North Tahoe This Week, our free newsletter covering local news, events, jobs and other useful community updates.

We recently started developing a midweek spotlight series featuring local businesses, organizations, people and events, which is set to launch in the next couple of weeks.

If you know a local business, nonprofit, organization or person you think we should spotlight, please send them our way!

That’s it for August.

If you need help with a website, ongoing support, social media, digital marketing or simply figuring out where your current digital presence could improve, we would love to hear from you!

Cheers,
Matt

Truckee North Tahoe Jobs Collective

The Truckee Jobs Collective is now the Truckee North Tahoe Jobs Collective 🎉

It’s not just a brand expansion - the Collective is now a partnership of not just the Truckee Chamber, but also the North Tahoe Chamber and Tahoe Prosperity Center. Here at Peak we helped the Truckee Chamber rebuild the website and job board a couple years back, and we’re proud to have played our part in bringing this partnership together to expand the job boards reach to more members and stakeholders, and continue to grow it’s effectiveness.

Our work is now expanding beyond support and maintenance of the job board itself to include a weekly jobs newsletter, social media, employer spotlights, blog content, seasonal campaigns, and partner outreach.

Since we began working on the Jobs Collective, the platform has supported more than 2,100 job postings, 11,500 applications, and 400 new employers.

A couple of useful reads

Adding a new service page to your website? Update more than one page

When you introduce a new service, creating a dedicated page on your website is just the first step. To make it effective, you’ll also want to update the rest of your site so everything works together. That often means revisiting your homepage, navigation, internal links, calls to action, metadata, and any supporting content to make sure the new offering is visible and easy to find. If you’re not sure where to start, we put together a simple guide that walks through the process: How to Add a New Service or Product to Your Website.

Local events and community news

Truckee/Tahoe locals: if you’re looking for a weekly summary of the news and upcoming events in the Truckee/Tahoe area, delivered right to your inbox every Monday morning, subscribe to our other newsletter, Truckee North Tahoe This Week.

Harnessing AI workflows to cut out busywork

As a business owner, there’s almost always a repetitive task that eats up time you’d rather spend elsewhere. It might be sending updates, scheduling meetings, organizing leads, or pulling together reports - small things that add up quickly.

AI is a buzzword I’m sure you all are thinking about as business owners, but maybe unsure how to approach it or if there’s a use case in your business that it can solve.

One example from my own workflow: I used to spend hours researching local businesses to identify potential website clients. It was tedious and I often avoided it even though I knew it was important for growing my business.

Now, I’ve set up a simple AI-driven workflow that handles most of that process. It pulls from a list of local businesses, reviews their websites, and flags the ones that are outdated or could benefit from improvements. Every morning I get a curated list of opportunities to review, and best of all I get to add the human element to each outreach.

This new workflow has been a significant driver of growth for us at Peak over the last year, and we’d love to help you find these opportunities as well!

If you’d like to discuss a tedious, annoying, or inefficient workflow and how you can automate it, please reach out! I’d be happy to share ideas or

Cheers,

Matt
Peak Digital Studio

The best websites are not just prettier versions of the old one. They are clearer, easier to use, easier to update, better organized, and much better at helping people take the next step.

That has shown up in a few different ways for us this month, from chamber websites and local workforce tools to travel booking platforms and ecommerce planning.

New article: How we refreshed the Truckee Chamber website

We published a new case study on our work with the Truckee Chamber of Commerce.

The project focused on something a lot of growing organizations deal with: a website that had become packed with useful information, but harder to navigate over time.

Instead of starting from scratch, we helped reorganize the site around the Chamber’s real priorities: Advocacy, Economic Vitality, and Community Connection.

The goal was to make the site clearer for members, easier for visitors to use, and better aligned with the Chamber’s role as “The Heart of Truckee’s Business Community.”

Read the article

Project spotlight: Boat Concierge

We’ve also been working on Boat Concierge, a boat charter website for the U.S. Virgin Islands, with many more locations planned.

This one is fun because it is really more of a booking platform than a traditional website, and required complex integrations and dynamic filtering and sorting.

The goal of the site is to help users search, browse, compare, and book charters more easily, while giving the business a stronger foundation for SEO and future expansion into new destinations.

A few things we focused on:

• Making boat listings easy to browse

• Creating dedicated charter pages instead of simple booking links

• Building a clear path from discovery to booking

• Supporting FareHarbor booking while improving the on-site experience

• Creating an SEO structure around destinations, trip types, and planning content

Check out the site

Around Peak: Restaurant Den got a refresh

Restaurant Den is moving from a restaurant website service into more of a content hub for restaurant owners.

We’ll be sharing practical ideas around restaurant websites, local visibility, online ordering, marketing tools, customer trust, and simple ways to bring more people through the door.

The restaurant world has plenty of software and plenty of noise. Restaurant Den is meant to be the useful version.

Check out the new site

What we’re seeing right now

A lot of our recent work has fallen into a few buckets:

• Organizations with strong programs, but websites that need clearer structure

• Local businesses that need better conversion paths and stronger trust signals

• Ecommerce brands outgrowing their current platform

• Service businesses that look great in person, but need their website to better match the quality of their work

• Community platforms that need content and marketing systems, not just a launch

The main theme of all these is your website should not just hold information, but help people make decisions.

That might mean helping someone become a member, book a service, make a purchase, apply for a job, make a donation, contact your team, or simply understand what your organization does more quickly.

Quick website check

Here is a simple test for your homepage:

Can someone understand these three things in 10 seconds?

• What you do

• Who you help

• What they should do next

If not, that is the place to start.

You do not always need a full redesign. Sometimes the first move is tightening the headline, simplifying the navigation, adding proof, improving a call-to-action, or making your most important pages easier to find.

Small fixes can make a real difference.

Free website audit for the first 3 businesses

This month, we’re offering a free website audit for the first three businesses or organizations that reach out.

We’ll take a look at your site and send back practical notes on what is working, what is confusing, and where there may be opportunities to improve clarity, trust, SEO, speed, and conversions.

If you want one of the three spots, reply to this email with your website URL and we’ll take a look.

Cheers,
Matt
Peak Digital Studio

P.S. If your website has grown a little messy over time, we can help clean it up without throwing away everything that already works.

We’ve been chugging along in May, launching new work, showing up at local events, helping nonprofits and small businesses clean up their digital presence, and continuing to build useful local resources for the Truckee/Tahoe community.

Here’s what’s been happening at Peak Digital Studio!

New Launch: Ian Casey Foundation

This was a project where speed and clarity mattered. The foundation needed a simple, polished page that could get the event out into the world, support ticket sales, explain sponsorship opportunities, and give people a clear next step.

Instead of a longer build of the entire site, we focused on getting the most important version live first, with room to expand the site over time.

That’s often the right move. Launch the useful version quickly, and use it as a foundation to build on.

Peak at the Tahoe Economic Summit

We were proud to attend and sponsor the 2026 Tahoe Economic Summit, hosted by our friends at the Tahoe Prosperity Center.

The theme this year was “Accelerating Tahoe’s Innovation Economy,” with conversations around small-business growth, workforce housing, transportation, environmental innovation, and the regional trends shaping Tahoe’s future.

We love this event and are super grateful to have the TPC as a partner. We work with local businesses, nonprofits, chambers, civic organizations, and founders who are building the next version of this region. Sponsoring the summit was a small way to support that ecosystem and stay connected to the people doing the work.

It was also a helpful reminder that great websites, clear messaging, and strong digital tools help real organizations communicate, grow, hire, fundraise, and serve their customers and communities.

Last Chance: Best of Truckee/North Tahoe Voting Ends Tomorrow

Voting for Best of Truckee/North Tahoe closes tomorrow, May 15.

If you haven’t voted yet, take a few minutes to support your favorite local businesses, restaurants, shops, nonprofits, service providers, and community resources, and of course us!

New Article: Is Your Website Overbuilt?

We recently published a new article on a problem we see all the time:

A website starts simple. Then a new service gets added. Then a landing page. Then a plugin. Then a pop-up. Then a duplicated page. Then a tool no one remembers how to update.

Eventually, the website still technically works, but it feels heavier than it should.

Our article, “Signs Your Website Is Overbuilt, and How to Simplify It,” looks at how small businesses and nonprofits can spot when their website has become too complicated, and what to do about it.

The big takeaway: most websites do not need more stuff. They need more clarity.

Visitors usually want three things:

• What do you do?

• Can I trust you?

• What should I do next?

If your website makes those answers hard to find, it may be time to simplify.

For Smaller Teams: Peak Launchpad

We’re also continuing to build out Peak Launchpad, our starter-friendly website option for solo founders, small businesses, and early-stage organizations that need a real web presence without a big upfront project.

It’s built for businesses that want to start with a clean, professional website and improve it month by month as they grow.

It’s especially useful for sole proprietors, new businesses, local service providers, and teams that have outgrown DIY platforms but want something more durable than another temporary fix. Launchpad is built on a platform that can scale with the business, so the first real website can also be the last major website they ever need.

If you know someone who needs a website but has been stuck between “do it myself” and “spend a fortune,” send them our way.

Truckee/North Tahoe This Week

Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly local newsletter. Truckee/North Tahoe This Week is a great local resource for events, restaurant picks, outdoor updates, and useful things happening around Truckee/North Tahoe, delivered to your inbox every Monday morning. Follow along, or send us something we should include.

Business Notes Worth Watching

A few regional updates caught our attention this month because they could shape how local businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations plan for the season ahead.

The Palisades Tahoe redevelopment remains one of the biggest long-term business stories in the region. For local operators, it raises important questions around year-round tourism, visitor traffic, staffing needs, housing pressure, transportation, and future opportunity in Olympic Valley and beyond.

In Tahoe City, Fanny Bridge is back open after a major replacement project, which should help with access and traffic flow heading into the summer season. That is good news for nearby businesses, visitors, and anyone trying to move through the West Shore corridor.

Need Help Making Your Website Work Better?

Whether you’re launching an event, cleaning up an old site, building a stronger nonprofit presence, or finally making your website easier to manage, Peak can help you get there without overcomplicating the process.

If your website feels heavier than it should, or you have something coming up that needs to launch fast, reply to this email and tell us what you’re working on.

We’d love to help.

Cheers,
Matt
Founder, Peak Digital Studio

Hey friends,

We’ve got a small favor to ask.

Peak Digital Studio was nominated in the Best Of North Tahoe awards, and we’d appreciate your support!

Over the past few years, we’ve had the chance to work with startups, nonprofits, restaurants, local businesses, and organizations throughout Truckee, Tahoe, and beyond. What started as a small creative studio has grown through word of mouth, referrals, and support from this community. We can’t thank you all enough.

If we’ve helped with a website, branding project, marketing materials, creative strategy, or if you’ve simply enjoyed following along with what we’re building, we’d be incredibly grateful for your vote.

Vote For Peak Digital Studio

Also, quick update: we recently migrated our newsletter over to Substack to make it easier to share updates, local stories, projects, and behind-the-scenes content from the studio.

Thanks again for supporting independent creative businesses like ours. It really means a lot.

Cheers,
Matt
Peak Digital Studio