Your market multiplies by six, then leaves.
Web design in Crosslake
Crosslake has roughly 2,400 year-round residents and over 15,000 people in summer. Sixty percent of the housing is seasonal. No other kind of town does that to a business — and almost no off-the-shelf software is built for it.
- Based in Brainerd, not outsourced
- Fixed price, agreed up front
- I reply within 24 hours.
Everything here runs on a calendar, including your customers.
A six-fold swing between February and July isn't a busy season, it's two different businesses. The winter one serves neighbors who already know you. The summer one serves thousands of people who have never heard of you and are choosing from a phone before they drive up.
Which means your website is doing the entire job of introduction for most of your revenue, in a window where you have the least time to think about it. It has to be right before the season, not during.
The second pressure is bookings. Plenty of lakes businesses take them through a contact form, which means every enquiry costs a reply, a check of the calendar and two more messages — done at night, by the owner, in July. The alternative isn't a booking platform taking a cut and owning your customer list; it's a booking system inside your own site that knows your real availability and puts the reservation into records you own.
The Whitefish Chain is 14 connected lakes, 119 miles of shoreline and more than 20 lodging businesses. If you're one of them, you're not competing on being on the water — everyone is. You're competing on whether somebody can find out what you cost and book it in under a minute.
Build off-season. A site commissioned in March is working for the season it was built for. One commissioned in June has already missed most of what it was for.
The price is on the page, same as everywhere else on this site.
No discovery call before you're allowed to know what something costs. These are the same prices in Crosslake as anywhere else.
Custom website
$1,495
Mobile-first, forms wired to your inbox, SEO foundations, launch and a handover walkthrough. Half up front to book, half on launch.
Site Care
$49/month
Optional, month to month, no cancellation fee. Hosting, domain and SSL, patches, backups and monitoring — including switching the site between seasons.
Custom software
$950
One module to start, if the bigger problem is what happens after the enquiry arrives. Software for lakes-area businesses →
The kinds of Crosslake business this fits.
Each of these has its own page, because the job is genuinely different depending on what you sell and who's buying it.
Resorts & lodging
Every booking you take through somebody else's site, you rent.
Restaurants & bars
Your menu is the most-read page you own. Usually it's a PDF.
Questions from Crosslake businesses.
Can I take bookings without paying a platform every month?
When should I have it built?
What happens in the quiet months?
Across the lakes area, and the rest of Minnesota.
I'm in Brainerd, so Crosslake is a short drive. The work itself runs over email and video calls, and if you'd rather sit down with someone about it, that's easy to arrange here.
- Brainerd
- Baxter
- Nisswa
- Pequot Lakes
- Crosslake
- Breezy Point
- Little Falls
- Aitkin
- Crosby
- Staples
Other towns up here
If you only want the town, not the whole company: Lakes Area Web Design has its own page for Crosslake businesses, same person, same prices, same phone number.
Further out, or out of Minnesota entirely? Still fine. Tell me where you are.
Let's get your Crosslake business found.
Tell me what you do and which towns you want to be found in. I'll reply within 24 hours with a fixed price and a date, and if a website isn't what you need right now, I'll tell you that instead.